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Citv Limits
Volume XIX Number 3
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2/MARCH 1994/CII'Y UMITS
~
r:fiJff'TIlJ!' ~
Creative Accounting
M
ayor Giuliani's maiden budget proposal is currently making its way
through a gauntlet of tireless analysts and critics, and many of his
assumptions about where savings can be found are turning out to be
deeply flawed. Of all of them, perhaps the most outrageous is the
administration's claim that the fingerprinting of welfare recipients will save
the city roughly $90 million a year starting in 1996.
The mayor's budget wonks calculated the $90 million figure in a creative
way. First, they looked at a research report on an upstate fingerprinting
program, which found that 4.3 percent of all Home Relief recipients-
primarily adults without children-failed to respond to letters demanding
that they come down to their welfare office for fingerprinting. The state
admits it is a bit of a stretch to assume that these people were guilty of fraud
simply because they didn't show up for an appointment. In fact, the state
provided no research explaining why people failed to respond. But that
didn't deter Giuliani's hatchet men. They decided a fingerprinting program
in New York City could weed out even more than 4.3 percent of Home Relief
recipients-twice as many, in fact. So they doubled the state's figure,
calculated the savings, and dropped millions from the social services budget.
Then they pulled off a neat trick: they decided fingerprinting would also
get rid of any fakes and cheats currently receiving Aid to Families with
Dependent Children (AFDC)-the main welfare program, covering more
than 850,000 New Yorkers-resulting in a 5 percent reduction in the number
of people enrolled in the program. In preparing their calculations, the
analysts assumed the city could yank away an entire family'S benefits if a
mother fails to show up for fingerprinting. Sadly, the budget folks will have
to rework their spreadsheets, because what they are proposing is against the
law. The federal government prohibits punishing children on AFDC for their
parent's failure to make a welfare appointment, go to a job interview-or get
fingerprinted.
Michael Dowling, commissioner of the state's Department of Social
Services, says he supports fingerprinting. For one thing, he says, requiring
people to place a couple offingers on an electronic device is a minor intrusion
compared to the dozens of other humiliations men and women on welfare
must tolerate at the hands ofthe bureaucracy. And he argues that it is a small
price to pay in exchange for giving peace of mind to the taxpaying public, thus
defusing the popular rhetoric of welfare bas hers who believe the system is
loaded with can artists.
Dowling's points are thoughtful and bear consideration. But there's more
to it than that. Giuliani's outrageously inflated predictions of budget savings
touch on the truth of fingerprinting: since there is no evidence that it
accomplishes its goal, it is little more than another way to churn people out
of the welfare system, knocking them off the rolls when they fail to show up
for an appointment-regardless of whether or not they have committed fraud.
This is something that happens all the time today; women fail to show up for
a job training interview, or miss a call demanding they come in for a
"recertification" review, and they get summarily dumped from the system.
In the short term, churning saves the government money by denying
people their benefits. Budget wonks like that, because it improves the annual
bottom line. But in the long run, we all pay for it. Taking money away from
needy people has consequences. They end up on the streets, in the homeless
shelters, in the hospitals-or worst of all, they end up in the criminaljusttce
system, where they can always get three meals a day. 0
Cover de.,,,, by Karen Kane. PhotoVaph by Martin Jom.kI.
SPECIAL BUDGET REPORT
Hard Tim.es Coming 6,
Duck and cover: Keep your heads down, nonprofits! If Giuliani's budget
proposal goes through, everyone will feel the heat.
Penny Wise... 6
Slashing the bootstrap: A shortsighted savings plan may mean the
shredder for a program that has helped thousands of poor New Yorkers
help themselves. by James Bradley
Unkind Cuts 8
Between the lines: What the budget says, and doesn't say, about code
inspection, legal aid and food for the hungry.
by JiU Kirschenbaum and Steve Mitra
Reality Strikes 10
Forked tongue: The mayor's capital plan claims to provide for the
"acceleration" of two low income housing initiatives. "Cremation" is
more like it. And that's just the half of it. by Andrew White
New Priorities 12
HUD Dud: Big hits to low income rental subsidies. Major increases for
funding to homeless programs. Well , it could have been worse.
by Toby Sanchez and Andrew White
FEATURE
Street Savvy 14
Livery car drivers are tired of second-class status. They want workers'
comp, cheaper insurance, and, oh yes, a union. by Peter Ortiz
PIPELINE
Blue Collar Revival? 18
Red Hook residents are supporting a "back to the future" plan for mixing
light manufacturing with residential housing. by Barbara Fedders
COMMENTARY
Planwatch
Empowering New York
Cityview
Immigrants as Scapegoats
Review
It's a Banker's World
MPAIlTMEl'O'S
Editorial
Brief.
n.JdnsOat
lieu BaveR Proteet
Pathmark ConfIiet
2
4.
4.
5
20
by Peter Marcuse
22
by Una Clarke
24
by Stephanie M. Fowler
ProfeuioDal
Direetory
JobAde
26.27
27
6
14
18
CITY UMITS/MARCH 1994/3
Flaking Out
Congress and the bankers' deep pockets
amendment-called the Bank
Enterprise Act-has been
opposed by community activists
who charge it would pay banks to
pursue commun i ty lending
activities that a re a I ready req u ired
of them under the Community
Reinvestment Act of 1977.
As legislation designed to
boost the effectiveness of com-
munity-based banks, loan funds
and credit unions made its way
through the House of Represen-
tatives last fall , New York Con-
gressman Floyd Flake (D-Queens)
tacked on a controversial amend-
ment that would take millions of
dollars away from community
institutions and put it in the hands
of commercial banks.
Federal records show that
about one-fifth of all contributions
by political action committees
(PACs) to Flake's latest reelection
campaign came from the com-
mercial banking industry. But an
aide to the legislator denies that
the contributions influenced his
agenda.
Mott
Haven
Protest
" Uni dos must go! Uni dos
must go! " chanted the march-
ers in front ofthe Unidos Man-
agement Office. " We won' t
stop until t hings get better."
Tenants United for Better
Living (TUBL) held a rally last
month to protest safety and
maintenance problems at t he
Jose de Diego Beekman
Houses, an apartment com-
plex in Mott Haven managed
by Unidos and owned by the
Boston-based Continental /
Wingate Company.
Galvanized by the January
death of 15-year-old Bernardo
Rodriguez, who accidentally
fell down an apartment build-
ing elevator shaft at 140 East
140th Street, TUBL says their
requests for better services
have gone unheeded.
"They always say they' re
working on everything but
nothing ever gets done," says
resident Vivian Ramos.
" We want better living con-
ditions," adds Virginia Picart,
Rodriguez' aunt, who notes
4/ MARCH 1994/ CITY UMITS
With the Community Devel-
opment Banking and Financial
Institutions Act, Congress aims to
fulfill President Clinton's prom-
ise to fund a network of com-
munity banking institutions that
would improve access to credit in
low income communities. The
Senate version of the bill is
expected to come up for a vote
this month. Like the House
version, it would authorize $382
million over four years to fund
community development finan-
cial institutions (CDFls).
But the bi ll that passed the
House includes a provision
introduced by Flake and Jim Leach
(R-Iowa) that would siphon off at
least one-third of the money and
give it to commercial banks. The
" It is like bribing banks to do
what they should do anyway,"
says Stephen Glaude, president
of the National Congress of Com-
munity Economic Development,
which represents 500 nonprofit
developers in 40 states. "We'd
like to see all the money go to
community-based institutions."
Flake's amendment will water
down the bill's impact, says Allen
Fishbein of the Center for Com-
munity Change. "There's a very
limited pot of money and a
tremendous need to support ex-
isting CDFls," Fishbein explains.
An analysi s of Flake' s cam-
paign contributi ons shows that
commercial banking industry
Tenants at the Jose de Diego Beekman Houses in the Bronx demonstrate in
front at their management company's offices.
that safety problems are nothing
new at the Beekman Houses.
The protest was the latest
escalation in a long and bitter
dispute. The tenant group has
been working with the Mott Haven
Restorati on Project (MHRP), a
partnership between the city
and federal governments that is
funded under the Bush admin-
istration's anti -crime Weed and
Seed initiative. MHRP organizer
Edwin Lorenzo reports there are
more than 3,000 maintenance
violations atthe Beekman Houses,
including more than 500 of those
termed "immediately hazardous"
by the Department of Housing
Preservation and Development
(HPD). The group has 900 pages
of HPD computer printouts to
prove it.
"Fall i ng ceilings, holes in the
walls, rats. One family was living
in an apartment with no window
panes, " says Lorenzo. "They just
had plastic. And the stove and the
toilet didn't work." The building
in which Rodriguez died has 24
apartments with a total of 256
code violations, including 52 that
are immediately hazardous,
PACs provided $32,450 to Flake' s
last campaign effort, according to
the Washington-based Centerfor
Responsive Politics. He received
a total of$166,730 in PAC money.
Marshall Mitchell, Flake's
press secretary, says the contri -
butions have nothing to do with
the congressman' s position. He
says CDFls simply don't have the
capacity to make large numbers
of loans, so it makes more sense
to channel the money through
established banks.
"You can't do community de-
velopmentwith a piggy bank," he
says. " We' re not in the business
of funding CDFls. We' re in the
business of putting money into
the community."
As an example, he states that
if a church in Flake's district
needed a $10 million loan, itwould
be forced to go to a commercial
bank. Flake is pastor of Allen
A.M.E. Church in Jamaica.
Steve Mitra
according to HPD spokeswoman
Cassandra Vernon.
Butthe management company
says the tenants' complaints are
not justifi ed. " I think they' re over-
reacting," says Gloria Glenn,
operations manager for Uni dos.
Thetwo sides met last summer
and fall, buttalks broke down after
the second meeting. Even the
cause of the breakdown is
disputed. Unidos office manager
George Morris says MHRP
abruptly cut off communication.
But Lorenzo says he stopped
because Uni dos was not taking
the tenants' demands seriously.
After asking for and receiving an
initiallistofthe most serious repair
problems, Unidos said it would
take six months to make the 93
repairs on the list, he charges.
Lorenzo says MHRP is using
other methods to apply pressure
to the out-of-town owners. They
have brought the tenants' case
directly to HUD, which pays rental
subsidies in the projecttothetune
of $9.6 million a year, according
to HUD spokesman Adam Glantz.
