Mott Haven Herald

Green jobs, green city: a special report

Posted on 06. Jun, 2010 by Bernard L. Stein.

The economy may be recovering, but you wouldn’t know it in Mott Haven, Melrose and Port Morris, where, officially, one of every five adults is unemployed, a number that overlooks many undocumented immigrants and ignores those who have given up on looking for work or taken part-time jobs because they can’t find full-time employment.

But the neighborhoods of the South Bronx have an edge: experienced community-based organizations devoted to an idea whose time may have come—green-collar jobs building a more energy-efficient, less polluting economy.

Green jobs have become a buzz word, embraced by the Obama administration as a way out of the economic downturn. It has provided $4 million to a union-backed education organization, which will parcel it out to local organizations.

In this special report, the Herald examines how much of that money will be spent, analyzing what it may mean for residents and for the Bronx and taking readers to the workplaces and classrooms that will share the $4 million to teach new skills. We visit:

• The Osborne Association, which helps people who’ve done time in jail or prison to become gainfully employed.

• Project H.I.R.E. at Bronx Community College, where trainees learn construction practices

• And an after-school program run by SoBRO, where young people get an early start at thinking green.

A version of this article appeared in the June issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

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Homeless advocacy group holds rally in Brook Park

Posted on 27. May, 2010 by Joe Hirsch.

The city should be moving people out of homeless shelters and into vacant apartments built during the real estate boom that now stand empty, advocates from the community organization Picture the Homeless said at a rally in Brook Park on May 19.

The Morris Avenue-based group chose the anniversary of Malcolm X’s birthday to hold the rally and a march to a branch of Chase Bank on East 137th Street. The aim was to draw attention to the plight of the city’s homeless population, and what it says is the Bloomberg administration’s indifference to growing numbers of people without a place to live.
(more…)

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Homeless struggle against increasing odds

Posted on 24. Apr, 2010 by Carla Candia.

Illustration: Nicholas Loomis. Source: Coalition for the Homeless

On a recent Saturday, a young family of five shuffled along East 138^th Street. Jimmy (who asked that the family name not be published) rolled a green duffle bag filled with clothes. With his free hand he held his 3-year old daughter’s hand.

His wife Cynthia pushed the baby stroller where her two-week-old daughter slept and carried her 2-year old daughter in her free arm. The family boarded a Bx17 bus to Fordham Road, where they left their luggage at Cynthia’s grandmother’s apartment, then returned to the Jackson Avenue Family Residence, a homeless shelter on East 138^th Street and Cypress Avenue.

For a year and a half the family has bounced between staying with family members and living in shelters.

Jimmy, 30, Cynthia, 21, and their three little girls are among the approximately 12,000 families that by August 2009 were relying on the New York City department of Homeless Services (DHS) .

In the first four months of the current fiscal year, the number of families with children entering shelters increased by 25 percent, compared with the same period the year before, according to the most recent Mayor’s Management Report.

While the City Hall says it’s doing the best it can to combat homelessness, critics of its policies say a meager affordable housing program and a bureaucratic shelter system aggravate the problem.

“Over the past year more New Yorkers experienced homelessness than at any time since the Great Depression of the 1930s,” according to a report issued in March by the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy organization.

The reason is “an unprecedented economic downturn, both here in New York and across the country,” said Kristy L. Buller, the Department of Homeless Service’s deputy press secretary, in an e-mail response to questions. Her agency, she insisted, “is successfully meeting the demand each and every day.”

The city doesn’t keep statistics by neighborhood, but the figures it does keep show that a disproportionate number of the homeless families in shelters come from the Bronx.

Jimmy and Cynthia are among those families. Because a year and a half after entering the system they still haven’t been assigned to a long-stay shelter or an apartment, every 10 days they have to go to the Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing office at 346 Powers Avenue in the Bronx to apply for permanent housing.

Beforehand, they have to all pack all their belongings and trudge with them to Cynthia’s grandmother’s. Then, while the city reviews their application, they retrieve their things and take them to a temporary shelter. They have stayed in shelters in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens.

It shouldn’t take a year for a family to find permanent housing, said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless. But the city makes a “huge numbers of mistakes,” he said.

But the central problem, Markee argues, is that New York City doesn’t have enough affordable housing.

The coalition is pushing for more public housing to be built, and for reinstituting a federal housing subsidy that was eliminated in December 2009. But these long-term solutions can’t help Cynthia and Jimmy. They face more immediate problems.

Jimmy thinks it would be easier to win an apartment if he had a job, but he is illiterate, and says, “It’s hard to find a job when you can’t read.” He also suffers from depression, ans says, “I’ve tried to kill myself seven times.”

