Tag Archives: new york city

by | March 12, 2013 · 10:30 am

The Fight to Keep Chicago Public Schools Open Continues…

Photo by the Chicago Tribune -- "Lucero Espino, age 16, a student at Thomas Kelly High School in Chicago, and hundreds of other people hold a candlelight vigil on the North Side of Chicago on Monday, February 20, 2012, to protest public school closings. "

Photo by the Chicago Tribune – “Lucero Espino, age 16, a student at Thomas Kelly High School in Chicago, and hundreds of other people hold a candlelight vigil on the North Side of Chicago on Monday, February 20, 2012, to protest public school closings. “

The Chicago Public School (CPS) district has entered crisis mode. According to Mayor Emanuel, CPS is experiencing a deficit, and in order to save money and improve school quality, his administration has decided to consolidate efforts and close schools in the Chicago area.  The Chicago Reader reports that CPS has determined 129 “underutilized” elementary schools, and within the next few weeks, the mayor will choose to close a quarter of those schools.

The problem is that administration reports and given motives conflict with other independent sources. Recently, Truthout published an article investigating the amount of money the city will save by closing these schools. Publicly the CPS projects that it will save 500,000 to $800,000 per school annually. However, the costs associated with closing a school are enormous:  $4.5M per school! The article also reports that while CPS claims to be experiencing a deficit, a recent audit of their finances shows a $344M surplus.  This begs the question of why is the mayor closing elementary schools and cutting programs with they have a cushion of funds? This needs to be investigated further.

The decision comes after a long and contentious teacher’s strike in CPS, and its hard not to feel like there is a twinge of retaliation involved. Many parents, teachers, students, and janitorial staff are infuriated by the mayor’s decision. By closing multiple public elementary schools, hundreds or even thousands school staff (public employees) will lose their jobs in the middle of an unemployment crisis. This problem is intensified by the fact that most CPS employees are black, at a time when black unemployment is several times that of white unemployment. According to the Community Media Workshop, African Americans living in Chicago are more than 2.5 times more likely to experience unemployment than white folks. Last year, the Economic Policy Institute released a survey indicating that Chicago had the third highest rate of African American unemployment in the country.

As public schools in Chicago close, charter schools are becoming more and more prevalent. Salon News asserts that teachers working for charter schools are generally non-unionized, while teachers that work for public schools are.  Many CPS teachers see the mayor’s consolidation tactic as an attempt to dismantle unions and deny teachers power. Further, the news comes at the end of a school year that begun with a long, powerful, and highly contentious teacher’s strike. Its hard to not feel like there is a twinge of retaliation involved, and that the mayor is actively working to disempower an strong union with nationwide influence.  

Similar cuts in education and school closings are happening in New York City. Currently, 26 schools may close and be replaced by charter schools. The Movement of Rank and File Educators arm of the United Federation for Teachers, the same caucus that moved for the Fall 2012 strike in the CPS, is fighting that schools remain open. On Monday Evening, teachers, students, and allies met at the Brooklyn Technical High School for a Panel for Education Policy. We hope that such events will force city from removing public schools!

The nationwide movement to close public schools and replace them with charters is part of a larger movement towards privatization of public resources, including housing, that we wrote about last week. The move to privatize — in sectors from education to housing to prisions to trash collection — is part of a larger battle to reduce the ranks of public, unionized employees. We believe that by stripping away collective bargaining rights and making profit the bottom line (over, for example, a good education) city administrations are doing children, particularly low income children and families, a huge disservice.

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by | January 15, 2013 · 2:51 pm

Banks Walk Away?

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1153 St. Johns Place, Photo via Property Shark

Last night, tenants at 1153 St. Johns Place brainstormed ways to organize in order to improve conditions in their building. Even though their tenant association is active and they are represented by South Brooklyn Legal Services, tenants are in a tight spot. Their building has been in foreclosure for many years, and is currently being managed by court appointed receiver Scott Nunnally. The Plaintiff, Flushing Savings Bank, claims to have sold the mortgage over a year ago to someone named Alex Varveris.  However, he has neither substituted into the foreclosure case nor registered a mortgage transfer with the County Clerk. The court is also not moving the foreclosure case forward. It seems that it’s up to tenants to try and do that themselves – which is what they decided to do last night.