" It's hard to hold a rent strike
when 90 percent of the rent goes
directly from HUD to the land-
lords, " Lorenzo points out. "And
until recently, tenants were afraid
[of complaining to HUDJ because
they were afraid they would lose
)
Health advocates and members of the community advisory boards of the city's
public hospitals held a press conference last month at CIty Hall to denounce
privatization efforts planned by the Giuliani administration. Speakers, including
Enid Ford (foreground), charged that privatizing hospitals would lead to second-
rate health care for low income New Yortlers.
Pathmark Conflict
A plan by a group of churches
in Southeast Queens to encour-
age Pathmark to build a super-
market in the area has run into
their subsidies. We're break-
ing down those barriers."
With the help of Congress-
man Jose Serrano, MHRP has
met with local HUD represen-
tatives to discuss the repair
problems. Glantz acknowl-
edges that while it is unlikely
HUD will demand that Con-
tinental/Wingate hire a new
management company, "We
have a responsibility to insure
thatthe owners provide decent
safe and sanitary housing."
Glantz acknowledges that the
latest HUD inspections of five
of the Beekman Houses
buildings-including the one
in which Bernardo Rodriguez
died-show rankings of un-
satisfactory or below average.
Glantz, who stresses that
HUD is "not running away
from our responsibilities,"
says that despite "significant
problems," he thinks Unidos
has been responsive. Rather
than be "heavy-handed, we
wa ntto try to act as med i ator."
Stuart Miller
opposition from local City
Council member Juanita Watkins
and a community group in
Laurelton.
The Queens Citizens Organ-
ization (QCO). a group of 45
churches, announced last March
that a tentative deal had been
struck to build a 24-hour super-
market on a site at the junction of
Springfield and Merrick Boule-
vards in Springfield Gardens. The
agreement culminated a three-
year organizing and planning
effort to bring jobs and more
affordable groceries to the area,
where residents have long relied
on expensive superettes and
distant suburban superstores,
says Tony Aguilar, an organizer
with QCO.
ButJose Rivera, Watkins' chief
of staff, charges that the commu-
nity near the Path mark site was
not consulted, nor had Watkins'
support been sought until late in
the planning process.
"Arou nd November, 1992, we
heard it as a rumor," says Rivera.
"We told [QCO) we could not
support the proposition without
significant community input."
Watkins organized a town
meeting in Laurelton last fall , and
Rivera says opposition to the store
was fierce. Critics argued that a
new Path mark would generate too
much traffic close to a public
school, and that it would force
small shopkeepers on Laurelton' s
main shopping strip, Merrick
Boulevard, out of business.
"We live in a bedroom com-
munity," says Herbert Murdoch,
board member of the Federation
of Laurelton Block Associations,
a group that represents home
owners in the neighborhood.
"Certain things don't belong in a
bedroom community."
Now, Watkins is prepared to
vote against the project when it
proceeds through the city's land-
use review process later this year,
Rivera says. He adds that without
Watkins' support, the proposal
could die because other council-
members are loath to cross their
colleagues on purely local issues.
Aguilar of QCO denounces
attempts to block the supermar-
ket, arguing that Path mark had
been invited into the community
by the members of QCO, who
number in the thousands. Hesays
he understands the opposition
elsewhere in the city toward
megastores such as Wal-Mart and
Home Depot, which are setting
up shop without being invited.
But, he argues, "This is nota Home
Depot situation."
"The opposition's interests are
not those of the consumer," he
says, adding that if Watkins is
responsible for killing the project,
"she wi II have to answer why she's
vetoing 700 jobs." Steve Mitra
-
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DIIte: FRIDAY, MARCH 18,1994
CITY UMnS/MARCH 1994/5
Hard Times Coming
Spending cuts will hurt poor communities most of all.
N
eighborhood-based non profits have been
the packmules of the city's social service
and housing agencies for years, supplying
social workers and tenant organizers, home
care attendants and legal counselors, as well as
countless other professionals. In recent years some
of the most visible nonprofit workers have been the
construction managers overseeing the development
and rehabilitation of thousands of city-owned apart-
ments, rebuilding heretofore neglected
neighborhoods such as Bradhurst, East
New York, Williamsburg and a dozen
others.
If the preliminary budget published
last month by the Giuliani admini-
stration is enacted in anything like its
current form, the city will be dealing
out some very painful blows to a
number of nonprofits. For a few, it will
mean the end of development plans
that have been in the works for years. For others, it
will create fiscal handcuffs that could greatly ham-
per their ability to stay in touch with neighborhood
people and represent their interests.
Of course, residents oflow income neighborhoods
will experience the consequences of these cuts most
directly: for example, New Yorkers who would have
learned from a tenant organizer in the Community
Consultant Program how to fight for their right to
decent, safe housing, or others who might have
moved from the cold streets and homeless shelters
into a comfortable room in a renovated SRO, fi-
nanced through the housing department's SRO Loan
Program. Each of these programs is slated for a sharp
reduction in funding.
As the budget negotiations begin this month in the
City Council, City Limits seeks to outline a few of the
toughest cuts, explain what they will mean in the
neighborhoods and discuss what community leaders
aim to do about them. The budget battle
begins in March and isn't over until
June. But the major shifts come fast
and early-before the final executive
budget is proposed on April 26th-
and the mayor has set out to make
dramatic changes on so many fronts
that advocates for specific programs
are in danger of getting lost in the
tumult.
We also take a look, on page 12, at
what the federal Department of Housing and Urban
. Development has in store for New York City in the
coming year. There is a shared theme, aside from the
overriding fiscal conservatism: both Giuliani and
Clinton are planning to concentrate spending on a
few specific programs, cutting away or vastly reduc-
ing many others. The danger lies in what happens to
the people cast aside with the programs, and in what
it will cost the city to deal with their more desperate
needs sometime in the future.
Penny Wise ...
consultant program and fund only "the
most viable and effective housing re-
lated services." The words have hous-
ing activists crying foul.
BY JAMES BRADLEY
S
pending government money as
efficiently as possible is one of
Mayor Giuliani's favorite re-
frains. Nonprofit neighborhood
groups are demanding that he put his
money where his mouth is, and reverse
proposed deep cuts to a program that
prevents low income New Yorkers from
losing their homes and ending up in the
homeless shelters-where they become
a strain on the city budget.
The administration's preliminary
spending proposal for the next fiscal
_/MARCH 1994/CITY UMITS
year includes a 37 percent cut in the
Community Consultant Program, a De-
partment of Housing Preservation and
Development (HPD) initiative that pays
community groups to organize and edu-
cate low income tenants and home own-
ers and assist them in housing court and
foreclosure proceedings. Ironically, the
mayor's rhetoric of efficiency appears
even in the budget line that contains
news of the cut: the city, the document
reads, will reduce the number of com-
munity organizations taking part in the
"The program is a prime example of
what an ounce of prevention can do,"
says John Broderick of the Community
Training and Resource Center (CTRC).
Kristine Haag, executive director of the
Neighborhood Initiatives Development
Corp., a group based in the Pelham ~
Parkway section of the Bronx, adds that 13
it costs $30,000 a year for the city to ~
house a family in the shelter system. ~
That's roughly the amount her organi- ?ii
zation gets from the city through the ~
consultant program to pay for their ten- ~
ant organizer, Haag notes. "If we were to :n
do nothing else but house one homeless ~
family a year, then the program pays for
itself," she says. "But the reality is we've
helped thousands offamilies."
Avoiding Eviction
Under the consultant program, $2.5
million is distributed to 109 nonprofit
housing organizations citywide. The
money pays the salaries of organizers
who help tenants avoid eviction and
force landlords to repair and maintain
their buildings, they also guide people
through the process of applying for
housing subsidies and public assistance
benefits.
These services, advocates note,
further save the city money by prevent-
ing bank foreclosures and the city's
takeover of buildings
whose owners have failed
to pay property taxes.
Moreover, they explain,
organizers are proactive
forces in their communi-
ties, giving residents the
knowledge they need to
both deal with govern-
ment bureaucracies and
secure their homes and
neighborhoods against
crime.
nally come from federal Community
Development Block Grants, but when
Washington requested census data to
confirm that the program was targeting
needy communities, HPD failed to
produce the figures; federal officials
subsequently ruled that the city could
no longer pay for the program with the
block grant funds.
Advocates say the incident was
indicative ofHPD's lack ofinterest. Anne
Pasmanick, executive director ofCTRC,
charges that Dinkins' housing commis-
sioner, Felice Michetti, "hated" the
program and changed its direction,
allowing the money to be used in
conjunction with new housing devel-
opment projects. In fact, city officials
HPD spokeswoman Valerie Jo Bradley
believes decisions will likely be made
by the department when housing groups
submit their proposals for renewed
contracts.
Tenant Harassment
For the neighborhood groups, the
lack of alternative sources for funding
tenant and community organizers is
another worry. "There really are no other
resources for tenant organizing," says
Alison Cordero of the St. Nicholas
Neighborhood Preservation Corp., a
Williamsburg/Greenpointgroup. "There
are not a lot of private foundations out
there [that will support this kind of
work). The Community Consultant
Program is it." St.
Nicholas deals with over
300 tenants a year in some
30 buildings, and Cordero
fears cuts in organizing
staff may lead to a
renewed cycle of tenant
harassment and property
abandonment.
Others offer equally
dismal predictions.
"Without this funding we
could lose half of our
organizers," says David
Pagan of Los Sures, a
g community group located
~ on the south side of
:;
ffl Williamsburg. Los Sures
ffi currently employs five
According to figures
compiled by the Commu-
nity Consultant Coalition,
a lobbying consortium of
groups that take part in
the city program, organ-
izers for 35 of the groups
helped to form 472 tenant
associations and 134
block associations, ob-
Community Consultant c:ontracts help pay tenant orpnizen like Alison Cordero
(abcwel of the St. Nicholas Neighbortlood Presentation Corporation. But the program
may be on Its way out, leaving groups to scramble for _ funding.
tenant organizers, he says.
"We deal with more than
sixty buildings, maybe
tained nearly 1,900 building repairs in
rental properties and 396 home repair
loans for small home owners, and as-
sisted 635 tenants in purchasing their
apartments-all in one year.
Slated for Elimination
Despite such successes, for years ac-
tivists have had to fight the city to keep
the program alive. The program was
slated for complete elimination more
than once during the Dinkins adminis-
tration, only to be saved by the coalition's
lobbying efforts.
Why such opposition? "It's perceived
to be a pork barrel program," explains
Jay Small, executive director of the
Association for Neighborhood and
Housing Development. "Also, there's
an overwhelming lack of commitment
from HPD."
Many point to a flap over a federal
audit of the program in the late 1980s.