In the time Jimmy’s family has bounced from place to place, they have filled out more than half a dozen applications for permanent housing and have been rejected.

The application process can be complicated and intimidating. “Some of the paperwork can be confusing,” said Sarah Murphy, assistant of the executive director at he Coalition for the Homeless.

On a recent Monday, Cynthia and Jimmy received a letter telling them to be at the temporary housing office at 3 p.m. They left the Jackson Avenue Family Residence at 1:45 p.m. with their three girls, and walked a couple of blocks to the office.

Cynthia kept her eyes fixed on the ground and barely spoke. “We are bracing for the worst,” she said.

And that Monday, they were rejected for an apartment again, because, according to Cynthia, applicants for housing are required to present paperwork to show the their housing history for the past two years, and she and Jimmy couldn’t.

“It’s hard,” she repeated again and again. “It’s hard.”

They walked back to the shelter in complete silence. Jimmy’s looked exhausted. He hadn’t slept the night before and he had dark circle under the eyes. Cynthia was in tears, and the girls were crying, too.

Cynthia called a cousin in Pennsylvania to borrow money and ask for advice. After hanging up, she entered the shelter with her family.

A couple of weeks later, Jimmy had news. “We are in Pennsylvania,” he said. “We weren’t receiving help in New York.” He had found a job at Wal-Mart and was look

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South Bronx Action Group says “We’re still here”

Posted on 15. Apr, 2010 by Juan DeJesus.

For 40 years the South Bronx Action group helped tenants who lived in Mott Haven, Melrose and Port Morris. Then in February, the organization lost its home.

Forced by cuts to its funding from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development to leave the offices on East 149^th Street where its staff had counseled tenants on housing and citizenship issues, South Bronx Action did what many individuals do—it moved in with a relative. (more…)

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Housing rises on reclaimed land in Melrose

Posted on 08. Apr, 2010 by Alex Green IV.

An eight-story apartment building rising on the Northeast corner of East 158^th Street and Third Avenue will complete the transformation of the intersection.

Dubbed La Terraza, the building will join two more apartment buildings developed by the Melrose-based non-profit Nos Quedamos in the last decade.

Offering 107 apartments for middle, moderate, and low-income families, along with new stores, La Terraza will occupy one of the last vacant lots in the Melrose Commons urban renewal area. Spills of chemicals from a drycleaner that once occupied part of the site had to be cleaned up before construction could begin.

Two more buildings are rising on another formerly contaminated site, on Courtlandt Avenue between East 160^th and 161^st streets. There, a gas station had polluted the ground.

Called “brownfields,” underutilized and often contaminated sites like these are found throughout urban areas, but are especially numerous in neighborhoods like Mott Haven, Melrose and Hunts Point where crime, poverty and a changing economy have led many businesses to close and many building owners to abandon their property. (more…)

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Windmills and sun power Melrose buildings

Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by Jeanmarie Evelly.

From blocks away, you can spot 10 white windmills whirling atop the five-story brick building on East 156^th Street. The wind-powered turbines help generate clean electricity for the 63 rental apartments inside.

This is the new, green, look of affordable housing, and Melrose is leading the way.

Called the Eltona, the building is the latest addition to housing for low-income families in the neighborhood. Its state-of-the art, energy efficient features are what you might expect to find in the trendy apartments of Williamsburg or SoHo.

“When you speak of green roofs, when you speak of sustainability, when you speak of green structures, we’re number one,” Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., boasted at the building’s ribbon cutting ceremony on Oct. 27.

The Eltona is the first affordable housing development in New York City to qualify for the highest rating a green building can get, called LEED Platinum. The Bronx itself is home to 86 percent of the LEED certified-for-home units in the state, according to Les Bluestone, president of Blue Sea Development, the Eltona’s developer.

LEED, or Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, is a certification system developed by the United States Green Building Council to rate how environmentally friendly a building is. Platinum is the highest a building can achieve, followed by gold, silver, and just plain LEED-certified.

The Eltona offers one-, two- and three-bedroom rental units for $782, $943 and $1,089 a month, respectively. Eligibility is determined by family size and income. A family of four must earn no more than $46,080.

Blue Sea has received more than 2,400 applications, according to Bluestone, and about 20 leases have been signed so far.

Twenty-three-year-old Tia Smith and her two-year-old daughter were among the first residents to settle into the Eltona. Smith was on the verge of eviction a few months ago after the rent in her last apartment was raised to $1,300 a month.

The Eltona is one of several environmentally friendly, affordable buildings in Melrose Commons.

“I didn’t know where I was going four months ago, where I was going to live,” Smith said. “Now I know I have a place to come home to.”

Smith and other Eltona residents will also serve as the subjects of an environmental study by Mt. Sinai School of Medicine. The study will monitor the effects of living in a green building on health.

