City Limits Magazine, March 1997 Issue

8/3/2019 City Limits Magazine, March 1997 Issue

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URBAN A~~A IR S N (W S M A6AZ IN (

'be U D i o D i z a t i oo f W o r k f a r


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Pimps in PinstripesHave $1,695 to blow? That's a few dollars more than the twomonth allotment ofpublic assistance and food stamps for a fam

ily of three in New York . It's also the fee (not including roomand board) to attend the three-day "Welfare Privatization" conferencein Washington that begins March 24.Sponsored by the World Research Group and,..___ -..... .".- the Reason Foundation, the conference featurespresentations by private-sector gurus with entrepreneurial ideas about restructuring the welfaresystem, including managing partners from

ED ITOR A Lockheed Martin, Electronic Data Systems andAndersen Consulting. Top billing on the conference's first morning goes to Richard f . Schwartz,former special adviser to Mayor Giuliani. Schwartz was in charge ofparing down the city's welfare system. Promotional material proclaimsNew York City "an international leader in welfare reform withAmerica's largest and most successful Workfare program."Schwartz has moved into private-sector consulting to make anincome from needy government officials laboring under budget-cuttingdirectives. Programs he helped engineer have cut the city's welfare rollsby more than 220,000 in the last two years and saved the Giulianiadmin istration more than $50 million a month in welfare spending,according to the city comptroller.As Schwartz has found , the most efficient way to make the welfaresystem less costly is not through "reinvention" but by cutting the welfare rolls . Fewer recipients , ewer benefits to be paid.Not surprising--but conveniently overlooked by the ax-wieldinggurus-is the household income information just released by theCensus Bureau as part of the 1996 New York City Housing andVacancy Survey. It shows that people are worse offeconomically evenas the welfare rolls have been cut. In fact, they may be worse offspecifically because the welfare rolls have been cut.Poverty is deepening in New York: 32.3 percent of the city's 1.9 million renter households had incomes below the poverty line at last count,up from 29.9 percent in 1992. The median income ofall renter households dropped 3 percent from 1992 to 1995, after adjusting for inflation.Schwartz and other fo lks looking to make a killing by consultingwith government on reckless welfare strategies are reminiscent ofanother breed ofbottom-feeder. Not long ago, we had a name for thepolitical and nonprofit machine denizens who made extraordinary livings off the welfare system while doing nothing for the community:poverty pimps. They hung out in the gutters of the South Bronx, EastHarlem and elsewhere, winning contracts for their business partnersand sucking low-income neighborhoods dry.Their heirs now occupy downtown offices and are called entrepreneurs. They can charge their acolytes $1,695 to listen as they pontificate on innovative strategies for making profits off ofdespair and misery. It's a peifect symbol for our age.

Cover Illustration by Chuck Gonzales Andrew WhiteEditor

(ity LimitsVolume XXII Number 3

City Limits is published ten times per year. monthly exceptbi-monthly issues in June/July and August/September. bythe City Limits Community Information Service. Inc . anonprofit organization devoted to disseminating informationconcerning neighborhood revitalization.Editor: Andrew WhiteSenior Editors: Kierna Mayo. Kim Nauer. Glenn ThrushManag ing Editor: Robin EpsteinContributing Editors:JamesBradley. Rob PolnerDesign Direction: James Conrad. Paul V. LeoneInterns: Mary Blatch . Omar SacirbeyAdvertising Representative: Faith WigginsProofreader : Sandy SocolarPhotographers: Dietmar Liz-Lepiorz. Melissa CoopermanAssociate Director,

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and Environmental DevelopmentUrban Homesteading Assistance BoardBoard of Directors *:Eddie Bautista. New York Lawyers for

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Subscription rates are: for individuals and communitygroups. $25/0ne Year. $35/Two Years; for businesses.foundations. banks. government agencies and libraries.$35/0ne Year. $50/Two Years. Low income. unemployed.$10/0ne Year.City Limits welcomes comments and article contributions.Please include a stamped. self-addressed envelope for returnmanuscripts. Material in City Limits does not necessarilyreflect the opinion of thesponsoring organizations. Sendcorrespondence to: City Limits. 120 Wall Street. 20th Fl..New York. NY 10005. Postmaster. Send address changes toCity Limits. 120 Wall Street. 20th Fl.. New York. NY 10005.Periodical postage paid

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FEATURESWEP: Workers Expect Paychecksayor Giuliani has earned bragging rights to hundreds ofmillions in welfare savings. But unions are joining the fight forworkfare workers' rights, and that means big changes down theroad for welfare reform. By Andrew WhiRudy's Bare Budgetlush with a Bull market windfall, the mayor is talking taxcuts to the wealthy. But low-income residents will miss out ontheir Wall Street bonuses. A primer on city cuts to housing, hospitals,youth, recycling and the Civilian Complaint Review Board.The Apprenticeship of Money KravisFinancier Henry Kravis teams up with nonprofit guru KathrynWylde to leverage private sector millions for inner-city economicdevelopment. Can they really create jobs without risking capital?By Kim Nau

PIPELINESAbandonedHello, I must be going. The mayor has anointed a thirdhousing commissioner but there's little reason to think that spellsrelief for tenants of crumbling buildings. By Glenn ThruRoommatesThe threat of rent deregulation is mobilizing SRO residents,the city's most vulnerable tenants. By Mary Blai

COMMENTARYCityview 130The Price is Wrong By Errol T. LouCityview 132Silent Slavery By Sushila PaReview 133Broken Promises By Shawn DovSpare Change 138Good Deeds Undone By Mike Arsha

DEPARTMENTSBriefs 6 , 7 Editorial 2GOP seeks Vito Override Letters 4George's April Fools Gift ProfessionalDirectory 36Want the facts? Cut it out. Job Ads 37


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A Flaw" Approach? dents at the Park Avenue Armory havebeen there more than two years.

LETTERS

I write to call attention to the blatantbias that pervades Phyllis Vine's articleabout the nonprofitization of several of thecity's shelters for single adults ("A 'Cure'for the Homeless," January 1997).Practically all of the shelters have beenrenovated . Qualified staff is in place.Residents are being moved into permanenthousing and jobs. Vast amounts of moneyare being saved. The service needs of themost troubled, chronically homeless arefinally being meaningfully addressed. Yet,shockingly, Vine bemoans the loss ofcapacity in drug-infested, squalid andthreatening "general" shelters.

Vine also discusses my intention torestrict occupancy at the Harlem I Men'sShelter to those who wish to participate inthe work and training program we offerthere. As an advocate I have always beenforthright about my position that it is notwrong to expect responsibility from recipients of public benefits. I do not believeyou act in a homeless person's best interestwhen you give him or her a venue in whichto pursue substance abuse or otherwisefester indefinitely without any progresstoward independence. However, that beingsaid, no responsible nonprofit would discharge a client to the street. Appropriatetransfer arrangements will be made inevery case of noncompliance.

M

Not uncontested are Vine's claimsthat most shelter residents are short-termusers of the system without majorimpediments to independent living. TheNew York City Commission on theHomeless, on which I served, found that60 percent of single adult shelter residents had been in the system for morethan a year. It also found that in randomtests, 80 percent of general shelter residents evidenced drug use. The articleitself points out that 69 out of 100 resi-

The city has made a very wise decision in investing in a more cost-efficient,therapeutically effective alternative to theold "general shelter" system. As advocates we should encourage the move inthis direction.George McDonaldPresidentThe Doe Fund

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Phyllis Yin. r.pll.s: GeorgeMcDonald errs if he thinks my articlesomehow opposed the clean-up of thefilthy, dilapidated living conditions thatnonprofit organizations have accomplished. They have made very significant,laudable improvements.

The problem J sought to elaborate,however, should not be glossed over. Toargue, as McDonald does , that the systemserves a population of predominantlychronic shelter residents is to simplyignore the facts.

True, if you take a survey on any givenday, as the Commission on the Homelessand several other researchers did in the1980s and early 1990s, you will find 60percent or more of the men and womell inthe city shelters have been there for aslong as a year or more. You will also findthat a majority of residents have a historyofmental illness and substance abuse.

But the one-day survey is a fundamentally flawed approach to establishing aprofile of the average mall or woman whouses the shelter system, as DennisCulhalle, a University of Pennsylvaniaprofessor of social work has put forth ill(Letters, continued on page 34)

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Takes the

out ofWall Street.