Funding for the consultants had origi-
confirm that Michetti inserted the
current cuts in her budget proposal to
the incoming administration before
leaving office, and Giuliani advisors
saw little reason to reject them.
Though the consultant program has
managed to survive in past years thanks
to the intervention of the City Council.
financial support has dwindled, falling
from $4 million in 1989 to the current
$2.5 million. Now, however, given the
sizable budget deficit and a new
administration with few ties to the non-
profit community, not to mention an
aggressive stance toward cutting social
spending, few housing advocates are
confident that the program can be saved
from the ax before the city's spending
plan is finalized this spring.
In the meantime, there is concern
about who will determine which orga-
nizations will get dropped as a result of
the $920,000 in cuts now on the table-
HPD or Giuliani advisors-although
three thousand people,"
he explains. "It's impossible for two
people to [handle) that amount." The
result? "A lot of people who need
services will end up going to [city
agencies). others will end up falling
through the cracks and never be heard."
Juan Crespo, a tenant at 173 Henry
Street in Manhattan, is particularly
grateful for the Community Consultant
Program. Five years ago, his seven-story
pre-war building had deteriorated to
intolerable conditions; the owners
wanted to turn it into condominiums
and, according to court papers, deliber-
ately cut off water and other services to
force tenants out. A broken front door
led to rampant robberies and break-ins;
residents went without heat for extended
periods and, the tenants charge, in one
particularly egregious incident manage-
ment deliberately destroyed plumbing
fixtures, resulting in massive flooding.
Crespo grimaces, recalling those days.
"I don't even want to remember it, I
CITY UMITS/MARCH 1994/7
suffered so much," he says.
Crespo and his fellow tenants sought
help from It's Time, a Lower East Side
housing group. Organizers there helped
them form a tenants association that
successfully sued the landlord in
Housing Court, preventing the conver-
sion and securing desperately needed
building repairs. Since then new owners
have taken over, and the property ap-
pears to be in good shape.
Irreplaceable Work
While HPD refused to comment on
the proposed cuts in the program,
advocates hope that the new mayor's
proposals are guided by ignorance rather
than ideology. "Maybe they just don't
realize how useful this program is,"
says Kristine Haag wistfully. "To some,
it seems that we're just providing advice
to tenants. How useful can that be? But
often, that advice is the glue that keeps
the neighborhood together."
To make its case during City Council
budget hearings, the Community Con-
sultant Coalition will once again seek to
galvanize allies and supporters. Over
the years, the coalition's lobbying ef-
forts have gathered a small but loyal
group of councilmembers committed to
protecting the program, including Tom
Duane of Chelsea and Greenwich
Village.
According to spokesperson Chris
Quinn, Duane and others must educate
the new administration.
"I'm sure [the Giuliani people) have
no idea what the Community Consult-
ant Program is," Quinn says. "We need
to send a clear message what these con-
tracts do." 0
Unkind Cuts
BY JILL KIRSCHENBAUM AND STEVE MITRA
Breaking the Code
What the budget says: "The Depart-
ment of Housing Preservation and
Development (HPD) will deploy solo
code enforcement inspectors in areas
previously served by
two-person teams for
daylight tours only, al-
lowing a reduction of 20
inspectors" and saving
$590,000 a year.
Currently, the budget
for code inspection is
$12 million. Prior to
1991, the state contrib-
uted $8 million a year.
In 1991, that figure was
halved, and the follow-
ing year, the state canceled its contri-
bution to the code enforcement budget,
pleading fiscal constraints.
What the budget doesn't say: Code
inspectors are the city's first line of
defense against slumlords. They respond
to tenants' complaints about no heat or
hot water, and they write up violation
reports about dozens of other danger-
ous conditions, from frayed wiring to
collapsed ceilings to roach and rodent
infestation. These reports are an essen-
tial piece of many housing court actions
against bad landlords; without the
violation report, there would be no case.
a/MARCH 1994/CITY UMITS
In the 1970s, HPD had about 700
inspectors. By 1989, that number had
been cut to 500. Today it stands at 213 .
"The consequences of further cuts will
be dire," says John Broderick of the
Community Training and Resource
Center. "The program
has been devastated by
cuts. Right now the in-
spectors barely even re-
spond to emergencies."
But the Giuliani
administration's pro-
posal would have an es-
pecially damaging im-
pact in the poorest, most
crime-ridden neighbor-
hoods where they are
needed most. These are
the communities where two-person in-
spection crews operate.
"Inspectors are not going to walk into
buildings alone in high crime areas,"
says Esau Simmons, financial secretary
of the Allied Building Inspectors Union
Local 211, which represents the inspec-
tors. Because of an agreement between
the unions and HPD dating back to the
1970s, he adds, the inspectors have the
right to refuse to enter a building by
themselves when they don't feel safe.
Faced with the fact that many decrepit
buildings are controlled by drug deal-
ers, their fears are not unjustified, say
community leaders. In areas of the South
Bronx, Harlem and Central Brooklyn,
therefore, inspectors have regularly
teamed up with one another. "They are
not going to put their lives on the line,"
Simmons says.
If inspectors are forced to split up,
they will simply write "No Access to
Building" on their inspection sheet
when they feel threatened, he explains.
And that means tenants will not be able
to back up complaints against their land-
lords when they appear in Housing
Court.

Consolidation or Elimination?
What the budget says: "Eliminate
Human Resources Administration
(HRA) contracts for legal services to
seniors, disabled persons, people with
AIDS and anti-eviction services, saving
$1 million."
What the budget doesn't say: The
lion's share of the budgets of the Legal
Aid Society, Legal Services of New York
and a handful of other organizations
providing free representation to the poor
comes from an obscure mechanism
called IOLAs, or Interest on Lawyers'
Accounts. When an attorney's client
puts money in a short-term escrow
account for any reason-as a down-
payment guarantee on a home purchase,
for instance-the interest is turned over
to the legal aid programs.
But interest rates have dropped
precipitously in recent years. Between
1992 and 1993, proceeds from IOLAs
for New York City dropped $6 million,
a devastating loss that resulted in job
openings left unfilled and the early
retirement of lawyers and paralegals.
Last year, the City Council added a $1
million infusion to HRA's budget to
help cover some of the loss, even as
legal aid groups have also had to cope
with additional cuts in federal support.
The Giuliani administration seeks to
withhold that funding next year.
What the budget says: "City-funded
legal services contracts will be consoli-
dated with the Human Resources
Administration's Anti-Eviction Legal
Services Program," and removed from
the budget ofHPD, saving $1.3 million.
What the budget doesn't say: Not
everyone can get legal help from the
HRA anti-eviction program, which is
funded largely by the federal govern-
ment in an attempt to reduce homeless-
ness. Only low income families with
children are eligible, and then only if
they are participating in the federal
Emergency Assistance to Families pro-
gram, which offers one-time payments
to cover the cost of tem-
porary shelter, moving
expenses , food and
clothing and rent arrears.
The HPD program
proposed for " consolida-
tion" provides anti-
eviction legal assistance
to everyone else-single
adults, disabled adults,
senior citizens, victims
of domestic abuse,
couples without chil-
dren, and families with children who
for one reason or another are not eligible
for the federal emergency program.
These people are not eligible for HRA-
funded legal assistance.
"So under the guise of 'consolidat-
ing' the two programs, one program is
really being eliminated, " says Steven
Banks of the Legal Aid Society. "And all
of those people will be prevented from
receiving legal services.
"It's clever. Consolidate, rather than
eliminate. But when does consolidate
mean eliminate?" Banks notes skepti-
cally that this i"s such a case.
According to Giuliani spokesman
Forrest Taylor, "The money allocated to
HRA does basically the same thing."
But Scott Sommer of Legal Services
calls this manipulation of funding
streams a "smoke screen. "
"They're talking dollar for dollar and
this is really apples and oranges. These
cuts will totally skew the work toward
Emergency Assistance cases, and lop
out an entire area of work we currently
do."
New York' s two largest legal aid
providers are not the only groups
affected by the proposed cuts. Smaller
neighborhood organizations citywide
that provide anti-eviction services
would also lose out. "We were due to get
a grant from HPD this year," says Barbara
Lowry of the Northern Manhattan
Improvement Corp., which, with seven
staff attorneys, is the only provider of
legal services for the poor in the Wash-
ington Heights/Inwood section of the
Bronx. "We will be terribly hurt by
this."

Less Food for the Hungry
What the budget says: "Eliminate
funding for a Food Stamp outreach
program and for the purchase of food
through the Human Resources
Administration' s Emergency Food
Program, saving $400,000."
The outreach pro-
gram consists of a bare-
bones media cam-
paign-primarily in the
form of subway and bus
posters and public ser-
vice announcements-
aimed at informing New
Yorkers about food
stamp eligibility re-
quirements. By cutting
$200,000 from the out-
reach program, the city
will also lose federal matching funds.
Another $200,000 is to be cut from the
Emergency Food Program, which
supplies 500 of the city's 1,000 soup
kitchens and food pantries.
What the budget doesn't say: Cancel-
ing the media campaign will actually
result in the loss of some $12 million
dollars in food stamps to eligible New
Yorkers who would be brought into the
program through the
outreach effort. Accord-
ing to HRA's own esti-
mates , the campaign
funded in last year's
budget is expected to
bring in nearly $30 in
benefits for every dollar
spent on outreach.
Food stamps area 100
percent federally sub-
sidized benefit. New
York has often been
criticized in the past for not taking ad-
vantage of large amounts of federal and
state resources for such things as job
training, health care and SSI. Indeed,
according to a 1992 report by
Alterbudget, "Cutting Our Losses ,"
there are nearly one million hungry
New Yorkers eligible for food stamps
who are not receiving them. "Minimal
city dollars could help expand outreach
and design innovative programs that
could draw millions of additional dollars
to the New York economy," the report
notes. Advocates say the food stamp
outreach campaign is just such a
program.
Advocates are similarly concerned
about the proposal to cut support for
HRA's Emergency Food Assistance
Program. Last year, the Dinkins admin-
istration increased funding for operat-
ing expenses to soup kitchens and
pantries, partly in response to surveys
showing that at least 38,000 hungry
New Yorkers were being turned away
monthly because of lack of resources.
Neighbors Together is a case in point.
A ramshackle outfit in Brownsville with
leaky plumbing, poor ventilation and
broken toilets, Neighbors Together may
not look like a modern social services
agency. But it is the second largest soup
kitchen in Brooklyn, serving about
110,000 meals a year.