In addition, no smoking is permitted anywhere in the building, and health authorities hope that will have an impact on asthma symptoms in a neighborhood where asthma is epidemic.

The Eltona isn’t the only or first building in the neighborhood to go green. Melrose Commons, as this area of redeveloped housing units is known, is also home to Sunflower Way on East 158^th St between Melrose and Elton Avenues. Completed in 2002, the 30 three-family homes were the first affordable housing to qualify for an Energy Star label through the use of energy efficient appliances, heating and water systems.

In 2007, Blue Sea Development built the nearby Morrisania Homes, the first affordable housing units in the state to receive any kind of LEED certification.

Construction of a LEED Silver building is nearing completion on East 158^th Street. The Jardin de Selene, as the building is called, stands 12-stories high, one of the tallest structures in Melrose Commons.

The building used recycled materials during construction, has bamboo floors and counter tops and solar cells on its roof that will generate about three percent of the building’s annual electricity needs.

But no other housing is quite like the Eltona. Its residents will also be eligible to receive on-site job training from Wildcat Service Corporation, a New York nonprofit.

And then there are those rooftop windmills.

The windmills are an experiment, Bluestone says. Blue Sea is still trying to determine whether or not the turbines are worthwhile, since their efficiency depends on how strong the winds are in a given day and location. (The Eltona also has an electricity source in the building’s basement that works with the turbines.)

“Between the two of them, if it happens to be a windy day, then we could be providing about 90 percent of the building’s electricity,” Bluestone said, “but the wind would have to be steady.

“The jury is still out on whether it’s practical in that location,” he continued.

A version of this story appeared in the Winter 2009 edition of the Mott Haven Herald.

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Thousands of Mott Haven families face eviction

Posted on 07. Dec, 2009 by Jeanmarie Evelly.

On many weekday mornings, the line outside the Bronx Housing Court at 1118 Grand Concourse stretches around the block. Many of those who wait will find themselves and their families on the street.

Each year, as the weather turns colder, the city’s homeless shelters swell with residents seeking refuge.

A substantial number of the 75,514 families hauled into Housing Court by landlords and evicted for failing to pay their rent come from Mott Haven and Melrose, according to court officials

“The judges were frustrated because they were seeing so many people coming in with these problems—not being able to pay rent and facing eviction,” said Carmine Rivetti of the United Way of New York, a nonprofit that provides community based social services.

The problem was crucial enough for officials to launch a pilot program four years ago to help residents from the 10451 zip code, which includes much of Melrose.

Most of the residents who find themselves in court have little knowledge of the system or where to turn for help, said Ellen Howard-Cooper of the city’s Department of Homeless Services. So the Department launched the Homeless Help program in partnership with the Housing Court, Legal Aid and the United Way.

“There have been studies that show 70 percent of families don’t seek assistance,” when facing eviction, said Howard-Cooper, who oversees the program.

With an office located right in the Bronx housing court building, Housing Help is like one-stop shopping, she said. The program tries to deal with the underlying issue that led to an eviction notice—loss of a job, loss of a subsidy, mental health problems or domestic violence.

“You’re not just going to have a lawyer,” said Judge Jaya Mahavan, who presides over all of the program’s cases. “The idea is to prevent people from having to come back.”

The program boasts a stellar success rate. Ninety-eight percent of the 1,630 families who have used the service since it began in 2005 have remained out of the shelter system. Housing Help either kept them from being evicted or placed them in stable housing elsewhere.

In addition to providing legal services, the court program also matches the families up with local organizations, like BronxWorks (the new name for the Citizens Advice Bureau), which runs its own eviction prevention program. They help residents apply for a state subsidy that helps pay the rent for families with at least one child, who are on public assistance and are facing eviction.

BronxWorks program director Stacha Johnson said the demand for eviction help has grown tremendously over the last few years. The failing economy and cuts to federal housing programs such as Section 8 vouchers have left more families struggling.

“Previously, it was a lot of people who needed one-time help,” Johnson said. “It’s been difficult for families who’ve become unemployed.” Unemployment insurance doesn’t provide enough to pay the rent, she said.

The Department of Homeless Services is hoping to use the success of the Homes Help pilot program to influence policy throughout the city. The program has already been expanded to two other zip codes in Queens and Brooklyn.

The need is there, Judge Madhavan said. His courtroom has been flooded with more cases than ever.

Despite a series of belt-tightening budget cuts as tax revenues declines because of the recession, Madhavan insists there are no plans to end the service anytime soon.

“To the extent that we have the money were going to keep this going,” he said. “We have been swamped with numbers of people that we’ve never seen before, but the program continues.”