I 111< ~ ~ 1 1 1 ~

MARCH 1997

t 11


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On February 13, dozens of marchers - children, puppets and rabbiIncluded- called for an end to the demolilion of community gardens.They trudged from the lower East Side to City Hall

60P SEEKS TO OVERRIDE VITOThe initial trenches of the loomingrent regulation renewal battle arejust about dug.At press time, GOP leaders in theState Senate were expected torelease at leasttwo biDs outlining theirattack on protections for the richestand poorest New York City tenants.The plan is expected to come inresponse to a bill introduced byassembly Democrats in late February,which called for the permanent extension of rent control and rent stabilization. The state's rent regulation lawsare due to expire on June 15.One Republican bill, expected tobe introduced this month, wouldShort Shots

CRAIN'S REPORTS THAT THERE'S SOMEDISAGREEMENT WITHIN THE NATIONALUrban League over how they shoulddesuibe their move to the nonprofittower at 120 Wall Street. The busi-

force tenants to make a deposit onunpaid rent before they could proceed with housing court casesagainst their lendlords. A secondmeasure, expected to come later, willreportedly extend luxury decontrol,proposing the elimination of rent regulations for tenants who earn at least$100.000 a year. Currently, tenantswith incomes oyer $250,000 ayear living in apartments are denied rant capprotections.The already-released DemocraticParty b ~ I , produced by AssemblymanVito Lopez. the Brooklyone whochairs the Assembly's housing committee, would give tenants permanentnessman's glossy weekly says someLeague staffers want to use 95 PineSt.-the back door address-in lieuof admitting to Wall St. on their stationary. Good thing (ity Limits isbeset by no such sense of shame aswe slink into our amply-(arpetednew digs on Pine Street this month .

GEORGE'S APRIL FOOrS GIFTGovernor George Pataki has

hatched a nasty April Fool's Daysurprise for 175 community housing groups who organize tenants,help seniors and assist residentsin their conflicts with negligentlandlords.Community groups receivingNeighborhood PreservationCompany grants from the statehave always relied on the governor to transfer millions of dollarsfrom one f iscal year to the next tocover the gap between contractterms and the state's fiscal year.Since it has no effect on the statebudget, the transfer has become amatter of annual routine. Until thisyear, that is.

In his recently released budget,Pataki for the first time omittedNPC reauthorization. The decisioncuts off the flow of $7.5 million tothe community groups as soon asthe new state fiscal year begins onApril 1.

"As it stands now, it means Idon't have a housing person comeApr il 1, and I don't do a housingprogram," says Cather ine Piecora,executive director of the AstoriaDevelopment Corporation , whichuses its $65,000 NPC contract toprovide a wide range of tenant

services. "I don't think Pataki realizes what he's cutting . We helpseniors fill out grant forms, forGod 's sake."

Calls to Pataki's budget officewere not returned .

Pataki has also proposed a 75percent cut in the program's $11 .75million budget for next year. Thegovernor slated big cuts for theprograms in each of his previousbudgets only to have themrestored by the State Assembly,but advocates fear the welfarereform and the repeal of rent regulation laws will top the agenda thisyear, leaving the housing cutsunrestored .

The loss of the re-authorizationposes a more immediate threat.Because the money is not even inthe governor's budget, localgroups will have a hard timeobtaining bridge loans from banks,according to Celia Tkaczyk, exec utive director of the NeighborhoodPreservation Coalition of New YorkState, an affordable housing lobbying group.

"I t gets harder and harder everyyear to ask them to keep restoringthe program when they have somany other things to worry about,"Tkaczyk says. -Glenn Thrush

title to their rent-regulated apart- but adds that some fellow Democretsments without the need for lease are increasingly open to the idea. Herenewals. It also seeks to limit rent is researching aplan to address land-hikes when landlords perform major lord complaints that tenants drag outrepairs. The bill, co-sponsored by court cases to avoid paying rent.Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, is "What we need to do is increase theexpected to pass the Assembly, but number of housing court judges.has virtually no chance of gaining appoint like 50 new housing courtSenate approval judges so that most cases could beGO P sources teU City limits that resolved in a month," Lopez says.Senate Majority Leader Joseph 'We need to come up with aplan thatBruno still plans to propose a mea- eliminates the need for rentsure that wiU call for elimination of all deposits rent regulation. But Lopez predicts "If they are not talking aboutSenate Republicans will push primar- deposit of rent, our ears are open,ily for the luxury decontrol plan and says Billy Easton of the New Yorkthe rent deposit bill. State Tenants and NeighborsThe Assembly housing chief says Coalition, one of the largest pro-ten-he opposes the rent deposit measure ant groups. -Glenn Thrush-----------------------------

A(tually, you (an now reach us at 120Wall St. NY, NY 10005.CHRIS LYNN IS THE WIZARD OF 000WHEN IT COMES TO TALKING ABOUTManhattan Borough President RuthMessinger behind her back.In the moments before a February

13 mayoral briefing, the city's transportation commissioner was tellingcolleagues about a recent hallwayencounter between Messinger and hisfriend Councilman Antonio Pagan.Messinger, Lynn reported in a voiceloud enough to be heard dearly onpress row, said "Hi, Tony" as she

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B

PIPELINE i,

Mayor Giulianihands of f the hous-ing departmentbaton-for the thirdtime in as manyyears-to RichardRoberts.

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AbandonedThe mayors 1995 assurances that he had a strategy to preserveafford1.lble housing have turned up empty in '97. By Glenn Thrush

The city's ballyhooed promiseto prevent landlords fromabandoning their run-downapartment buildings in lowincome neighborhoods hascollapsed on the eve of its implementation,City Limits has learned.On Halloween Day in 1995, MayorGiuliani and Deborah Wright, then-commissioner of the city's Department ofHousing, Preservation and Development,unveiled a bold new housing initiative. Itwas, the mayor said, "designed to keephousing in responsible private hands." Itwas also designed to blunt growing criticism that the administration clidn't give ahoot about housing.In keeping with Giuliani's order thatHPD never again take ownership of buildings from landlords in tax arrears, the system was to offer little in the way of directmanagement of broken builclings . Rather,the city would use technology, shoe leatherand negotiating expertise to intervene withowners before their buildings fell apart.The flfSt component of the new system,Wright announced, would be an "earlywarning system" to predict which buildingswere most neglected. Second, the citywould provide technical assistance andlow-interest loans to well-intentioned landlords who had fallen on hard times . If thatfailed, Wright's agency would briefly takeover the properties, almost irnrnecliately

handing them over to pre-screened privatelandlords or community-based nonprofits.All that needed to be worked out, theysaid, were the technical details.But 18 months and two HPD commissioners later, the ambitious strategy isunfunded and unfinished. The administration's Halloween commitment has turnedout to be more trick than treat.'The trouble is that nobody at the wholeagency really gives a shit about the issue ofhousing anymore," said a former top aideto Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, the second commissioner to leave HPD in a year. 'There isno budget for the anti-abandonment plan ..With the money, this thing could be one ofthe most important programs in the historyof New York City housing."According to high-ranking administration sources and outside consultants, theproject is dying for lack of the $20 millionthat former HPD officials say is needed toget the transfer system-the key component of the plan--off the ground. Eventhough the program requires governmentsubsiclized loans and grants to aid in therepair of poorly maintained buildings, theadministration has been unwilling to commit new funds to those programs in theFiscal Year 1998 preliminary budget.An equally bad problem is HPD's organizational instability. Besides the repeatedloss of its commissioners, the agency hasrecently suffered the defection of its devel-

opment chief, its planning and sales director and the head of its emergency repairprogram. Gone too are nearly 100 of themid-level technocrats who had accumulated years of housing knowledge necessaryto make the plan work.'They're going to just limp along,"says Joe Center, a longtime housingactivist and nonprofit developer. "Thenthey are going to let the whole antiabandonment thing clie in the wind. Nomoney. No commitment. Nothing. It's justan unbelievable tragedy."Mayor SurprisinglyAmenableHPD sources say the future of the planbrightened briefly last year, when thencommissioner Barrios-Paoli met with themayor to seal a deal that would havepumped millions of dollars into anti-abandonment.

What happened at that meeting isn'tentirely clear, but Barrios-Paoli reportedly asked that HPD be allowed to keepsome or part of the estimated $15 to $20million that has been saved by selling offthousands of tax-foreclosed, in remproperties.HPD sources say the mayor seemedsurprisingly amenable to Barrios-Paoli 'ssuggestion. ''The idea was that half of themoney would go to the anti-abandonmentprogram and the other half would go intoeconomic development initiatives," anadministration source says. "But it diedbecause she didn't really keep the pressure up ."Barrios-Paoli denies ever having madea deal with Giuliani, but says: "It's certainly an idea I would support. I've alwayssaid that the resources for anti-abandonment can come from money already inHPD's budget." And HPD's newest commissioner, Richard Roberts, appointed lastmonth, told City Limits he needed to studythe issue before commenting on the needto fight to keep the in rem money insidethe agency. (See sidebar.)But another current Giuliani commissioner who has frequent dealings withHPD says the Barrios-Paoli cost-recoveryidea is coffin-nail dead: "Any more moneygoing into housing? I'd call that extremewishful thinking."Indeed, throughout the Giuliani administration, the focus in housing has been tosave money, not to spend more on theexpensive building renovations that havebeen the heart of HPD's traclitional mission. In fact , the only mention Giulianimade of housing in his February management report was that the city continued tosell off an average of 4,000 buildings a