"The current funding is pathetically
small and no where near enough now,"
says director Anne Kohler. "To further
cut the budget is a joke. "
In a survey of 273 soup kitchens
conducted in 1992 by the New York
City Coalition Against Hunger, 59 per-
cent said they had to send people away
unfed. Two-thirds said that they were
forced to serve smaller portions of food.
When they opened 12 years ago,
Neighbors Together fed 76 people in the
first week, Kohler says. "Today we feed
five hundred a day between the hours of
11 a.m. and 2 p.m. It goes up to eight
hundred a day in the summer months. "
To make matters worse, federal fund-
ing for surplus food distribution is also
drying up. According to
Lewis Straus, director of
the city Office of Food
Programs and Policy
Coordination, a pro-
posed cut by the Clinton
administration would
mean the loss of an
additional 15 million
pounds of food-canned
goods, grain and dairy
products-currentl y
distributed by neighbor-
hood groups to some 300,000 needy
New York households annually.
"The bottom line is that New York
City is losing big time," states Walker.
"We've been advocating for a $4 million
increase to the current city budget. And
the message that Giuliani is sending by
cutting these programs is what? Hunger
is over?" 0
For more information on how to
influence the budget plan, see the
following:
A Voice at City Hall: How NYC's
budget works and what your commu-
nity can do about it, available from the
Community Training and Resource
Center,47 Ann Street, NYC 10038. (212)
964-7200.
A Capital Primer: Everything you
ever wanted to know about the city's
capital budget...and how to change it,
City Limits, October 1992.
CITY UMITS/MARCH 1994/9
Reality Strikes
By Andrew White
The mayor seeks major cuts in funding for key pieces of the city"s 10-year housing plan.
I
t pays to read the fine print:
The Giuliani administration's
plan for capital investment in. infra-
structure and housing, issued last
month, includes the reassuring note that
"funding has been pr:ovided for the
acceleration of the Bradhurst and
Saratoga Square initiatives," two
Dinkins-era projects that aim to rebuild
vast sections of Harlem and Bedford-
Stuyvesant, respectively.
But deep in the fine print, there is an
altogether different story: big cuts are
on the way throughout the city's $4
billion, 10-year housing
buildings. And while the overall capital
budget for the housing agency is sched-
uled for a 20 percent cut over 10 years,
some of the deepest reductions are levied
on programs designed to assist home-
less New Yorkers and tenants of the
worst privately-owned housing stock in
the city.
For instance, Giuliani is seeking to
eliminate all city funding for the SRO
Loan Program, which provides non-
profits with loans at very low interest
(about 1 percent) to assist in the
construction of permanent housing for
plan-not least in
Bradhurst and Saratoga
Square. For fiscal 1995,
GIulIani's IIousiRg Plan
beginning next July 1,
funding for Bradhurst is
almost eliminated. Over
the next six years, invest-
ment in the project is
CIIIIII-.-'" CI
1I.,IIM-l_
.......... )
.r. II
HPDTotal $1,852 $1,488
touch in making that argument. "It has
never been a problem identifying
projects," says Nancy Wackstein ofthe
Lenox Hill Neighborhood Association.
"There's no end of viable projects from
credible groups with buildings lined
up. [HPD has] had more proposals than
they know what to do with."
"You have all this rhetoric coming
from the administration about solving
the homeless problem," adds Maureen
Friar of the SRO Providers Group. "But
the reality of the budget is that Giuliani
is not putting money forward for the
low income and needy
population. "
In addition, the Article
8A Loan Program is
marked for a 50 percent
cut over four years. That
program offers low inter-
est loans to private land-
_ lords in very low income
buildings for the repair of slated to be cut in half,
from $153 million to $95
million. Similar cuts are
proposed for Saratoga
Square. Overall , the cuts
in these two programs
alone could mean the loss
of more than 1,000 new
apartments for low, mod-
erate and middle income
families.
.20% major systems such as
L--_______________________ ...J plumbing or heating. The
Selected programs:
NOW Program 343 290
Capitallmproyementslin rem 90 151
Homeownership Programs 114 107
SROLoanProgram 157 74
Bradhurst 96 47
Nehemiah Housing 32 30
"The city no longer has
the ability to fund the
program at 100 percent
capacity," says Valerie Jo
Bradley, spokesperson
for the Department of
Housing Preservation and
Development (HPD).
Vacant Building Program 25 25
Article SA Loan Program 39 21
North General 20 10
Melrose Commons 20
Lead Paint Abatement Program 28
The city's first 10-year housing plan
began in 1987 during the Koch adminis-
tration, and has resulted thus far in
billions of dollars of investment in new
and rehabilitated housing, from single
room occupancy hotels (SROs) to apart-
ment buildings and small homes. But
the Giuliani administration is refocusing
the city's housing agenda.
Strategy Shift
Giuliani's capital investment plan
reveals a shift in strategy away from
massive development projects like
Bradhurst and towards the rehabilita-
tion and sale of city-owned apartment
10/MARCH 1994/CITY UMITS
formerly homeless men and women
suffering from mental illness, drug
addiction and other health problems.
The projects generally include social
services and health care on-site or
nearby. Since the program began in 1988,
3,800 units have been built. Two-thirds
of the residents used to live in the city
shelters or on the streets.
Dinkins' last budget called for $157
million to be pumped into supported
SRO development between 1994 and
1997. Giuliani calls for $74 million, a
cut of about 53 percent. "The cuts are
driven by a lack of sites," says HPD's
Bradley.
But advocates say the agency is out of
8
0
15%
+68%
-6%
53%
51%
-6%
0%
-47%
.50%
-61%
100%
loans also help landlords
restructure rents so that
income more closely
matches expenses-
mainly by awarding
federal Section 8 rent
subsidies to low income
tenants.
$60 Million Boost
The biggest increase in
the capital plan is a $60
million boost to the
budget for rehabilitating
thousands of deterior-
ating city-owned, tax-foreclosed build-
ings. The administration plans to
renovate the properties and sell them
off as quickly as possible to non profits
and private for-profit landlords.
Many advocates are pleased that the
administration is finally focusing on
repairing the tax-foreclosed buildings,
which house more than 150,000 of the
city's poorest residents. But can, or
should, the city sell the property off as
quickly as it would like?
"I don't know how many of these
buildings you can just spin off," says
Clara Fox of the New York Housing
Conference. "How many are viable with-
out a rental subsidy?" She and others
point out that past privatization efforts,
such as the Private Ownership Manage-
ment Program, had major afford ability
problems for both tenants and land-
lords. The sell-off, says Fox, should be
done slowly and carefully, with a clear
understanding of what buyers can afford
to maintain as low income housing.
Debt Burden
The mayor's proposed cuts are
intended to ease the debt burden-
currently about $3 billion a year-that
strains the city's operating budget.
But the Reverend Preston Washing-
ton of Harlem Churches for Community
Improvement, part of the consortium
developing Bradhurst, is angry. He
charges that the mayor is proposing
cutting taxes to benefit big business at
the expense of inner city residents. "It
is obvious [Giuliani] has a vendetta
against the black community," he adds.
"It is a tragedy for the city to betray the
community this way.
"You have the ads on the subways
saying don't give to the homeless, and at
the same time you are taking away the
infrastructure support that gives the
homeless a chance to be reintegrated,"
Washington continues. "We need to get
angry about that. He does not have cre-
ative solutions for this city." 0
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CITY UMITS/MARCH 1994/11
New Priorities
By Toby Sanchez & Andrew White
The President takes aim at homelessness, but leaves low-rent housing behind.
T
he Clinton administration's
tentative new homelessness
agenda began to take shape last
month with the release of the
1995 budget proposal for the federal
Department of Housing and Urban
Development, which includes major
increases in funding for homeless
programs. But the plan also has some
dark surprises, particularly for New York
City: development funds for new public
housing and some rental subsidies for
low income tenants are slated for major
hits.
The news has disappointed some
housing advocates. "We support any
increase in funds for homeless people,"
says Maria Foscarinis, Director of the
Washington -based National Law Center
on Poverty and Homelessness. "But if
the goal is really to get at the causes of
homelessness rather than to put on Band-
Aids, it is a big mistake to cut funds for
public housing."
New Homeless Grants
Overall, the administration's
proposed $26 billion budget for the
Department of Housing and Urban
Development (HUD) amounts to a $1
billion increase over the current year.
That includes more than $1.25 billion
to be devoted to a new system for helping
local governments cope with homeless-
ness by combining funding for a complex
medley of programs-emergency shelter
grants, Shelter Plus Care, Supportive
Housing and so on-under new Home-
less Assistance Block Grants. The block
grants would be distributed in lump
sums directly to cities and states, which
would have more control over how they
spend the money than they do today,
according to HUD spokesperson Jack
Flynn.
While advocates agree that the
consolidation would make life easier
for city agencies, Richard West of the
National Low Income Housing Coalition
warns that moving funds from specific
programs to block grants has drawbacks.
"The rationale for block grants is that
they give flexibility to state and local
governments, but we believe that for
some programs, especially unpopular
ones, states and cities should not be
given too much flexibility. In fact, block
grants are an easy way to eliminate
12/MARCH 1994/CITY UMITS
programs [some local officials] don't
like, like housing for people with AIDS: "
Paying the Rent
On the housing side of the budget,
there will be more money available for
Section 8 rental vouchers and certifi-
cates, which help low income New
Yorkers pay rent to private landlords
and are an integral part of the city's
efforts to rehabilitate and sell dilapi-
dated, city-owned housing.
But Section 8 is only one of a number
of federal programs that help people
pay their rents. Others don't fare so well
under the Clinton plan. For example, in
"We have a major
source of low income
housing that may go
down the tubes."
New York City, the HUD budget puts
hundreds of thousands of low income
tenants at risk of losing the federal
subsidies that make their apartments
affordable, according to Victor Bach,
director of housing policy and research
at the Community Service Society.
These tenants live in privately-owned
developments financed with HUD-
subsidized mortgages, and part of their
rent is paid by HUD. But 20 years or
more has passed since many of these
buildings were built, and in many cases,
the landlords are now eligible to payoff
their mortgages and pull the apartments
out of the rental subsidy programs. To
prevent this, HUD offers incentives to
the landlords to stay in-but the Clinton
administration plans to eliminate the
incentive fund. As a result, as many as
160 housing developments with about
46,000 apartments could pull out of the
HUD-subsidized programs during the
next few years-and hike rents to what-
ever the market will allow.