With an absentee landlord and an open foreclosure case that is dead in the water, it seems that 1153 St. Johns Place tenants are in indefinite limbo. And, the plight they are facing is not unique. According to The Real Deal, “some banks are deciding that in some judicial foreclosure states – like New York – it is more lucrative to walk away from distressed homes.” And Ed Jacob, executive director of Neighborhood Housing Services of Chicago, told CNBC:

What we’re finding in those neighborhoods is in judicial states [where a foreclosure case has to go before a judge], banks are making a decision that it’s going to take two years to complete this foreclosure, and increasingly cities are enforcing things on codes and vacant buildings. Banks are looking at what the residual values will be and then the costs they will incur and essentially saying it’s not worth it for us to go through the entire foreclosure process.

Though this article is primarily about single-family foreclosures, the emerging pattern is consistent with what we have been seeing in New York City’s multifamily housing. And it has serious implications for tenants, particularly in buildings like 1153 St. John’s Pl, where the borrower has also walked away.  This begs the question, who is responsible for the upkeep of their homes?

The practice also has implications for New York City taxpayers. As The Real Deal points out:

[Borrowers] who walked [on the property] before the bank mailed out notice of its plans to abandon the property  may have no idea that they still own their homes – or that they are liable for upkeep and property taxes.

At 1153 St. Johns Place, someone owes both property taxes and massive HPD fines. If responsible parties continue to walk away from this building, these fines will never be collected.

It’s bad policy and negligent for banks to simply walk away from distressed assets, particularly when it goes hand in hand with a note sale to a questionable party — like Alex Varversis. However, it could be an opportunity for a responsible developer – or tenants themselves – to recapture this affordable housing stock. To stop such patterns and preserve affordable housing, creating  more innovative practices is imperative.

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by | December 3, 2012 · 11:42 am

Annenberg Institute releases report: “Is Demography Destiny?”

This month, the Annenberg Institute for School Reform released a disheartening report on the correlation between race, income, zip code, and college-readiness.  As you probably know, New York City high school students are not mandated to attend their local high schools.  Students apply to schools anywhere in the city, and can commute throughout.  This system has made it difficult to track student achievement with geographic location, but this is precisely what the Annenberg Institute did for their study “Is Demography Still Destiny?”  Through linking zip codes and demographics to college readiness, the report concluded that yes, demography is still “destiny.”

A few unfortunate facts unearthed from the report:

  • “The higher the percentage of black and Latino residents in any city neighborhood, the lower the college readiness scores of the students residing in that neighborhood.”
  • “The mean income level in each neighborhood was particularly strongly correlated with students’ college readiness scores – the lower a neighborhood’s mean income, the lower the college readiness scores of the students living in that neighborhood.”
  • “Only 8 percent of students from Mott Haven graduate ready for college, while nearly 80 percent of students from Tribeca do.”

While we feel there are several important pieces to draw from this report, we don’t agree with the notion that demography and college readiness is one’s destiny. Destiny is something that is unchanging, pre-determined, and takes any subjectivity out of our hands.  While race and class impact our lives through multiple mechanisms, we still have power to shape our own lives.

That being said, the report did highlight important information regarding the ways racism impacts students in our city.  The city, as a result of racism and classism, is clearly organized in a way that cuts off resources to students in some neighborhoods (often higher percentages of people of color) while provides opportunities to other students (likely in white neighborhoods).

School admissions processes can perpetuate this inequality with more prestigious schools giving preference to students with privilege. School admissions might give priority to students who have attended an open house or information session, for example, which might perpetuate the inequality of who can attend the school.

The authors recommend that schools:

Significantly increase the number of educational-option seats to ensure that students of all academic levels and all neighborhoods have a fair shot at seats in the high schools that are most likely to prepare them for college.

Authors of the report also call for community reinvestment  such as counseling programs and adding resources to struggling schools (not simply shutting them down).

As housing organizers, we also call for increased investments in our communities.  Poor housing, like college readiness, is also linked to lower-income neighborhoods and race.  Through our own research, we have seen that buildings in foreclosure with high code violations are overwhelmingly in neighborhoods of color.  We need to invest in those neighborhoods- stabilize housing, ensure permanent affordability, and provide access to resources that historically have been denied.  We hope that through continued research and organizing efforts- within buildings and neighborhoods- communities can gain power and demand those resources!