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year to private landlords , nonprofit groupsand tenant-run cooperatives.Ingttnlous Sch.mttA year ago, Giuliani's fmance commissioner figured out an even more ingeniousscheme to generate long-denied revenue offof the city's housing stock. By selling offold tax-lien debt to private investors-whoin turn have hired collection agents tosqueeze payments from owners-the citynetted more than $400 million without having to threaten takeover of a single building.But in hatching the tax lien sale,Giuliani's minions initially made no provisions to protect the buildings' low-incometenants who might have faced evictions ordeteriorating conditions if owners, unableto payoff the liens, abandoned their buildings. (See "Sell Out" in the May 1996 CityLimits.) In a frenzied legislative sessionbefore the lien sales, tenant advocates,council staffers and Harlem CouncilwomanVirginia Fields forced the city to pluck2,500 "distressed buildings" with 60,000apartments out of the lien sales pool.As importantly, the law codified theWright anti-abandonment plan, forcing theadministration to defend its record duringperiodic oversight hearings .At just such a hearing on January 31,HPD Deputy Commissioner CynthiaFisher indicated the agency would unveil a"pilot" version of the property transfer program by the end of the year.When pressedfor more details, Fisher would not disclosewhich neighborhoods would be involvedbut did indicate the program would relyheavily on for-profit owners willing toinvest their own resources on buildings."HPD is still planning for a comprehensive citywide anti-abandonment program," she assured the three councilmembers that stayed for the duration of themeeting. "But because of the limitedamount of capital dollars available, we willmake a major effort to identify ownerswho can [take over distressed buildings)without city money."''There are enormous logistical problems ," she added, in an apparent allusionto the agency's cash and personnel woes.Fisher said buildings that couldn'tindependently find new, white-knightownership would rely heavily on the 7aprogram, in which court-appointed administrators are empowered to take control ofdistressed buildings.By using HPD-subsidized 7a loans, the emergency repair program and heating fuel drops, administrators are able to stabilize poorly maintainedbuildings and resume rent collections.But, as of now, there is almost no fund-MARCH 1997

ing for the program . Last year, Giulianibudgeted about $1.5 million for 7a loans ,and this year's budget calls for only$500,000 more, which would pay for therehab of about 70 apartments.Moreover, HPD's recent attempts tostreamline the 7a process have been a failure. Two requests-for-proposals sent tocommunity groups interested in becoming7a administrators have been withdrawn forretooling during the last year. And the latest version of the RFP contains no reference to the use of 7a as an anti-abandonment centerpiece.Systttmatically Pur ."Even with a new and adequately-funded 7a program , the anti-abandonment system would likely require extra money tohelp stabilize the 60,000 units of distressedhousing that were pulled from the city'stax lien sale because they were in imminent danger of being abandoned.How much money would be needed?Even the most modest $lO,OOO-per-unitrepair regimen would cost the city $600million .Yet so far, the mayor hasn't beenwilling to allocate even a fraction to theloan and grant programs that would beused for anti-abandonment purposes.Fisher, the highest-ranking HPDholdover from the Barrios-Paoli regime,refused City Limits requests to commenton these issues."What you've got here is an agency

that is being systematically purged of anyknowledge and talent," says Jay Small,executive director of the Association ofNeighborhood and Housing Development."And it indicates a lack of interest in housing on the administration's part."Small and other housing experts sayexisting financial tools HPD could use tohelp struggling landlords stabilize theirbuildings have also been deprived of seri-0us money. The Participation LoanProgram, which combines government andbank money to give landlords below-market-rate loans for building rehabs, has suffered both federal and city cuts in the '90s.And the Article 8a program, which offerslow-interest loans for less extensive work,has had its budget doubled in Fiscal Year1998 to $6 million, but that's still a fraction of its 1980s funding level, when HUDbankrolled the program.Add to this the fact that the federal government has stopped issuing new Section 8vouchers for low-income tenants-something many landlords in the city 's poorestneighborhoods rely on to keep rent rolls ata level where they can pay for basic maintenance-and the dimensions of HPD'scrisis becomes clear.Foolishly OptimisticDesperate to salvage the anti-abandonment effort without reasonable funding,agency policymakers have begun considering a scheme to take money from the rent

Mister Roberts'NeighborhoodRchard Roberts, the youthful new commissioner of the city's troubled housing agency, is embarking on a ob that is likely to give him a ew gray hairs.Roberts, a 32-year-old fonner aide to City Hall's workfare and privatization guru Richard Schwartz, was due to take over the reins at the Departmentof Housing Preservation and Development at the beginning of March. UlliamBanios-Paoli, the culT8nt HPO commissioner, left the agency's helm after lessthan ayear on the job."Clearly the agency has been focused on implementing strategies to changethe city's role as landlord fllast resort," Roberts told City Umil$. "That willcontinue to be my priority."Roberts is aYale Law School graduate and former vice-president of theEdison Prqject, which promotes the privatization of public schools. He also guided the city's ANCHOR program, a public-private partnership to spur retail andresidential development in poor neighborhoods. A ear ago, he left his City Halljob to become a vice-president in the community relations department of MountSinai Hospital.What other priorities does he have in mind? "Personally, Iam very interestedin seeing an expansion of the ANCHOR program," Roberts says.Finding applicants for the job was difficult, according to agency stalTers andadvocates. "In a they needed to get ayoung guy like Richard," a sourceclose to Roberts says, "because an older person would have been less willing tojump onto the Titanic." -Glenn Thmh


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rolls of better buildings to pay for repairson the worst-maintained buildings with thepoorest tenants."It's their idea to cluster the buildingstogether, the economically viable ones withthe worst ones," says Brent Sharman ahousing analyst with the CommunityService Society whom HPD consulted onthe plan. "But I think HPD's assumptionsabout the average rent rolls [of the betterbuildings] are foolishly optimistic. Even inthe best buildings, you're not dealing withwealthy tenants .... I think they are increasingly realizing the folly of it."If the loan programs and third-partytransfer system are hurting for lack of cash,the "Early Warning System" has fallen victim to HPD's personnel turnstile. The mainarchitect of the system, which is supposedto collect data on a building's viability in acentral geographic information system,was former deputy commissioner HaroldShultz. He reportedly got into a fight withBarrios-Paoli and was driven from theagency.And although Fisher promised a pilotof the system sometime later this year, shewarned it would be a scaled-down versionthat probably wouldn't be accessible to thepublic. Others offer a less charitabledescription : "There 's been no computerization at HPD at all," says a Giu lianiadministration source.Small believes that the administrationhas been actively trying to stonewall thedozens of community housing groupsseeking information on the status of thesystem. "The early warning system is bullshit, it doesn't exist and there's no indication it's ever going to exist," Small adds.Meanwhile, the nonprofit housinggroups say they need detailed early warning information-such as housing courtrecord s, code violations, tax informationand fire department inspection records-tohelp tenants fight negligent landlords oreven work out their own deals to take overthe distressed buildings.But even the early warning system 'sills boil down to the issue of money.Ultimately, the purpose of the system hasalways been to identify buildings that canthen be channeled into the anti-abandonment system. Without a funded anti-abandonment strategy, the Giuliani admini stration has no incentive to identify even morepoor tenants that it can't-or won't-help."It 's all semantics," says ANHD'sCelia Irvine, who was instrumental indrafting the City Council 's housing lawbarely a year ago. "I f you aren 't willing tocommit the money, everything else isbasically useless."

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RoommatesDivided and under attack, SRO tenants are finally joining forces .By Mary BlatchBob Grossman likes RiversidePark, he just doesn't want tolive in it. He prefers his tinywarren of a room crammedwith stacks of books in theRiverside Towers Hotel, where the retiredteacher has lived for 10 years. But if thestate legislature allows rent protectionlaws to expire in June, he may be evictedfrom his SRO room and be spending moretime than usual in the park.While apartment renters make up themajority of the people who would be hurtif the city's rent control and rent stabilization laws aren't renewed in Albany thisJune , some 40,000 SRO tenants likeGrossman probably have the most to lose.Many are only one step away from homeless ness, and rent protection s keep themoff the street by keeping rents rising at aslow pace and preventing arbitrary evictions. Over the last two decades severalUpper West Side SROs have beendestroyed, many to make way for morelucrative hotels and apartments. "This is avery desirable neighborhood," saysGrossman. "They want to get rid of thepoor people."Amid these fears, a new organization,SRO Tenants United (SROTU), is building the first major citywide SRO rightsgroup founded on the principle of organizing tenants. "The rent law is the issuepeople are responding to the most, butthere are a lot of particular SRO circumstances not addressed by the rest of thetenant movement," says Terry Poe of theWestside SRO Law Project, one of theorganizers of SROTU. More than 100people were present at its third meeting onFebruary 6. Poe says his actual membership is twice that number.SROTU is starting simple, organizingmembers to help save rent regulations bywriti ng letters and coordinating visi ts toelected officials. "We are overcoming theidea among many SRO tenants that thingsare so bad nothing can be done," he says.There is good reason for SRO tenantsto be demoralized. Over 100,000 singleroom units, among the lowest pricedaffordable housing the city has to offer,have been lost since 1960. Gentrificationin neighborhoods like Harlem and Hell 'sKitchen has resulted in the conversion ofMARCH 1997

many SROs and rooming houses by landlords looking to make a greater profit.Don Lewis, the owner of Grossman'sbuilding, was fined $25,000 by the state in1989 for filing improper rent registrationsand overcharging his tenants.According toLeon Bell , the attorney at the WestsideSRO Law Project who handled the case,rents that should have been legally set at$200 to $300 a month had been illegallypushed up to nearly $1,000 a month.For his part, Lewis denies doing anything wrong. "This is a very luxuriousneighborhood and the residents are livinghere for pennies," he told City Limits. "Theaverage rent here is $300 a month. In surrounding buildings, it's $2,000."T.nants FIN

If the tenants won a technical victory atRiverside Towers, the case also illustratedthe difficulty of organizing SRO residents.Although about 50 tenants were involved inthe case, Grossman says many tenants fledthe building and only three of Riverside 's 19remaining residents, including Grossman,have joined the coalition.