"What this means is that we have a
major, major source of assisted low
income housing that may go down the
tubes," Bach says.
In addition, if the budget plan is
approved by Congress, programs for the
development of new public housing
would face deep cuts, from $678 million
in 1994 to $150 million in 1995-only
enough to build 1,750 new apartments
nationwide. In addition, funds for new
housing for low income senior citizens
would diminish by nearly 90 percent.
Lobbyists in Washington point out that
because older Americans are a politi-
cally powerful constituency, some of
the senior citizen housing funds may be
restored by Congress as the budget moves
through the legislative process this
spring. But other budget items may not
fare as well, says West. That's because
deficit reduction agreements restrict
Congress from increasing funding any-
where in the federal budget without
cutting it somewhere else.
Not as Bad
Even with the reductions, advocates
for affordable housing and the home-
less say the budget plan is not as bad as
they feared it might be. For one thing,
Community Development Block Grants,
used to rehabilitate and maintain low
income housing and pursue economic
development projects, will be funded at
last year's $4 billion level.
And in an effort to decrease housing
segregation and expand housing oppor-
tunities for people of color in cities and
suburbs, HUD is proposing jncreases in
funding for fair housing organizations
to pay for testers, litigation, education
and outreach. The department also plans
to spend money to strengthen enforce-
ment of laws against mortgage lending
discrimination and insurance redlining.
Inevitably, the HUD budget will
emerge from Congress with some
changes. But, given the mandatedrestric-
tions on spending, any overall increase
is unlikely. "We are confident that the
Hill will give us what we want on [a few]
items," says Richard Nelson, executive
director of the National Association of
Housing and Redevelopment Officials.
"There will be adjustments, but what
comes out will not be much different
from what [Clinton sent] in."
Toby Sanchez is a freelance writer and
consultant based in Brooklyn.
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CITY UMITS/MARCH 1994/13
BY PETER ORTIZ
I
t was a call that cab driver Eduardo
Colon would never forget.
"I was working when the radio an-
nounced number 103 was shot at the
Twin Donut," says Colon. He immedi-
ately realized that driver 103 was his 22-
year-old brother Bernardo. In the early
morning hours of March 7, 1993, Colon
and his father, who is also a livery driver,
rushed to the donut shop at 21Sth Street
and Broadway, just four blocks from their
base at the Seaman Car Service in Upper
Manhattan. They watched in silence as
Bernardo, an innocent bystander who had
been shot during a dispute among several
men, was placed in the ambulance. "Two
Immigrant
livfry drivfrs
unionizf for
fquality in
Washington
Hfights
U
nlike most yellow taxi drivers, livery
cabbies are unsalaried drivers who
use their own cars , make their own
hours, pay their own liability insurance
and cover the cost when their car blows a
gasket or needs a new transmission. And,
unlike the yellows, liveries are not allowed
to pick up passengers hailing them from
the street; instead, they pay a dispatch
fee-ranging from $35 to $150 a week-to
a base operator to receive radio calls for
pick-ups.
The rising death toll is only the most
public of the drivers' many concerns, which
they say include constant harassment by
police and city inspectors, and financial
burdens imposed by insurance companies
days later," Colon recalls, "he died in the
hospital."
Bernardo's death was yet another reminder that there is no
safe refuge from the violence that took the lives of 43 cab
drivers last year.
It also reinforced the growing sentiment in immigrant
communities that government has little understanding of the
needs and fears of the city's 23,000 livery drivers, much less
any interest in the important economic role they play in the
neighborhoods where they live and work. The industry
generates nearly $900 million in revenues each year, and
much of that money contributes to the vitality of the city's
immigrant and low income areas. Indeed, more than one-fifth
of the drivers are Dominicans, many of whom live in the
Washington Heights section of Manhattan. They help to keep
their neighborhoods afloat, says Santiago Vargas, a coordina-
tor of the fledgling Livery Drivers Organizing Committee
(LDOC), a union-based organization working to give the
immigrant drivers a unified voice.
Yet the families of Bernardo Colon and other murdered
drivers are not eligible for receiving workers' compensation
or other death benefits after their fathers and brothers died.
It's just one of many reasons the drivers believe the govern-
ment fails to recognize the role they play in the community
as breadwinners, or to acknowledge the dangers they face
every day, Vargas says. "The drivers don't have anything," he
explains. "When someone kills the driver, his friends have to
[go out tol collect money for his family."
14/MARCH 1994/CITY UMITS
and the Taxi and Limousine Commission
(TLC), the city agency that regulates the
industry. And despite court decisions that have supported
drivers' rights to workers' compensation, liveries are often
denied benefits by the state compensation board, which
tends to define them as independent contractors and, there-
fore, ineligible.
Such inequities have convinced a number of drivers that
forming a union is the best way to improve their lives, says
Wilfredo Larancuent, director of organizing for the Amal-
gamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU).
"Some of the drivers uptown asked us to organize. So
initially last March, we got a list of bases, went to each one
and made personal contact with the drivers," Larancuent
explains. "When we called oUT first meeting, fifty or sixty
people came."
The organizing effort is a joint operation of LDOC, made
up of drivers from 12 dispatch companies, mainly in the
Washington Heights section of Manhattan, and ACTWU.
Soon after the first meeting, the group put together an out-
reach campaign to get word out about the unionization drive,
posting leaflets on base bulletin boards , making announce-
ments on their car radios and distributing a bilingual news-
letter laying out their grievances. In addition, ACTWU is
offering English classes in an effort to better mobilize the
drivers , about a third of whom are Latino, Larancuent says.
The committee also arranged meetings with the TLC to
discuss harassment of drivers by inspectors and police. And
last June, they staged a rally outside of All City Insurance
Company, one of the city's princi-
pal insurers of livery drivers, to
protest high insurance rates.
Larancuent says he is focusing
on organizing the community
rather than using the worker-ver-
sus-management tactics that are
the stock-in-trade of a unionist.
"This is a community issue, and it
is not exclusively a worker or a
class issue," he points out, ex-
plaining that there are few other
legitimate businesses in poor
neighborhoods that generate as
much income. "Base owners are
from the neighborhood, too," he
adds, "and some are very poor."
The next step is to set up a
storefront office in the neighbor-
hood so that everyone knows about
the campaign, says Larancuent.
Eventually, he says, the group The city gcwemment d_'t understand that lively drivers playa critical economic role in low income
hopes to reach out to Haitian driv- immigrant COIIHIIIInIties, says Santiago Vargas labove! of the Livery Drivers Organizing Committee.
ers in Flatbush, and others in the
Bronx.
"There is an issue of political power, and the livery dri'vers
do not have an organization that will influence that change in
their behalf," Larancuent adds. "If the livery drivers are able
to pull their resources together, they can get a better deal.
They've got nothing now."
W
orkers' compensation has been the root of repeated
disputes in recent years between drivers, base owners
and government officials. Most base owners have
refused to pay into the state plan since 1986, taking refuge
behind a vaguely-worded law passed by the state legislature
that year. The law exempted taxi cab owner/operators from
the requirements of workers' compensation; the livery base
owners interpreted this to mean that any driver who owns his
own car is not an employee of the base, and not eligible for
workers' compensation. Critics, including Queens Assem-
blyman Gregory Meeks, say the base owners are wrong and
that the 1986 law was never intended to apply to the livery
industry. Meeks is seeking to amend the insurance law to
more clearly define compensation guidelines.
But the battle lines on the issue have never been well-
defined. In 1991, about 600 base owners and drivers joined
together to besiege the statehouse in Albany. They were there
to support a bill, sponsored by Brooklyn Assemblyman Vito
Lopez, that would formally exempt livery base owners from
paying workers' compensation premiums for drivers who
own their own cars.
The bill was ultimately defeated. But why did so many
drivers join in support of an effort designed to cut off their
own access to benefits? "They didn't have any leadership
back then," Larancuent says. "They did just what the owners
said, [and the owners) told them that if workers' compensa-
tion went through, the cost would be passed on to them,
which they did not want. But now that the union has gotten
involved, workers' compensation is being viewed differ-
ently."
But the union recognizes that drivers are not employees of
the dispatch companies in the traditional sense and favors a
compromise in which both drivers and owners would share
the cost of workers' compensation, organizers say. "We're not
saying owners should pay the whole thing," notes Larancuent,
"At the same time, livery owners should have an obligation
to pay people who pay money to them and where there is an
[employee-employer] relationship."
A
long Dyckman Street, at the bottom of the long, sweeping
hill separating Washington Heights from Inwood, gypsy
cabs line up three or four in a row, waiting for fares. Up
at the top of the incline on Broadway, licensed livery drivers
are furious: they have been stopped by police all throughout
the day, asked to prove that their licenses are up to date and
their inspection stickers are valid. The drivers say they don't
understand why the police are stopping them while the
gypsies get away with stealing their fares.
"A lot oftimes the police see the drivers as delinquents,"
says LDOC's Santiago Vargas. Livery cabbie B. Medina says
drivers are indiscriminately targeted by the police for sum-
monses, especially when it is time to fill their quotas. "You
payor you fight it out. The problem is, if you don't speak
English, the judge will most times believe the police."
Minutes add up to cash for these drivers. As the police line
CITY UMrTS/MARCH 1994/15
up the livery cars during spot checks on uptown avenues, the
drivers see dollar bills slipping away. With 12-hour work
days reaping an average income of $300 to $400 a week, the
delays are enough to cause a good case of heartburn.
"I've never seen the police do that with yellow cab drivers
or limousine drivers. They only do it with the livery drivers
and they only do it in minor-
ity communities," says
Larancuent.
In addition to being tick-
eted by police, organizers
say, livery drivers are fre-
quently stopped by inspec-
tors from the TLC, the same
agency to which drivers must
fork over an annual licens-
ing fee of $335. Drivers are
also required to pay the city
a yearly tax stamp; in 1989
the cost of the stamp in-
creased from $100 to $400.
driving records. Meanwhile limousine drivers, who are mostly
white, are assigned to a low risk pool and consequently pay
lower insurance rates. The organizers say the motive is
racism and bias against the industry, plain and simple.
Insurance executives disagree. According to Len Miller of
the Leucadia Empire Insurance Group, one of the largest
insurers of livery drivers, it
is up to independent bro-
kers to decide whether a
driver is high risk or not.
"That is something the driver
decides with the agent,"
Miller says. "We are at the
end of the scale."
But Larancuent scoffs at
such an attempt to pass the
buck.