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by | November 15, 2012 · 1:40 pm

How to Address Increasing Homelessness? Recapture Vacant Land

In January 2012, Picture the Homeless released a report, “Banking on Vacancy,” to document vacant property in New York City and make suggestions as to how that space can be used to reduce homelessness and increase low income housing. During this time, 38,000 people were living in city shelters. Here are their findings:

The numbers show that there was a massive amount of under-utilized housing stock in New York City. So much, in fact,that the vacant spaces in just one-third of the city (the area their survey covered) could house the number of people living in the shelter system many times over.

Since the survey was conducted, the need to recapture vacant buildings and land for affordable housing has only intensified. In August, the Bloomberg administration reported that nearly 50,000 people are spending the night in New York City shelters. This is almost a 10% increase in the number of recorded homeless people – the actual number is likely much higher, as un-housed people seeking shelter with family, friends, or spending the night outside are not recorded. In the wake of this increase, the Department of Homeless Services rushed to open nine new shelters in just two months.

The problem deepens: In a joint press conference with Cuomo on November 4th, Bloomberg emphasized the major housing crisis that left in Sandy’s wake. According to Bloomberg, there are as many as 40,000 New Yorkers that “we’re going to have to find housing for.” The Governor agreed: “There’s going to be a massive, massive housing problem.”

Now, more than ever, seems like an ideal time to return to Picture the Homeless’ survey. The unprecedented number of shelter-seeking people in New York, along with a possible influx of federal disaster relief money, calls for innovative housing solutions. By directing disaster relief money towards rehabilitating vacant property, we could provide housing to victims of Sandy – many of whom are NYCHA residents – while stabilizing long term affordable housing in New York City.

 

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by | September 11, 2012 · 5:13 pm

Honoring the Many Manifestations of Home

This post was written by Danielle Siegel, our new AVODAH. Stay tuned for most posts from her for the coming year! 

Today is a testament that there are many manifestations of home.

I am a native Californian. I moved to New York City three weeks ago. I began working with UHAB six days ago. And today is my first day being in New York City on 9/11.

UHAB is located within three blocks of the Wall Street subway stop. As you exit the train, a boldfaced sign reads, “9/11 Memorial.” Today, as I disembarked from the train, that sign ignited my memory.  I recalled my whereabouts eleven years ago.

I was elevens years old, and woke up to the shrill of my parents as they attentively watched the morning news.  We sat before the television in disbelief, unwilling to accept that the unimaginable had occurred.  My memory also illustrated my school as a space of silence—as usual, students occupied the hallways, cafeteria, and locker rooms that day, but they all operated in silence. Even three thousand miles away from the collapsed towers, the tragedy was palpable.

But nothing is like being in New York on 9/11.  Walking to my office, I imagined Wall Street on that day. I pictured thousands of people running down the street, paralyzed with trepidation and grief. I pictured debris and ashes dancing through the street.  And, like my school, I pictured silence, but one that demands stillness.

And today, as I proceed down Wall Street, I feel that silence and stillness among the taxis, street vendors, and business folk. Taxi drivers seem more patient. Street vendors seem more engaging. Business folk seem more considerate.   By no means has New York stopped or lost its essence today, but there is a pause in the air– an acknowledgment of 9/11’s tragedy and appreciation for the witnesses that continue to utter its memory.

Today, New York feels more like a community, standing in solidarity not only as survivors of the physical violence of the attacks, but the trauma that subsequently followed. Undoubtedly, that solidarity springs from a common narrative. The uniqueness of being in New York on 9/11 speaks to the threatening of a collective space that we call home. To New Yorkers, the concrete space where the Twin Towers once stood is home; these are the spaces that we spend the majority of our days, indulging in meals, formulating new relationships, enhancing our minds. To threaten our home is to threaten our livelihood. And that, in part, is why we feel the emotional intensity of 9/11.

The solidarity brought about by 9/11 works in conversation with the work I am now engaging with at UHAB—supporting tenants’ right to affordable and quality housing.   As I glance into the coming year, I recognize the importance of a space that we each call home—one that connects us to ourselves and constructs the fabric of our daily lives. Without access to these spaces, our foundations and emotional stability suffer.  However, this is where tenants, like New Yorkers that have lived through 9/11, inspire me– regardless of the injustices they have encountered, they are still willing to wage the battle and continue fighting. As I begin to witness the perseverance of tenants, I feel honored to engage in the battle for stabilized housing.

As the workday comes to a close and our experiences of 9/11 fall back into the backdrop of our minds, I encourage y’all to acknowledge the many manifestations of home as well as the importance of honoring and preserving those spaces.

This post is in honor of the victims and survivors of 9/11. 

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