There are other more basic problemswith putting together a coalition of poor,mostly solitary tenants scatteredthroughout the city. "They are mostlysingle people who tend to keep to them-selves," says Poe "Some of them areeccentric or fragile due to mental illnessor substance abuse."To bring together such tenants, Poeplans to fortify the coalition's structure."When we have a moment to breathe, thefirst thing we want to do is start organizinga network of building councils and devising a more formal structure for the organization," says Poe.Currently, the organization is fundedby the East Side and West Side SRO lawprojects, the Goddard-Riverside Community Center and member donationsfrom tenants, but SROTU is also applyingfor foundation grants.When the rent regulation fight ends ,they plan to study the housing codes thataffect SROs and push for legislation tomake it harder for landlords to harass orevict tenants.To Grossman, those larger goals and g.his own hopes are intertwined.Participation in SROTU is a matter of sur-vivaJ, he says. "This guy [the landlord] '"

PIPEl iNE

never stops, so I will continue in the orga- Retired teacher Bonization," he says. Grossmall isfight-ing to keep hisMary Blatch is a City Limits intern. affordable room aRiverside Drive


12/40F.

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CHASE. The right relationship is everything.8M 1997 The Chase Manhattan Bank. Member FDIC. Equal Opportunity Lender (5 )

CITY LIMITS


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T he work week usually starts winding down by 4 o'clockon Thursday afternoons at the Sanitation Departmentoffice building in Lower Manhattan. Thi Thursday seemsabout the same. All is quiet in the lobby. Until 4:05, thatis, when nearly 100 men and women in well-worn laborers' clothes push open the front doors and head for the elevator bank.They want the seventh floor, where Commis ioner John Doherty works.


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"They lVon'l respeCIus, Ihey IVan 'I listento LIS, .. says WE?worker GlennTurner (left). Heand ACORN orga-nizer Fred Simmonswere among theprotesters at theDepartmenl ofSallitatioll ill earl.February.

@M

Two cops intercept them. "Where do you think you're going?"says Officer Fernandez, drawn into the press of bodies, eyes darting left, right and center. "Where you're going is not a public area.Back up. Just back up." Officer Hawkins blocks the men andwomen from stepping into the elevators. Bewildered bureaucratstake haven in the back of the lobby."What do you want here?" asks Fernandez , providing the cuefor tbe protesters to begin chanting."We want work! We want work," they shout over and over. It'snot that they don 't have "work" per se-they are on welfare,enrolled in the city 's workfare Work Experience Program (WEP).They spend their days picking up litter on city streets. What theywant is real work with a real paycheck.The cops don't like the frenzy. Hawkins threatens the leadersat the front of the crowd with arrest. Sirens bellow on the streetand five more cops rusb inside.

That 's when the police pull an old trick. They offer to take fiveleaders from the group-including a pair of organizers fromACORN , the Brooklyn-based activist group that planned theprotest-upstairs to meet the commissioner. First, the rest of thegroup has to move outside. The leaders agree. But once they areon the seventh floor, Officer Fernandez informs them the commissioner and his aides don't want to see them."So we came up for nothing," says an incredulous SharonBush , one of the organizers . "He's dissing us right now.""We could lock you up right now," replies the cop, as his partner hurries a few worried department bureaucrats to an inner door."It's time to leave the building ."Outside, a man wearing a cap and a vinyl coat stands at theedge of Tom Paine Park beside the cop cars and 70 or 80 other

WEP workers . His name is Julius Manigault. He's just finishedhis sbift sweeping the streets in Washington Heights . "I cleanstreets 41 hours every two weeks wearing filthy clothes otherpeople have worn , picking up garbage bags in drug-infestedareas with needles and all kinds of contraband. That's notright ," he says."If they need this work done , they should give me a job ," beadds. "But this program , it's not designed for that."

T he Sanitation Department happens to beheadquartered in an art deco box of a building put up at the height of FranklinRoosevelt's Public Works Administration in1935 . That 's when the government put millions of unemployed men and women to work-and gave thema paycheck, not a welfare check. The historical irony wasapparently overlooked by Doherty, the cops and MayorRudolph Giuliani. In the weeks since his officers subdued themid-February WEP workers' demonstration, Doherty has stillrefused to meet with them.

But City Hall may not be able to ignore the WEP workers andtheir demands much longer. Mayor Giuliani has been stoking theWEP program up to full fire for more than a year, placing tens ofthousands of welfare recipients in low-skilled city jobs and gettinghuge value from what was once just a welfare check. During mostof that time he has kept municipal union leaders mollified by convincing them their members' jobs and work standards would notbe undermined by the presence of a massive new unpaid laborforce . But the mayor's assurances have begun to ring hollow inthe halls of big labor.CITY LIMITS


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As Cit)' limits goes to press, Executive Director Stanley Hill ofDistrict Council 37 of the American Federation of State, Countyand Municipal Employees-which represents about 120,000 cityworkers- i sdeliberating with leaders of the AFSCME Internationalon how to begin organizing New York 's workfare workers on amuch larger scale. The move comes on the heels of theFebruary 18passage of a resolution at the national meeting of the AFL-CIO inLos Angeles, which called for an all-out organizing campaign tosecure collective bargaining rights for people on workfare.

law last year authorized a plan to move millions of welfare recipients into jobs or workfare over the next few years-includinghundreds of thousands in New York City. Soon after the billbecame law, national union leaders began worrying about the danger of creati ng a new, unpaid labor force that could knock thefloor out frombeneath their members' wages and work standards.When they saw how the program was playing out in New York,their concerns mounted .

This could mean serious problems for Giuliani 's massive workfare program. In their preliminary outline of the campaign, unionofficials say they want workfare programs to abide by all laborlaws, to ensure workers' access to education and training-and toguarantee that there 's a clear ladder from workfare to paid, unionscale municipal jobs. The mayor's program offers none of thesethings.

"It's an attempt to substitute one class of poor people foranother class of workers, who, if you succeed, will become poorthemselves," charges Paul Booth, director of organizing for theAFSCME International. "The politicians are trying to drive downthe tandards of the rest of the workforce. That's their brilliant andevil motivation."Ultimately, labor leaders also began to learn how workfareworkers might be effectively organized-thanks in part to closeties between ACORN and the Service Employees InternationalUnion , which represents municipal and low-wage workers inmany cities, and between AFSCME and another community organizing network , the Industrial Areas Foundation.

"These workers shou ld be treated with the same respect anddignity as our membership," Hill says. "They are workers whoneed some collective bargaining. And I have to represent mymembers as well, so that there won 't be any displacement."While Hill insists this doesn 't mean he 's preparing for a confrontation with Giuliani , a top DC 37 aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity, is a bit more direct. "A lot of us are lookingat this as the fight of our lives," the aide explains. "We will doeverything we can to win this one."