"The TLC doesn't under-
stand that we give a service
that the city can't give be-
"It does not take a bright
person to figure out that these
folks are being assigned to a
high risk pool because of
their race and their class and
where they live," Larancuent
"This is an issue of political power," says Wilfredo Larancuent (above) of the
Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Wortlers Union, which is helping to organize
the livery drivers.
fumes. "We did not find one
livery driver in our study that was in the [low risk] pool. Not
a single one."
cause the yellow cabs won't go certain places, " Vargas argues.
"We go any place." He says the TLC is as bad as the police
when it comes to hassling legal, rather than illegal, drivers.
TLC chairman Fidel Del Valle admits that his agency once
resembled a trade group for the yellow cab industry, "whose
natural enemies were liveries," but says resources have since
been shifted to focus more attention on the illegal drivers. If
livery drivers see TLC inspectors stopping them, Del Valle
says, it's because of revoked licenses, stolen plates and an
increasing number of counterfeit plates. Besides, he adds,
with only 70 inspectors to cover all five boroughs, the TLC
simply doesn't have the manpower to go after the illegals
effectively.
"It is a ridiculous kind of mentality that you have to stop
the legal drivers in order to enforce the law and let the illegal
ones drive by," says Larancuent. The inevitable result of
regulators' leniency toward the illegals, he adds, is that many
drivers are finding it more profitable to join the ranks of the
gypsy cabs rather than deal with the TLC.
J
ar the most part, drivers and dispatch base owners see
eye-to-eye on the police and TLC problem. But most of
all, they agree that the high cost of liability insurance is
driving the industry into the ground.
Drivers currently pay annual premiums of more than
$3,000 for liability policies that don't include any coverage
for injuries to the driver or for death benefits to a driver's
family. A recent study commissioned by ACTWU found that
the three principal insurance companies that cover the livery
industry automatically place livery drivers, most of whom
are black or Latino, in a high risk pool, regardless of their
is/MARCH 1994/CITY UMITS
T
he drivers and the b a s ~ owners have a few solutions in
mind for these problems. For one thing, says Jaime
Vargas, the base owners intend to start their own insur-
ance company this year.
Drivers, meanwhile, are counting on the union, once it has
found its voice, to create a force that won't be so easily
dismissed by the government and the insurance companies.
The union is lobbying for legislation that would allow livery
drivers to establish taxi stands in outer boroughs, where they
could pick up passengers without waiting for a call from the
radio base, since so few yellow cabs venture above Manhattan's
96th Street or south and east to Brooklyn and Queens.
Larancuent would like to see this taken further, allowing
livery cars to pick up customers anywhere in the outer
boroughs. The practice is currently illegal, although many
livery drivers admit to doing it anyway.
As for the fight over workers' compensation, the differ-
ences between owners and drivers are beginning to turn to
bitterness as more drivers continue to get shot. Memorial
photos of the slain drivers from Seaman hang on the wall of
a recreational pool hall next to the dispatch base. They are a
constant reminder for Eduardo Colon, whose mother is
deeply worried about the possibility of losing another son.
"She does not want me to work this job," says Eduardo
Colon. "But I need the money. If I had another job, I would
change." D
Peter Ortiz is a reporter for the Mainichi News Service.
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CITY UMnS/MARCH 1994/17
Blue Collar Revival?
By Barbara Fedders
The Department of City Planning may allow manufacturing and housing
to stand side by side in Red Hook.
T
he Department of City Plan-
ning is considering a departure
from nearly 80 years of zoning
practice by mapping a "mixed-
use" district on the Brooklyn waterfront
in Red Hook. The designation would
allow light manufacturing and housing
to coexist on the same blocks, and, in
some cases, in the same buildings. If
this special district is adopted, it would
set an important precedent for the plan-
ning department, which has discour-
aged mixing such land uses in the past.
have."
In most areas of the country where
governments have instituted zoning
guidelines, different types of develop-
ment are kept separate from one another.
In the suburbs, for example, houses are
built away from industrial corridors. In
New York City-where zoning regula-
tions were invented in 1916 and
comprehensively revised in 1961-three
different types ofland uses are restricted
to individual districts on the zoning
map: commercial, residential and
an environmental activist and resident
of Greenpoint. Pasher is seeking to shut
down a waste transfer station in her
neighborhood that threatens nearby resi-
dents. "It's sometimes hard to get en-
forcement of environmental codes by
different city and state agencies," Pasher
says.
But John Loomis, a professor of ar-
chitecture at the City College of New
York who recently completed a study of
the Greenpoint neighborhood, argues
that the benefits outweigh the hazards.
"If you walk down the
block in Greenpoint that
has the Rosenwach Tank
Company factory, which
makes all the wooden
water tanks for buildings
in New York, it is com-
pletely safe," he says.
"There's a real commu-
nity. It's quite . different
from the Bathgate Indus-
trial Park in the Bronx,
where you have industry
surrounded by barbed
wire. That's the saddest
thing I've seen."
The proposal contra-
dicts a 1992 waterfront
rezoning plan by the de-
partment that called for
using the same Red Hook
land for retail, office and
residential development,
not manufacturing. Last
September, after com-
munity leaders protested,
the department set up a
six-member internal
committee to review that
plan. Local residents are
now pressuring the city
to preserve and expand
the base of blue collar
industrial jobs in the
neighborhood, and, at the
same time, develop more
housing. The new pro-
posal would address both
of these concerns.
There are a number of thriving mixed-use areas in New York, such as this one in
Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Admirers describe the neighbortlood as weI!-Integrated and
"completely safe"_nd would like the city to allow similar deYeIopment elsewhere.
Red Hook, like some
other waterfront areas
along the East River and
New York Harbor, has
several tracts of land cur-
rently zoned for manu-
facturing that have failed
"It would be a return to the concept
of a neighborhood in which people live
and walk to work," says Rex Curry,
assistant director of the Pratt Center for
Community and Environmental
Development. "[The Department of] City
Planning generally doesn't allow this."
Flexible Zoning
While any zoning change is months
or possibly years away from being
adopted, Maria Favuzzi, chair of
Brooklyn's Community Board 6, which
includes the Red Hook section, says the
idea has generated considerable excite-
ment. She believes the flexible form of
zoning will enable Red Hook to "restore
the population, have industry that is
compatible with people, generate com-
mercial activity and build access to the
waterfront-all things that we used to
iI/MARCH 1994/CITY UMnS
manufacturing. City planners have long
held that blue collar industries and
housing don't mix: manufacturing is
noisy and may emit pollutants that
present dangerous health hazards.
Yet there are thri ving mixed-use areas
in New York-Long Island City in
Queens and Williamsburg and Green-
point in Brooklyn, for example-that
developed either prior to the adoption
of zoning regulations or in spite of them.
While admirers describe these commu-
nities as well-integrated communities
where people walk to work and face
fewer social problems such as home-
lessness and crime, critics say that
mixed-use districts can attract unwanted
industry to quiet residential blocks.
"The problem comes in when indus-
try is not a good neighbor and is not
regulated properly, " says Inez Pasher,
to attract new industrial development.
The normal course for this type of land
in recent years has been for it to remain
vacant until housing developers seek
approval for rezoning. Such was the
case on the waterfront of Long Island
City, where state-sponsored developers
are pursuing a massive, $2.3 billion
office and luxury housing development
that overrides existing zoning rules (See
City Limits, February 1994).
A Wealthy Enclave
The Department of City Planning's
1992 rezoning report, "New York City
Comprehensive Waterfront Plan,"
recommended opening up the process
so that commercial and housing devel-
opment could take place much more
quickly on waterfront land, without the
delays that occur when a developer seeks
a zoning change. While following these
recommendations would have the ad-
vantage of effectively barring noxious
facilities such as sludge treatment
plants-which had previously been
planned for the Red Hook neighbor-
hood-the local community board
balked at the change, partly because
local manufacturers were concerned
they might be driven out of the area.
"We don't want to create a wealthy
enclave on the water. We want a lower-
middl&lass neighborhood with public
access to the waterfront and we want to
maintain the industrial base," says John
McGettrick, chair of the Red Hook Civic
Association, a group of business people,
home owners and other local residents.
"There's enough space to have both."
According to Tom Angotti, a Depart-
ment of City Planning employee who
serves on the team reviewing the water-
front plan, under mixed-used zoning
the city could allow individual build-
ings to include both manufacturing and
housing, which is now forbidden. In
addition, parcels ofland currently zoned
for manufacturing could be partially
opened up to housing development.
Planners envision small manufactur-
ers-such as woodworkers, metal work-
ers, small-appliance makers and some
types of food processors-moving to
the area and employing people who live
close to their workplace and don't need
to commute. In all cases only light manu-
facturing will be allowed: "Clearly you
can't have any heavy industry that uses
toxic chemicals or produces a lot of
waste," Angotti says.
Surprising Step
Not only is this a significant shift in
general zoning practice, but it also
represents a surprising step for the
planning department, long described
by many critics as unconcerned with
the preservation of manufacturing in
New York City.
Isabel Hill, a planner and former city
employee who resigned from the plan-
ning department in November, 1993,
says she was frustrated by the agency's
refusal to acknowledge that a sizable
blue collar work force needs to be pre-
served to provide jobs for semi-skilled
laborers.
"In certain neighborhoods, manu-
facturers are prospering, but City
Planning's studies don't reflect that,"
she charges.
In addition to the waterfront study,
the city released a 1993 study titled
"New Opportunities for a Changing
Economy" that described the near
decimation of manufacturing in New
York and recommended allowing
"modern supermarkets, department or
discount stores and other retail develop-
ments up to 100,000 square feet to locate
as-of-right [i.e. without a zoning change)
in light and medium manufacturing
zones."
Considerable Uncertainty
The department's recent support for
eliminating many manufacturing
districts has raised considerable uncer-
tainty over whether or not any of the
recommendations of the mixed use team
will be followed or even made public.
Furthermore, the appointment of Joseph
Rose, former director of the Citizens
Housing and Planning Council , an
advocacy and research grou p funded by
the real estate industry, to head the city
planning department has thrown an-
other variable into the equation. Rose
failed to return calls seeking comment
OLJrn [F@MIJ
for this article.
In the meantime, real estate develop-
ers are already pressuring the city to get
rid of some manufacturing .districts in
Red Hook. Greg O'Connell, a developer
who owns large chunks of the Red Hook
waterfront, says he has received several
calls from people interested in pur-
chasing property for uses not allowed
under current zoning regulations. "I have
two buildings that I can't sell ... because
they are in a manufacturing zone," he
says.