"Workfare programs in New York and Los Angeles have beensort of canaries in the mine shaft," says ACORN founder WadeRathke, who is also the founder of the two fastest growing localsin the SEIU . "There 's no more dramatic situation than what we'veseen in New York. It 's not a pretty sight."The Personal Respon ibility Act President Clinton signed intoL4BOIIIS II LI.O

It was the group's tenants who firstraised the workfare alarm at theFifth Avenue Committee, recallsBelliamin Dulchin, director of organizing for the Park Slope-based housingand community development nonprofit. "Particularly people who weregoing to school, getting GEDs, or inESL programs, who were gettingyanked out of school and being told toreport to WEP to sweep the streets."Dulchin began going out toProspect Park to talk to other WEPworkers, who complained about thelack of proper work clothes, no healthand safety training and an inadequategrievance process. They had no meansof demanding better working conditions, sick days and vacation pay, orsimilar benefits afforded their paidcoworkers. As far as WEP was concerned, what these folks did wasn'teven considered work. Instead, cityofficials used euphemisms like "payingback the community" and "job readiness" to describe their daily grind.They were laborers in limbo.But Dulchin and his counterparts attwo other nonprofit groups, PaulGetsos from Community Voices HeardMARCH 1997

and Heidi Dorow from the UrbanJustice Center, took a different view.Pooling their resources-and 890,000 ingrants from a number of foundationsincluding the Jewish Fund for Justice,the Stern Family Fund and the New YorkFoundation-the three groups starteda coalition called WEP WorkersTogether to help people in the city'sworkfare program fight for improvedworking conditions and a chance at areal job. It's one of three campaignsunderway citywide-the others arerun by ACORN and WorkFairness.WEP Workers Together relies onfive part-time organizers from thethree sponsoring organizations, whosplit their time between the WEP workand their regular jobs. It's a small butfocused enterprise.The organizers regularly go to WEPsites armed with leanets explainingeverything from workers compensationlaws to how to file a safety and healthcomplaint with the state. They show upearly in the mornings before workcrews are sent out from sanitationgarages, or at lunch time, when groupsof Parks Department WEP workers aregathered together on their break.

Often, organizers must play catand mouse with agency supervisors,and getting ejected from a site is notunusual. It's not surprising, then, thatmany workers are afraid to come forward for fear of being sanctioned orlosing their benefits. What's more, thepopulation is, by definition, a mobileone, with workers regularly beingcycled in and out of sites, sometimesas often as every few months. Thequestion, then, is how to get the mostbang for the buck.WEP Workers Together has generated news coverage with a number ofprotest actions in recent months, andmembers have testified at publichearings in the city and in Albany. It'sall part of an overall strategy thatcombines site-based agitation with apublic media campaign. To date, some500 workers have participated in WEPWorkers Together actions at 20 locations citywide."The issue is to create a moral climate," says Dorow. "You don't have toorganize 35,000 people to have a critical mass and create public pressure onthe city administration."-JILL KIRSCHENBAUM

M


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ACORN's SharonBush turns her

a l 1 i ~ i l l charms011 the supervisorsof SanitatiollDistrict J7 illBrooklYIl. O ver the winter, WEP workers wearing their ownclothes beneath reflective orange vests, walkingthe streets with garbage bins alongside, havebecome as ubiquitous as cops on scooter patrol.They trudge through the parks in groups, clearingbrush and plucking up litter. They clean and paint hallways in cityhousing projects. And they process paperwork in city offices. Thenumber of hours they work is based on the value of their welfarel check and food stamp allotment, divided by the $4.75 minimumj wage. For those on Home Relief, the welfare program for adultswithout children, that can mean roughly 70 hours of work eachmonth for just over $320 in benefits-less than half of it in cash.If they miss one day of work, they can be bumped off publicassistance entirely. Only a few dozen have moved into paid cityjobs, most through a special program set up by AFSCME and theBoard of Education to train cafeteria workers.

These men and women are walking evidence not so much of anew agenda of "personal responsibility" in welfare, but rather of theawesome labor and welfare savings achieved by the Giuliani administration during the last two years. The welfare roJls are down bymore than 220,000 since March 1995, saving the city $58 millioneach month, according to the city comptroller. WEP is one of themayor's most effective tools for moving high numbers of men andwomen off the welfare rolls. And his gains are quickly mounting.During the 16 months ending last October, the city placed atotal of 166,683 men and women into the program, according tothe Mayor's Office of Operations. That's nearly 10 ,500 new people each month. Yet the HRA press office says there are currentlyonly 38,000 public assistance recipients in WEP. If the adminis-

tration's numbers are accurate, then, as many as 130,000 peoplehave either been kicked off the welfare rolls for failing to abide bythe strict work rules, been moved temporarily out of the program ,or they've left welfare of their own accord.Those who 've stayed have many complaints, ranging fromthe lack of uniforms to reports of demeaning or dangerousassignments. WEP workers report that supervisors have forcedthem to clean toilets and do other janitorial work even thoughthey 've been assigned to a clerical job. Others say they've beenasked to handle dangerous cleaning chemicals without the proper gear. But the most common complaint heard from these workers is more fundamental.

"It 's a matter of respect," says Keith Brabham , a sanitationdepartment WEP worker. He and his colleagues standing outsidea Brooklyn sanitation garage say they want assignments that teachthem new and useful skills and offer the promise of a real job . Andthose already enrolled in college or training programs want tocontinue with their studies and not have to clean city streets for 20hours each week.Many WEP workers struggle with their pride when they talkwith outsiders. They are defensive, pointing out that they'veworked and paid taxes much of their lives, and angry that the program looks more like public punishment than ajob. It doesn 't helpthat WEP workers have to walk the streets and parks sheathed influorescent orange vests.

"It 's like a chain gang," says Wayne Hargrove , a former airtraffic control dispatcher in the Air Force who also worked as amedical lab technician in the 10 years since he left the military.He 's been on Home Relief for a year.CITY LIMITS


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Hargrove says he sought training to update his skills, but thecity was no help in finding a program. He was doing clerical workat the parks department as aWEP. But now he 's assigned to pickup garbage in the park. "When people learn some new skills ,that's when they put them out picking up garbage. It's debilitating."It's fine to demand that people look for jobs. Give peopleskills. I need my lab skills upgraded. I haven 't been an air trafficdispatcher for years. But there's absolutely nothing for training.I've looked all over for a training program. There's nothing."U Puntil now, only a handful of small community organizations have set out to organize theWEP workers. ACORN is the largest amongthem, with the most organizing resources andlongtime support from philanthropic powerhouses such as the Catholic Church's Campaign for HumanDevelopment.ACORN has been working to build a mass base of low-incomepeople for nearly three decades. Its earliest work was in the welfare rights movement. By expanding WEP, says ACORN NewYork Director Jon Kest, City Hall has handed the group a majoropportunity."Normally it's very hard to do welfare rights organizing," heexplains. "But now you have pissed-off people forced into easily organizable units. They ' re at the workplace, at the sanitationgarages and housing projects. They set these people up to beorganized."

Yet as it stands now, ACORN has only seven full-time organizers devoted to the campaign and is unlikely to muster the numbers they need to become a collective bargaining force representing a majority of WEP workers. "Only the unions have theresources to organize this many people," Kest says.On Valentine 's Day, Stanley Hill and AFSCME International'slegislative director for the northeast region met with Rathke , Kest

and a handful of others to discuss what each organization wasdoing on the workfare front.Three days later, the leaders of the AFL-CIO met . n LosAngeles and issued their groundbreaking workfare resolution. TheAFSCME International, along with the SEIU and theCommunications Workers of America, were committed to organizing the hundreds of thousands-and potentially millions--ofpeople already in or headed for workfare programs nationwide.It 's taken a long time to reach this point. Here in New York,Stanley Hill has spoken out on the issue only a handful of times ,first when pressed by City Limits last summer, saying only thatDC 37's past efforts to organize WEP workers had been blockedby the city 's Office of Collective Bargaining.

Soon after, following enactment of the 1996 federal welfarebill, Hill appeared in the daily papers denouncing the mayor 'srapid expan ion of the program. But he quieted his criticism aftermeeting with the mayor, saying he believed City Hall was responsive to concerns that WEP workers might take positions previously held by unionized workers. Part of the deal he worked out withGiuliani included three joint committees to oversee the WEP program , teaming top municipal union leaders with mayoral advisersincluding WEP architect Richard Schwartz.But the committees rarely met. At the beginning of this year,Schwartz announced he was leaving the administration to markethisworkfare expertise with a national consulting business. And bythat time it was increasingly obvious to all who paid attentionand especially to tens of thousands of unionized city employeesthat WEP workers were doing entry-level jobs union people haddone in the past, from administrative assistants and office aides inwelfare offices to administrative associates in the FireDepartment. WEP workers have taken over some subway stationjanitorial jobs formerly done by members of the Transit WorkersUnion, and, according to Teamsters Local 237 Director NicholasMancuso, 2,()()() WEP workers are now "custodial aides" at the

POLITICIL BISBBDILDIIIAmall political office on West 14thStreet office is home to theInternational Action Center and afew other loosely affiliated groupsincluding the nascent, volunteer-runWorkFairness campaign. The lAC wasestablished five years ago by formerU.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clarkand is most famous for its fightagainst the United Nations economicblockade of Iraq.WorkFairness has a similar radical edge, but its focus is local. Agroup of workfare workers staffingdesks at the city's Office ofEmployment Services (OES), the welfare division that oversees workfare,started the organization last year."OES is like a heart pumping outpeople, and that way you get con-MARCH 1997

tacts at sites all over the place,"says William Mason, co-chair of thegroup. Early on, Mason sought thehelp of Larry Holmes, a professionalpolitical organizer with the NationalPeoples Campaign and WorkersWorld, who is also volunteering histime. The group has gotten in-kindhelp with mailings and other tasksfrom a handful of unions, includingUNITE and AFSCME Local 420.Members travel to small community meetings to provide hands-oncounseling to welfare recipients. Buttheir greatest strength may be inmobilizing the traditional left. "Webring to it not just the base, butwomen's groups, radicals on campus,ministers," says Holmes. "Folkswhose cause was EI Salvador 15 years

ago, now it should be WorkFairness."In mid-February, about 15 workfare participants showed up at the14th Street office to hear the leadersspeak-and to get help on their individual complaints from an equal number of activist volunteers.Mason's co-chair is VonduraJordan, an eloquent orator who justfinished a year-long WEP assignmentat Harlem Hospital and is now tryingto mobilize union members. "I tellthem, 'I'm your past and I'm yourfuture,'" she says. "I'm struggling tokeep a roof over my head and I'm trying to get people to stand up for theirrights, just like the unions years ago.And I'm your future because I'mwhereyou're headed. No job. Just workfare." -AW


18/40

The leaders of theall-volunteer WorkFairness campaignhope to build apolitical baseamoJlg stlldelllsand the traditionalleft. Organi:erLarry Holmes (left)and campaigll cochair VOllduraJordall . a WEP1V0rkel; lead ameetillg at their14th Street office.

Housing Authority. Last month , Mancuso threatened t9 take thecity to court on the job replacement issue. Members in some ofDC 37's own locals, particularly the hospital and social serviceworkers, were growing angry."There have been a number of major complaints," says BillHenning, vice-president of Communication Workers of AmericaLocal 1180, which represents 6,500 middle-level supervisors inseveral city agencies. "Certainly the WEP workers are doing workthat used to be done by members of the unions ."For several months , DC 37 officials said they did not believethey had legal standing to organize the WEP workers. The maindifficulty was a 1981 decision by the city's Office of CollectiveBargaining, based on an earlier incarnation of the WEP program ,that outlawed workfare unionization. But a number of lawyers andunionists now argue the 1981 decision is irrelevant: the cun'entWEP program, they charge, bears virt ually no resemblance to thatof 16 years ago.With the facts underlying the ruling having changed so dramatically, they say, it 's time to make a new challenge. And theunions are finally moving that way.O n the national front, AFSCME made its supportof workfare organizing explicit in January bybacking the efforts of a small, new union local inBaltimore.The union had paired up a few years ago withthe Industrial Areas Foundation , a national community organizinggroup, to create the SolidaritySponsoring CommitteelLocal 1711 ,organizing low-wage employees of Baltimore city contractors.

The IAF demanded local legislation requiring city contractors topay higher wages, and the legislation passed. Today, members ofthe local who were making the minimum wage are now earning$6.60 an hour or more. And jobs that had been contracted to theprivate sector have returned to government agencies , helpingAFSCME's membership.Now the city 's burgeoning workfare program is a threat, saysIAF organizer Jonathan Lange . "There are rules against displacing city workers. But it 's not considered displacement if a lowwage contract worker loses a job to a workfare worker in a cityagency. We don't want to defend the old welfare system , butnobody supports the notion that reform should be done at theexpense of low-wage workers ."Local 1711 and its 400 members have mounted a campaign toorganize workfare workers, demanding they be given all the rightsof paid employees-including a living wage, not a welfare check,in exchange for their toil.Meanwhile , AFL-CIO leadership, including President JohnSweeney and national AFSCME president Gerald W. McEntee ,are lobbying the Clinton administration 's labor and human services officials to issue regulations that would place workfare participants under the same labor laws as their paid colleagues,reports one top union official.Workfare participants "a re not at this time considered to beemployees" as far as the administration is concerned , accordingto Labor Department spokesman Randy Wilson . Therefore theydon't qualify for the same protections as other workers. But thelobbying appears to be having an impact. Wilson says the workfare labor regulations "are being actively discussed in various

CITVLlMITS


19/40

working groups between the agencies . It's something they areagonizing over and talking about."But the most crucial fight is at the loca l level. Mayor Giulianicontends WEP workers are not employees at all, and that if theyfail to show up for their shift, they can lose their welfare benefits .Beyond that, his pre s office refuses to comment on the unionization efforts.Because WEP workers are working for the city, it's up to thecity 's Office of Collective Bargaining to decide whether or notthey can unionize, says OCB spokesman Rory Schnurr. "There 'sa great likelihood a case will be filed before long," he adds. At thatpoint, a ruling will be made by a panel of the three independentOCB members , who are appointed jointly by representatives ofthe mayor and the unions.Whatever the city and the Clinton administration say, Rathkesays the distinction makes no difference to him ."The question of whether a WEP worker is an employee is atotally different question from whether or not they can have aunion ," he says. "If this looks like a cow then it's a cow.And theywill stampede like cattle to protect their rights."

I n an industrial area south of Linden Boulevard on theedge of Canarsie in Brooklyn , two city sanitation garagesoccupy a block-square cinder block shed.Inside, uniformed sanitation workers stand aroundtalking about the overtime they will be making thanks totwo February holidays. Beside them are five WEP workers, all ofthem black women and older men in civilian clothes, standingaround, speaking quietly with ACORN organizer Sharon Bush.It's the first time ACORN has sent anyone to the site, andsome of the WEPs are wary, reticent. But 50-year-old HartleyStevenson speaks up, saying how unhappy he is about beinggiven a filthy Sanitation Department coat and second-handgloves to wear when he started the assignment, never beingallowed to take them home and wash them. He says he receives$68.50 every half-month from Home Relief, plus a monthlyinstallment of food stamps. For that, he is supposed to workseven hours a day five days a week , every other week. He can'tafford not to-it's just about his only source of income .Stevenson signs an ACORN paper authorizing the group torepresent him in any collective bargaining with the city. Otherssign as well , offering their phone numbers and addresses. Oneman says he can 't afford to clean his work clothes-he just wearsthem day after day. "I don ' t mind the work ," he adds . "I just wantto be paid."

Within a few minutes, two badge-toting superviso rs ask Bushto leave the garage. Outside, as a dozen trucks roar past, the twosupervisors tell her she should not be speaking with the WEPworkers while they are on duty. Bush promptly turns her organizing charms on them ."We 're not here because of you all ," she says. "It 's the WEPprogram we have problems with. Don't you think it's disrespectful that these men and women aren 't given coats of their own thatthey can take home and wash?""Yeah, I see what you ' re saying ," says one of the supervisors ,Mr. Sampson . But it's not his business. "Talk to the assistant borough supervisor," he says .Bush is careful not to antagonize the bosse . Her approachhas its payoff: At 8 a.m. in the District 5 sanitation garage onMARCH 1997

Montauk Avenue, WEP workers are piling into a van to headout to their street assignments. The supervisors turn their backsand head into their offices as Sharon goes into the garage tochat for a few minutes with the workers , most of whom knowher. She 's pushing them to come down to an ACOR meetingon Lincoln 's Birthday, a city holiday .And she lets one or two ofthem know that the group may try to shut down a work site in acouple of weeks if Commissioner Doherty doesn ' t agree tomeet with the workers .At this point, Bush and the other organizers are visiting theirsites at least once a week, maintaining contact. Despite ordersfrom headquarters to keep community organizers out of thegarages, some Sanitation Department employees are quietlyallowing the organizing work to go forward. ACORN reports ithas gathered collective-bargaining authorization signatures fromabout 2,000 sanitation WEP workers (many whom may have

WBII DC 37 OlTS II'OL'IDTBI PIITICIPITIOI or PIIDIMPLOYIIS IS LIIILY TOBICOMI rll110ll IXPLICITSTIWIIDS WILL 01'WIP WOllllS CIIDS TOSial UP rOI TBI UIIOI

since left the program), and about as many altogether from within other city agencies.However, that 's only a tiny percentage of the tens of thousandsof people flooding into the WEP program .Seven community organizers are nothing combined to thepower of an established union 's potential organizing and lobbyingcapacity. When DC 37 gets involved, the participation of paidcity employees is likely to become far more explicit.Paul Booth, the AFSCME International's organizing director,says one of the union 's most powerful tools will be its shop steward , who already work at most of the sites where WEP workersare a signed . "Combined with the groups doing the organizing onthe outside, I think we will have the ability to reach 35,000 or50,000 workers," he says . "The stewards will give them a card tosign up for the union at the appropriate stage."Neither he nor Hill will give any details about when the unioneffort will kick into gear, nor will they say how many organizersare to be committed to the task. As City Limits went to press , Hillsaid he was scheduling meetings with AFSCME International tolayout the strategy. In the meantime, AFSCME and its fellowAFL-CIO unions are working on the Clinton administration."Congress left undefined whether these people are workers," saysBooth. "We will make government change their mind ."A worker is someone who is commanded to work . We ' ll justhave to get the government to do what's right."


20/40

A voter's guide to three years

ofMayor Giuliani's .... money maneuvers.