But in a neighborhood where two-
thirds of the population lives in public
housing and desperately needs blue-
collar employment, converting all the
land to housing would be a mistake,
says Rex Curry of Pratt Institute. "If you
don't maximize employment locally,
you're passing the buck.
Barbara Fedders is a frequent contribu-
tor to City Limits.
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CITY UMITS/MARCH 1994/19
WATCH
Empowering New York
U
rban issues have not been high
on President Clinton's agenda,
despite some excellent ap-
pointments to the Department
of Housing and Urban Development.
His major initiative, empowerment
zones-selecting a few limited "poverty
areas" and giving them additional fund-
ing for social services and tax incen-
tives to encourage private enterprise-
are a weak substitute for an urban policy.
They promote social services rather than
economic development and propose
spatial solutions to social problems.
Where did they come from? And what
can we do with them now that they are
here?
Empowerment zones are a bastard
idea. Their mother of record is the
concept of community empowerment
that emerged from the civil rights move-
ment and the Kennedy and Johnson-era
antipoverty legislation. The stepfather
is Jack Kemp, secretary of the Depart-
ment of Housing and Urban Develop-
ment (HUD) during the Bush adm-
inistration, who put the zones forward
as a cheap answer to the 1992 Los
Angeles riots. And then there are the
individual politicians (godfathers
wouldn't be a fair term) who under-
stood that the zone legislation would
benefit their districts, and ultimately,
under the stewardship of Harlem Con-
gressman Charles Rangel, won its
passage into law last year.
Pure Deception
But the law's genetic code is a defec-
tive one. Zones are no way to deal with
the problems of unemployment, bad
education, miserable health care, inter-
national com petition and multinational
mergers, distorted public priorities and
greed-driven, unproductive private
investments. These are not problems
created in a particular location, and
certainly not in the ghettos of our cities.
Pretending that they can be addressed
in particular locations, let alone a trivial
number of "zones," is pure deception. It
distracts attention from where the real
problems lie. And yet it is politically
appealing, for those most victimized by
poverty can hardly turn down even the
crumbs that may come their way.
Congressman Rangel was serving his
constituents well when he pressed for
20/MARCH 1994/CITY UMITS
the zones; how could he not fight for
one in Harlem? Still, even he knows
their limits.
What to do then? The answer is easy
in principle: take what is to be had, but
at the same time continue to push for
real urban programs. That seems to be
what the leadership ofHUD, the best we
have had in many years, is doing. But
what about locally?
Last autumn, there didn't seem much
doubt as to what would actually be
done. Rangel was key to getting the bill
through Congress, so the Clinton
administration owes him a zone. His
district has all the poverty it takes to
qualify. Those in the political know
spoke of a Rodney King zone in South
Central Los Angeles
and a Rostenkowski
zone in Chicago, and
took for granted that
there would be a
Rangel zone as well.
Mayor Dinkins desig-
nated the Harlem
Urban Development
Corporation (HUDC) , a
state-chartered corpo-
ration with close ties
to Rangel, as the agency
to prepare the city's
application.
Then Rudolph Giuliani got elected,
with no help from Harlem, but some
debts to Puerto Ricans in the Bronx and
Hassidim in Williamsburg. Areas in each
of those neighborhoods could qualify as
easily as Harlem. The new mayor logi-
cally disregarded Dinkins' mandate to
HUDC and invited applications for zones
from the Bronx and Brooklyn. Bronx
Borough President Fernando Ferrer,
initially willing to step aside for Rangel's
Harlem, now no longer has to. And
Hassidic leaders are quite willing to
pick up the challenge. Others elsewhere
in the city would also like to get in on a
good thing.
Here both the law and the politics get
complicated. The law allows a zone to
have three noncontiguous districts, al-
though the total population served must
be less than 200,000. So maybe Giuliani
could have his cake and eat it, too: get
Rangel's support, but force him to accept
two other areas in New York and swal-
low a smaller zone for Harlem. How
By Peter Marcu.e
small would Rangel's zone be? Theo-
retically, an equal division among the
three would mean 66,666 persons per
area. But the law also places a maximum
of 750,000 people in the six national
zones put together. What chance is there
that New York City alone will get more
than one-fourth of that total, covering
200,000 people, if Rangel loses enthusi-
asm after having a politically brokered
compromise forced down his throat?
Little Sense
In any case, such a compromise defies
the only defensible logic behind
empowerment zones, which is that con-
centrating resources on a few places
(Why on places? Why not on people?) is
more sensible than
scattering them around
so they will have no
significant impact any-
where. Harlem is a clas-
sic case; with a popu-
lation of about 310,000,
even a zone covering
200,000 people would
only touch two-thirds
of the area. New York's
one claim to getting a
disproportionate share
of the 750,000 total is
that we're tackling a
single bigger problem area than any
other city. So creating three zones in
New York City, evenly divided with
about 67,000 people each, makes little
sense.
Nor is dividing the zone in Giuliani's
political interest. If there are going to be
three areas submitted, decisions have to
be made about which areas to turn down
and which to approve. If Giuliani had
left well enough alone, he could have
gained favor in Harlem by working with
the community while telling excluded
neighborhoods that Rangel was respon-
sible. If he encourages other communi-
ties to apply, the mayor is likely to lose
as many votes as he gains when he turns
some of them down.
If it is to be one zone, Harlem is
surely the logical one, certainly politi-
cally. Rangel will have a powerful voice
in the approval process, and has earned
a priority. And he has a potential ace up
his sleeve: both the state and city must
submit any application to the federal
government; the city in this case means
Giuliani. But there's a little-noticed and
odd provision in the law: "An appli-
cation by an economic development
corporation chartered by a state shall be
considered to have been submitted by a
state and a city." Call it the Harlem
Urban Development Corporation clause,
if you will. HUDC could bypass
Giuliani completely, and submit a single
large application for Harlem.
The Process
But deciding to submit one large
application for Harlem isn't the end of
it. The zone has to be seen as a base for
something larger, not an end in and of
itself, and the process used in preparing
the application is perhaps the most
critical of all. Specifically:
Get serious about the economics
involved. Empowerment zones are no
magic wand. No one experienced with
the concept thinks they will have a
major long-term effect in addressing
deep-rooted poverty. They can fund
some experiments; they can put some
people to work. Their biggest weakness
is their geographic formulation: they
will support neither new job creation
nor new hiring of the residents of an
area unless both are within the zone
itself. The much broader and more
sensible provision in the original bill,
making support available for employ-
ers-wherever located-who hired
residents of a zone, was struck out in
conference committee.
Given that, look at what can really be
done. Hospitals and educational
institutions and research facilities,
perhaps some social service agencies
andnonprofits, particularly community-
based ones, are potentials for job
creation; see who they are, give them
help if they really need it, but don't have
illusions about the number of jobs they
can produce.
Possibilities for new business
investment are limited. Infrastructure
investment is another story. Both in-
zone construction and employment of
in-zone residents on construction jobs
qualify for support under the act. The
two have immediate and tangible
benefits for a poor area, and might, in
the long run, stimulate economic
development. That includes housing.
Focus there.
The enterprise zone act offers a
$100 million social service block grant
to each of the six zones. Yet looking at
the legislation simply as a way of
increasing social services is not the right
way to go. However much more need
there is for such services, they are gen-
erally remedial and not curative; they
address symptoms (which indeed must
be addressed) but most do not deal with
causes. The zone should not end up
simply feeding more social services into
destitute neighborhoods. Empowerment
zones should be used to equalize, not to
further ghettoize.
"Social services" are broadly con-
sidered in the legislation, and should be
broadly interpreted in the application.
E enn nt zones
should be used
to equalize, not to
further gh. oize.
Social services eligible for the block
grant can help people learn new skills,
get jobs, stay healthy, care for their
children while they work. Harlem does
not need more homeless shelters; it
needs jobs and training for construction
workers and it needs the housing, the
infrastructure and the production that
workers can produce. It needs commu-
nity-based health services and the jobs
they provide.
Cannot be Top-Down
If the empowerment zone applica-
tion process ends up pitting African
Americans against Latinos, Jews against
either, poor people in Harlem against
those in the Bronx against others in
Brooklyn, it would have been better
never to have gotten started. This can-
not be a top-down effort that sets one
group against another in competition
for funds or favor. Grassroots groups of
neighborhood residents must be directly
involved, not just in presenting propos-
als, but in deciding which proposals are
included, where the plan should aim,
whom it should serve. Not just public
hearings, but a public decision-making
process must come out of this applica-
tion effort.
And it should look to and involve
people from outside the prospective
zone with problems similar to those
who will be included, to develop pro-
posals that will benefit both. For
instance, a model for health care that
can be used in any underserved area,
not just in Harlem; a business investment
fund that can be replicated anywhere
that small business needs it; environ-
mental standards everyone can claim; a
tenant training program for the rehabili-
tation and management of public hous-
ing; and an ongoing democratic plan-
ning process all communities can copy.
If empowerment zones are seen as a
beginning rather than as an end, the
whole city will benefit from Harlem
getting a good one and a big one.
Empowerment zones are a bad idea, but
they're here. Let's use their potential
positively, while getting in a position to
do better. 0
Peter Marcuse is a professor of urban
planning at Columbia University and a
City Limits contributing editor.
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CITY UMnS/MARCH 1994/21
Immigrants as Scapegoats
By Una Clarke
B
laming immigrants for our
nation's desperate urban crises
is a political pastime growing in
popularity among some govern-
ment officials in Florida and California.
Now, one of New York City's own
politicians has jumped into the
scapegoating game.
New York State Senator Frank
Padavan (R-Queens), chair of the
Senate's Committee on Cities, recently
released a report titled "Our Teeming
Shores," [original italics] that alleges
foreign-born New Yorkers cost New York
$5.6 billion each year, a figure equiva-
lent to nearly one-tenth of the state
budget. The report calls for wide-ranging
legislative reforms, including a morato-
rium on further immigration into the
United States until "the scope of
immigration's impact on our country is
sufficiently understood."
As an immigrant New Yorker, I am
appalled by the spirit and substance of
the Padavan report. It is a baseless,
inflammatory and reprehensible assault
on the integrity of the immigrant com-
munity, and one that panders to the
worst fears of the nativist movement.
Not only is it simply wrong on several
counts, but it conveniently disregards
the many contributions immigrants
make to our city.