/ ~ - -


21/40

THEMAYOROF THECITY OFNEWYORKclutched his retractable pointer andbegan buggy-whipping a long series ofhuge management charts in front ofhis fawning commissioners and theyawning press."I tliink this shows the responsibilityof our administration," Rudolph Giulianilectured, soothed by the reassuringdrumbeat of his steel against the compli-ant, taxpayer-financed placard.

But by the time his special events staffbrought around the seventh rile of charts,a reporter in the first row 0 City Hallpews moaned loudly enough to be heard bythe mayor's right-hand man, Randy Mastro."Good lord, not another stack." Th e smilethat had been fixed to Mastro's lips throughout the briefing was instantly drained of itsgood will. But the mayor was cheerfullyoblivious and prodded forward, the headof his 'pointer thwacking away."Okay," he added, "this nextgraph shows ..."For Giuliani, the arcane citybudget and agency performance

I , I \ , I I I

nlustrationsBy RJ. Matson

JJcharts were tools of self-validation, proof his sobriety as a city manager and,ultimately, his fitness to be mayor again"The thing that he wants to projectthe sense that he's ushered in a moreresponsible era of fiscal management,"says Glenn Passanen, a budget analyst fthe City Project, which has often criticized the mayor's cuts to social servicesWhat the record really shows isconsiderably more complex. Th e baretruth of Giuliani's budgets is that they

reveal a more consistent record of hispriorities than any of his recent predecessors. He's spent an increasing proportion of the city's strained resources oncops, firemen and child protective services. He hasn't placed much of a premium on housing, education , child care,hospital care for the poor, recycling orwelfare. True to his word, he has allbu t dismantled the agencies that provide for those needs.What follows is a summaryof the mayor's money decisioand their impact on the city'neighborhoods.


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The mid-'gos have been theGreat Leap Backwards in the city's commitmentto developing and preserving its low-incomehousing stock.It's not totally Giuliani's fault; he just delivered the coup de grace. The hemorrhagic cuts tothe Department of Housing Preservation andDevelopment, which began in the last, troubled year of the Dinkins Administration,have grown ever deeper each year ofGiuliani's reign .The administration has tried to shift fundingto reduce city contributions and maximize theuse of federal dollars. But the city's overallhousing capital budget has plummeted from$372 million in 1993 to $261 million lastyear.Capital funding levels will hold steady fornext year, but in the Fiscal Year 1997 budgetGiuliani slashed a third of HPD's bricksand mortar, wiping out nearly $53 mil-lion worth of apartment rehabs andnew construction for low-incometenants. Only $10 million of thatdecrease was replaced by new federal money.While the cuts have devastated the agency, theadministration has moved aggressively to divestitself of its in rem stock, turning over nearly 10,500apartments in 758 buildings to private landlords,nonprofit groups and tenant-owned coopera

tives-while at the same time placing a ban onthe city's takeover of any new tax-arrearedbuildings. The agency's shrinking management burden has freed up millions, but thatmoney was pumped into the city's general coffers to cover the budget deficit instead of beingput into HPD's stalled anti-abandonment program (see "Dead on Arrival," page 8).What's the impact of the budget carnage? Averitable shutdown of new low-income housinginitiatives and a sharp drop-off in the repairs andservices the city used to provide-"the virtualelimination of the agency," according to housingadvocate Jay Small.The most important single indicator of HPD'smission is the number of rehab jobs started in anygiven year. In 1991, at the apex of HPD's capitalfunding boom, the city started 19,000 moderate andmajor rehab projects on apartment buildings. Thisyear, the city embarked on only around 8,000 rehabs.Even more dramatic is the agency's abandonment of programsthat have provided permanent housing for the homeless. In 1991 ,HPD created 4,173 apartments for the city's most desperate residents. This year the agency will be lucky to chum out 1,200 newapartments--even as scores of families spend night after nightsleeping on the floors of the city's homeless intake unit. Anddespite former Commissioner Lilliam Barrios-Paoli 's promise lastyear that HPD would once again focus on homeless housing , the

agency plans to construct only 230 units next year.In the meantime, most of the worst-maintained privatelyowned apartments in the city are going uninspected by HPDcode-violation teams. In 1991, the city issued 569,000 violationsto negligent landlords; Last year, the number of tickets plummeted to 129,000. At the height of the city's commitment tohousing inspections in the early 1970s, the city fielded some 693inspectors. That number is down to about 250 today, largelybecause the city has never allocated replacement dollars for the$8 million drop in state funding in the early 1990s-despiterepeated promises early in the Giuliani administration to shiffederal dollars into the program. - Glenn ThrushEvery major poll predicts thatRudolph Giuliani will be re-elected on the merits of his crimefighting record. The logic is simple. The number of murders in thecity per year has dipped below 1,000. The crime rates in sevenmajor felony categories are as low as they have been in 27 yearsBut if he gets the good publicity, he should bear some othe responsibility for the apparent rise in reports opolice misconduct-abetted, some experts say, byGiuliani 's attempts to cut off funding to the fouryear-old agency charged with investigating bad-copallegations.Since he was elected, Giuliani has attacked thbudget of the Civilian Complaint Review BoardIn Fiscal Year 1998, the board will likely see$628,000 cut from its $5.2 million budget, whichwill result in the layoff of 24 investigators , effectively crippling the agency's capacity to attack itmassive case backlog. This occurs at a time when

the CCRB bas seen a steady rise in complaints-including a 19 percent jump thiyear alone to around 5,700."I'm not advocating throwing money aproblems , but [the administration] has to havesincere interest in investigating the problem aband," says Detective Terrance Wansley, vicepresident of the Guardians, an association oblack police officers. -Kiema MayoFor the kids in NewYork City 'S public schools, there 's nothing quitelike an election year.After three years of wrenchingspending cuts-more than $1.6 billion worth

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani has suddenly discoveredthe value of public education, securing some $160million in new funds for the Board of Educationin his Fiscal Year 1998 budget.The most ambitious initiative in the mayor'new budget is Project Read , a $125 million early grade literacyprogram for students with reading problems . Other items slatedfor spending include 40,000 computers ($22.7 million), six newschools for students with anti-social problems ($2.7 million), andarts programs ($2.5 million, with another $22 million possibledown the road).Last November, after the unexpected upsurge in tax revenuesMayor Giuliani announced there would be $70 million in fundingfor new textbooks in addition to $605 million in new capital fundsCITY LIMITS


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over the next three years-including $88 millionfor mobile trailer school rooms, $16 million torehabilitate existing space and $392 million onmodular classroom units that can be attached aswings to existing schools.That's the good news. But education activistsare quick to point out that these spending initiatives restore only 10 percent of the $1.6 billioncut from public schools in the mayor's firstthree budgets. "It's too little , too late," saysNoreen Connell, executive director ofEducational Priori tie Panel. "They do notreverse the impact of the previous cuts."Connell adds that the new funds for textbooks are committed for only two years.Currently, the city spends about $36 per student on text books, compared to as much as$120 per student in many suburban districts. "We can't have one or two years ofadditional money-and that's it," she says.The recent upsurge in capital expendi-tures seems a pittance in light of the mayor's threeprevious budgets. A five-year, $7 billion schoolconstruction plan that began in the Dinkins administration was slashed to $2.3 billion when Giulianibecame mayor, and later restored to $2.9 billion.Last year, the mayor and the City Council, to great fanfare,agreed on a four-year, $1.4 billion plan to rebuild deterioratingpublic schools. But Giuliani and Council Speaker Peter Vallone

have made only a non-binding commitment tofund the plan over the next few years and they,not the Board of Education, get to determine howthe money is spent.So far, none of the money has been spent,although $200 million is budgeted for this fiscalyear, officials say.Some of the new spending initiatives are welcome, activists say, but there is still no coherent plan to deal with chronic overcrowdingand other daunting problems currently facingthe system. According to John Fager, executivedirector of the Parents Coalition , a public schooladvocacy group, there could be as many as120,000 students without adequate classroomspace by the next school year.

- James BradleyMayor Giuliani seemsto be trying to tie a toe tag onto the Healthand Hospitals Corporation, which runs the city'sI I municipal hospitals and has a mandate to servepoor New Yorkers.In the mayor 's first three budgets, HHCreceived some of Giuliani's most extreme amputations. And if the mayor's proposed 1998 budgetgoes through, the administration will have cut its subsidy to thecity hospitals by nearly 85 percent since the final year of theDinkins administration. Before Rudy, city hospitals got $350

GIULIANI II WILL CUT TAXESPage 24 of the mayor'sFebruary managementreport unveils RudyGiuliani's erstwhile campaignagainst "The Way ThingsUsed to Be." Under thatheading, the mayor has tallieda list of the $926 million intax hikes enacted underDavid Dinkins in 1992.In 1997, faced with a flushof tax dollars from WallStreet's boom, Giuliani canafford to do something thedeficit-strapped Dinkins nevercould: cut taxes an d denouncethe fiscal irresponsibility of hisDemocratic predecessor."It's not quite fair to trashDinkins," says Martin Arrick,director of the public financedepartment at Standard an dPoor's, which downgraded thecity's bond rating during the

March 1997

first year of the Giulianiadministration. "Dinkins managed to balance the budgetevery year, as has Giuliani. It'shard to compare the twobecause Dinkins was mayor ata time when we had a particularly nasty recession. Now thatthe economy is doing betterGiuliani can afford to do somethings that Dinkins couldn't."The mayor is using theWall Street-generated revenueto cover tax cuts he hasalready pushed through thestate legislature, including cutsin the commercial tax, thehotel tax and coop-condoprorerty tax. All told, the citywi! lose $622 million inpotential revenues by FiscalYear 1999.Moreover, Giuliani plansto go to Albany to press for

additional cuts that will tally ahalf-billion dollars per year bycentury's end. Among thetaxes included in the packageare the wildly popular elimination of the city's share ofthe sales tax on clothing purchases under $500, additionalreductions in the commercialrent tax and the unincorporated business tax."People are generallyhappy with the idea that thecity is decreasing the taxburden, but people are veryconcerned about whether thecity can really afford taxcuts," Arrick adds. "We'vegot to realize that the WallStreet boom isn't going tolast forever."One good year doesn'tmake up for five terribleyears." -Glenn 1hrush


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million in city funding . Next year they'll seebarely $55 million. And with privatization ofthree municipal hospitals his priority ,Giuliani has not made any capital investment in HHC. Instead the corporation hasfloated bonds on its own.Beyond the mandatory 25 cents thecity must contribute to every Medicaiddollar spent, Giuliani has basicallystripped the city's financial commitment toHHC down to paying the corporation forthree services-emergency care for uniformed workers, in-patient care forinmates and management of the citymorgue.Advocates say the mayor's budgetignores the city's responsibility to care foruninsured patients who will be locked out ofMedicaid when federal welfare andimmigration reforms take effect. Theysay the state pool that reimburses hospi-tals for the cost of caring for uninured patients won't be largeenough to cover the post-welfare reform crisis, and thatGiuliani needs to fill the gap.Even before welfare reform , the number ofuninsured patients was rising rapidly, from 1.3million in 1994, to 1.6 million in 1995, according to Judy Wessler of the Commission on thePublic 's Health System.

The administration's previous cuts havealready taken a significant toll. Between1994 and the present, Giuliani has forced a25 percent staff reduction at HHC, whichnow has 10,000 fewer employees-of allkinds-than it had when the mayor got elected. And sources within HHC tell City Limitsmore layoffs are in the offing. During themayor 's tenure, the city has eliminated1,500 general-care hospital beds, a movethe mayor says is essential to streamlineHHC's operations in the era of managedcare.Governor George Pataki's proposal to cutMedicaid means there's more trouble ahead .Themayor estimates that Pataki's plan-which hesupported because it also cuts the city 'smatching-fund contributions-will translateinto a $79 million reduction in the Medicaidcontribution the city will owe HHC. It may savethe city taxpayers some money, but HHC officialsestimate the governor's plans would mean an overall decrease of$600 million for city hospitals.The influx of uninsured patients coupled with shrinkingMedicaid reimbursements mean the city's private non-profit hospitals known as "voluntaries" won ' t be able to pick up the slack,says Community Service Society President David Jones, an HHCboard member. - Robin Epstein

The outcry following the beatindeath of young Elisa Izquierdo, which led to the creation of tcity's new Administration for Children's Services in Janua1996, has dominated the Giuliani-era child welfare debate.Largely in response to the incident, funding for child welfare hremained steady during the Giuliani years and the mayor has copiled an impressive record on protective services. He has increasthe number of protective caseworkers from 712 to 915 and creata team to target responsibility in children's deaths and abuse. He halso dedicated $30 million for child support enforcement.But while those areas of the budget have thrived, the admintration has left important preventative services exposed to sevestate budget cuts. And those programs , say advocates , are the mpotent resources for keeping children in stable homes-and outfoster care.In 1995 , Governor Pataki passed along a $131 millichild welfare cut to the city that has had a disproportionatedamaging impact on several preventative programs. TFamily Rehabilitation Program , a nationally-reconized intensive program that targets drug-addictmothers, suffered a $1.6 million cut in 1995 aanother $1.1 million cut in 1996, resulting in telimination of it drug treatment component. Tresult: some of FRP 's 300 drug-addicted parenhave been referred to state caseworkers who hadle five times as many cases; others havenbeen transferred to alternative programs. Whpercentage of their children have gone into foter care is as yet unclear, providers say.Giuliani also eliminated a program that prvided on-site counseling services for children

city-run day care centers. And the administraticrippled a program which assigns caseworers to visit mothers and children in thhomes and help them deal with acute meical problems or chronic and abusive emtional problems, slashing its budget by $1million. Because no other program providsimilar services, the impact of the cuts ahard to gauge.The administration has also taken a bout of key juvenile justice programdesigned to prevent at-risk kids from comitting crimes or becoming repeat offeners. Family Ties, an intensive alternative-tjail program recognized by the state comptroler 's office for its 82 percent success rate, weliminated in Fiscal Year 1997, resultingthe layoff of 12 staffers who providintense in-home mediation between parents akids along with supervision of troubled youthAftercare , another much lauded program, hfound its staff and caseload cut roughly in half under GiuliaThe program , which helps young veterans of the Spofford juvnile lock-up re-adjust to life back in their home communities, hbeen the most successful approach to keeping kids from becoming repeat offenders , according to City Comptroller Alan HeveStill, no segment of the city 's youth budget has uffered nearas harsh a fate as The Agency Fornlerly Known As The Departme

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of Youth Services. After three years of deep cuts,a succession of three commissioners in threeyears, a rash of contracting scandals and lawsuitsover funds that were eventually impounded bythe mayor, the agency was consolidated withinthe Community Development Agency.The youth department's overall budgetwas cut from $74 million in the last yearof the Dinkins administration to $54.7million last year-a 30 percent slash thathas forced the total shutdown of 100 groupsthat provided after school sports leagues,homework help and tutoring , mentoringprograms and arts instruction, according tothe City Project.Other programs have been unable toplan for their future or preserve organizational stability in the face of the Giuliani administration 's perpetual assault on their survival: Teenmothering classes , crisis nurseries and juvenileprostitution diversion programs have all been targeted for elimination by the mayor, only to becompletely re-funded by the City Council in both1995 and 1996.This year, for the first time under the currentmayor, youth programs have been left largelyuntouched. - Scott KleinLast year when themayor gouged nearly $30 million out of therecycling budget, he cut collection from weeklyto twice monthly in the Bronx, Brooklyn, andfive Manhattan community boards , making itlikely that millions more bottles and cans arebeing tossed in the regular trash .In 1996, the City Council had been able torestore some of Giuliani's $23 million in recycling cuts , but last year they used their restoration funds to cover other gaps-and filed a lawsuit instead . Perhaps the most damaging longterm part of the cut was the zeroing out of education and outreach programs, which expertssay is essential to helping residents understandthe bewildering separation and bundling regulations they must follow.

The overall level of city recycling-about 14percent-hasn't changed much since theDinkins administration, but it is sti ll far short ofthe 25 percent mandated last year under city law.But all that wa before the Fresh KillsLandfill Closure Task Force estimated thatwhen the Staten Island dump closes in fiveyears, the cost of shipping New York's dross outof town will be $150 to $200 million per year.In his proposed Fiscal Year 1998 budget,the mayor hasn't brought back weekly collections but he has set aside nearly $9.5 millionfor a bulk metal and mixed paper recyclingpilot project he killed last year.March 1997

BrFfNEW YORKI N CORPORATED

YourNeighborhood

HousingInsuranceSpecialist

The Giuliani administration has done prettywell by city parks as far as capital improvementsare concerned-he set aside nearly $170 millionthis year alone-but his maintenance budgetshaven't kept pace. The mayor projects that thefull-time work force will number 1,906 inJune of 1998 , says Charlotte Fahn, planningand design director for the Parks Council.Even in 1992, when Dinkins made brutalcuts to the overall parks budget, there werestill 3,436 full-time parks workers.The 5,000 workfare participants assignedto the parks have lessened the blow of theheadcount reduction on trash pickup butnot on more serious maintenance problems.Says Fahn : 'There's a desperate shortage ofplumbers for the drainage systems, fountainsand toilets, masons to fix crumbling walls, horticulturists who recognize plant diseases and people tofix the roofs of park buildings."In 1996, the Citizens Budget Commission determined that maintenance funding wa less than 10percent of the amount needed to keep parks in a"state of good repair."

- Robin Epstein

For 20YearsWe've Been ThereForYou.R&F OF NEW YORK, INC. has a specialdepartment obtaining and servicing insurance fortenants, low-income co-ops and not-far-profitcommunity groups. We have developed competitiveinsurance programs based on a careful eva

Documents

City Limits Magazine, March 1997 Issue