At the outset, Senator Padavan makes
no attempt to distinguish between legal
and illegal aliens. His analysis is pre-
mised on the idea that all of those who
are foreign-born-including myself-
are a drain on the city's economy. But
the overwhelming majority of foreign-
born New Yorkers are lawful perma-
nent residents and naturalized citizens
who work hard, pay their taxes and
abide by the law. Immigrant entrepre-
neurs in New York own more than
40,000 businesses that create jobs for
other immigrants and native New
Yorkers, and contribute an estimated
$3.5 billion to our economy every year.
Deliberately Disingenuous
The Padavan report ,tosses out
numbers in a scattershot way: immi-
Cityview is a forum for opinion
and does not necessarily reflect
the views of City Limits.
Z2/MARCH 1994/CITY UMITS
grants cost New York State $2.1 billion
in social services, he writes, including
Aid to Families with Dependent Chil-
dren, Home Relief and Supplemental
Security Income; another $270 million
in criminal justice expenses, and, finally,
$3.3 billion for education. That's how
he arrives at the sum of $5.6 billion.
But the senator has used a deliber-
ately deceptive method. He simply
divides the total of state spending in
each of these areas proportionately,
based on the percentage of immigrants
in New York State, without ever docu-
menting how many of these dollars are
actually spent on immigrant New
Yorkers. Clearly, it's a flawed approach.
Padavan conveniently ignores the
other side of the equation: the contribu-
tions immigrants make to the private
sector and, in taxes, to the public sector
as well. Surely Padavan must be aware
that, according to a national survey con-
ducted by BusinessWeekmagazine, im-
migrants earn $240
billion a year, pay $90
billion in taxes and
receive only $5 bil-
lion in welfare. Other
studies have shown
that the average first-
generation immigrant
family contributes
about $2,500 more in
taxes to the public
coffers each year than
it obtains in services.
positions.
Padavan claims that his aim was to
highlight basic inequities in the way the
United States government deals with
immigration: while federal officials
allow large numbers of immigrants to
enter the country, states like California
and New York are never reimbursed for
the services they must provide to the
newcomers, such as childhood immu-
nization, health care and housing.
Offensive Statements
Yet, even as Padavan lays some of the
blame on the federal government, his
report is peppered with statements
offensive to many immigrant groups.
From reading it, one would think that
all Senegalese nationals are engaged in
illegal street peddling and that all
Russian Jews who seek asylum here
have no justifiable fear of persecution.
Padavan would stop them all.
The report is an outright promotion
Immigrants are
especially important
to New York City.
They staff our city's
hospitals and restau-
rants, operate private
and publicly owned
transportation
services and consti-
tute the backbone of
City Council member Una Clarke 10-
Brooklyn) represents parts of FIatbush,
East FIatbush and Crown HeIghts.
of a nativist agenda
spurred along in
recent years by Gov-
ernor Pete Wilson of
California and his
counterpart in
Florida, Lawton
Chiles. For a politi-
cian from New York
City, where nearly
one-third of the
population is foreign-
born, to espouse this
baseless rhetoric is to
defy logic. For
Padavan to partake in
this scapegoating is
even more bizarre:
his senate district
encompasses parts of
Flushing and
Jamaica, whosethriv-
key industries like
garment manufacturing, which long ago
would have left our state permanently
were immigrants not available as a com-
petitive labor source.
Equally important are the thousands
of immigrants who come here with
advanced scientific and other pro-
fessional degrees. The latest available
statistics indicate at least 20 percent of
all foreign-born New Yorkers in our
city's work force are in white-collar
ing commercial
economies are based
in large part on the investment and hard
work of Chinese, Korean, Indian and
West Indian businessmen and women.
I call upon all New Yorkers to join me
in rejecting this mischievous attempt at
political divisiveness. As for myself, I
am proud of the many contributions I
have been privileged to make to this city
and state and I intend to continue mak-
ing whatever contribution I can to the
homeland of my choice. 0
R
Stick
Together.

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CITY UMITS/MARCH 1994/23
Review------,
It's a Banker's World
"Community Reinvestment Perfor-
mance: Making CRA Work for Banks,
Communities and Regulators," by
Kenneth H. Thomas, Probus Publishing
Company, 1993, 515 pages, $60 hard-
cover.
y
ou might call Kenneth Thomas
an optimist. His 515-page tome
on the Community Reinvest-
ment Act reveals the stunning
failure of federal banking regulations to
force financial institutions into compli-
ance with the Community Reinvestment
Act (CRA), which mandates that banks
make loans in the same communities
where they accept deposits. In page
after page, Thomas confirms what com-
munity organizations have known for
years: that banks have consistently found
ways to circumvent their CRA responsi-
bilities, often with the tacit approval of
regulators themselves.
Yet the Wharton School professor
and CRA expert is still a fervent believer
in the merits of that regulatory process,
and asserts that the answer lies in fine-
tuning existing rules rather than
thoroughly overhauling them.
This is not a book for the mathe-
matically faint of heart. Designed as a
primer on CRA for lenders, regulators,
policy makers and community grou ps-
and reading like a text for MBAs-
Community Rein vestmen t Performance
provides a detailed critique of regu-
latory inconsistencies and loopholes,
and in those terms it is a valuable tool
for community organizations. But if
readers are expecting to find in this
book a how-to for forcing stubborn lend-
ing institutions to do the right thing,
they will be sorely disappointed.
Citing examples from a cross-section
of the nation's banks and thrifts, Thomas
closely examines CRA compliance and
identifies the foibles of the nation's worst
performers, documenting their unwill-
ingness to employ even the simplest of
measures, such as customer surveys, to
determine community credit needs. And
in the book's most revealing section, he
suggests that regulators employed
favoritism during the compliance review
of Norstar Bank. Citing more than 20
criticisms by regulators of Norstar that
should have prevented its parent com-
pany from being allowed to take over
Bank of New England, the author
alleges that government officials never-
theless upgraded the bank's compliance
rating from "Needs Improvement" to
"Satisfactory" and allowed the merger
to go forward. The allegation implies
that CRA's sole enforcement mecha-
nism-the threat of regulatory denial
for merger or expansion activities-is
ineffective and obsolete.
Larger Shortcomings
Yet Thomas does not speculate as to
how favoritism was allowed into the
process. He merely notes that such
questions should be examined by an
independent body, and leaves it at that,
while noting that less than 20 of the last
70,000 bank mergers were denied on
the basis of CRA noncompliance.
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By Stephanie M. Fowler
Such an omission points to the book's
larger shortcomings. By focusing so
tightly upon the inadequacies of the
review process, Thomas obscures a
larger issue-the inability of current
federal legislation to foster community
reinvestment. And he presents no mean-
ingful discussion on the absence of true
noncompliance penalties, without
which there is little incentive for
improved reinvestment performance by
lenders. Legislation that offers no real
enforcement mechanism creates an
environment of contempt perpetuated
by lenders and sanctioned by the regu-
latory process.
Thomas's most innovative and
controversial recommendation-to
impose a CRA tax assessment on non-
compliers-is relegated to the book's
final 10 pages. He proposes an explicit
tax on banks that is tied to their com-
pliance ranking, with lowest perform-
ers levied heavy tax penalties. While
banks have long argued that the cost of
compliance paperwork alone is the
equivalent of a tax on their institutions,
advocates argue that this in no way acts
as an incentive for banks to improve
lending practices, as a performance-
related tax would.
Thomas also tends to mute criticisms
that might be offensive to his most influ-
ential audience-financial institutions.
He fails to highlight the community
assessments of lender reinvestment
performance that often contradict
government ratings. Bank of America,
for example, has received the highest
official ranking, in spite of repeated
community group criticisms of their
performance. What were the nature of
these complaints? Were they substanti-
ated? And what does that imply about
the correlation between rating and per-
formance? These questions are glossed
over in Thomas's analysis. Similarly,
the ability of community groups to use
CRA reporting laws to pressure banks to
live up to their charter mandates is
almost entirely ignored.
Blight and Decay
Nor does Thomas adequately
consider the troubling disjoint between
even the highest rated banks and the
conditions of blight and decay in the
communities in which they operate.
What good is a well-oiled process if it
fails to create meaningful change? Tho-
mas shies away from some of the inno-
vative ideas currently circulating in
community banking circles. such as
creating investment funds targeted at
improved housing .
Thomas' s insistence on emphasizing
regulatory modification is frustrating.
Why continue to pursue a process he
has so expertly proven to be seriously
flawed? Why not move to a more
dynamic and responsive model? Com-
munity Reinvestment Performance is
best viewed as a reference guide. a
compendium of facts supporting
arguments held by lenders and commu-
nity organizations. Thomas' voice is
powerful. providing perhaps the first
published accounts of regulatory
favoritism. ineptitude and inefficacy.
However. in identifying and substan-
tiating innovative solutions to commu-
nity disinvestment, his book is disap-
pointing. becoming a metaphor of the
bureaucracy which it critiques-a
bureaucracy unresponsive to the
community's needs. 0
Stephanie M. Fowler is a project finance
officer for a major Japanese financial
institution.
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proflcl.nt computer skill.; rel.ted tralnlnG'con.ultlng exper1ence. BIlingual
(Sp.n-Eng) , plu Statowlde trav.l/flexlble work hours. Competltlv. taf.ry/
.xc.II.nt benefltl. BINd In Alb.ny office. Stnd cover letter .nd relUmt to
Ctc/II. Tkac%yk, NeIghborhood Pre .. rvatlon Co.,ltlon, 303 HamIlton Street,
Albany, NY 12210.
CITY UMrre/MARCH 1994/1'7
You are invited to a
Community Service Society Workshop
Saving Housing
for the Future:
A Workshop on Strategies
to Counteract Housing
Disinvestment and Abandonment
at
Chase Community Development Corp
1 Chase Manhattan Plaza
60th Floor Conference Room
Wednesday
March 30th, 1994
9:00 a.m.-2:00 p.m.
Morning Program: 9:30 a.m. to 11 :30 a.m.
Welcome by David R. Jones, CSS President & CEO
Address by Deborah C. Wright, Commissioner, HPD
Presentation of CSS Building Blocks Report
Afternoon Program: 12 noon to 2:00 p.m.
Panel discussion on issues relating to the 7-A Program,
Code Enforcement, Early Warning System,
and Mortgage Foreclosures.
(HPD officials will participate.)
Breakfast at 9:00 a.m. and buffet lunch
at 11:30 a.m. will be provided.
For information and to register
call Migdalla Molina at 212-614-5497.
Co-sponsored by: Association for Neighborhood
and HousIng Development, Inc., Community
Training and Resource Center, and the City-Wide
Task Force on HousIng Court, Inc.