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Mott Haven flunks Recycling 101

Posted on 23. Nov, 2009 by Sergey Kadinsky.

Glass, metals, apple cores: It’s all the same to Mott Haven residents, according to a report published in the Daily News on Oct. 4. Citing confusion and lack of space for recycling, the report, based on Sanitation Department figures, pegs the recycling rate for Mott Haven, Port Morris, and Melrose as the worst in the city.

Only 16 percent of what should be recycled is, according to the report, compared to the citywide average of 42 percent. (more…)

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Rats plague seniors in Betances Houses

Posted on 20. Jul, 2009 by Lindsay Lazarski.

By Lindsay Lazarski

lindsay.lazarski@motthavenherald.com

For months, residents of the Betances Houses building set aside for senior citizens heard the sound of claws scratching as rats scurried back and forth in the crawl space overhead at night.

Rat urine stained the ceiling. The animals gnawed holes in it, then tumbled through them onto the floor. They darted into the radiator vent beneath the mailboxes in the lobby.

Inside the walls of the building, which is across the street from St. Mary’s Park, the rodents climbed to the second story roof where they feasted on chicken bones, take-out containers and potato chip wrappers thrown from windows.     

Finally, in response to complaints, an exterminator arrived. But when he planted poison, the rats died by the dozens inside the walls, and their decaying bodies began to stink.

Residents covered their noses and mouths with their hands, while they waited for the elevator, hoping to ease the suffocating stench of the decomposing rat carcasses.

“This should be the best kept building in New York. Instead it’s the stinkiest!” said Ernest McNeill, shaking his head. 

McNeill, a retired mailman who has lived in the building for eight years, said the rats behaved as if they were tenants, walking around, and crossing the street.

“They looked like puppies, like little Chihuahuas,” chimed in Herman Escabi, another tenant. 

Segundo E. Delgado, another resident, said, “They’re big rats, like cats,” as he held out his hands to measure an imaginary rat for effect. 

The New York City Housing Authority, which owns and operates the 12-story, 88-unit building, reserved for seniors 62 years old and older, openly acknowledges the infestation and the nauseating smell that followed the dispatch of the exterminator.

“No one should be subjected to that,” said NYCHA spokesman Howard Marder of the odor.   

NYCHA has since removed the panels of the dropped ceiling and is in the process of sanitizing the space and replacing the ceiling. “It will be done expeditiously,” Marder promised.

But residents say the horrendous smell from the lobby is all too familiar.  

McNeill, who has burned cocoa-mango incense to try to mask the smell in the lobby, remembers the foul odor beginning about two years ago.  He is hopeful that NYCHA has taken steps to clean the entryway, but wants to see more improvements made to the front of the building.

“All they did was clean that one room,” said McNeill, referring to the lobby. “It still looks like you’re going into a jailhouse.  And it stinks,” he added, as he pointed to a locked room next to the lobby with the word “incinerator” in bold white letters.

McNeill said he doesn’t like to invite guests, or even his own children, over, because of the condition of the building. The whole front entryway should be renovated, he says. Instead of the prison-like iron grates that cover the doors and windows, he proposes glass, which would allow residents coming in to see the lobby and be sure that it’s safe.

The senior building has been nicknamed “Calvary,” after Calvary Hospital in the Bronx, explained McNeill. 

“Calvary is where they put you on your death bed. When they can’t do nothing else for you.  When your insurance runs out and the city is going to bury you,” said McNeill, who disapproves of the name and expects a better living environment.    

Maria Canales, director of the Betances Senior Center located next-door to the senior building, said the center also has a problem with rats.  She said exterminators come, patch holes in the building, and cover the radiators, but she still sees the rodents.      

“I want the seniors to have a clean, sanitary, safe, place to live and socialize,” said Canales. “They worked hard their whole lives and they deserve the best and that is what we are trying to do here.”

Canales explained that part of problem is people who litter or who throw food from the windows to feed the pigeons. Pieces of bread, orange peel, and juice bottles landing on the roof of the senior center attract and nourish the rats.

“We all need to work together,” said Canales. 

Dominga DeJesus lives on the second floor of the senior building. She said she could not open her windows because of the rats roaming on the senior center roof near her windows at night. 

The senior center’s custodian, Tony Rodriguez, said there is nothing more that can be done.

“Rats have been here for the last hundred years, and they are still going to be here,” said Rodriguez.   “As long as people are here, rats are still going to be around.”

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Feds charge Arroyo kin with embezzlement

Posted on 12. Jun, 2009 by Bernard L. Stein.

Taxpayer funds intended for two low-income housing projects in Mott Haven paid for trips to Puerto Rico for Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo and her mother Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo, according to a federal criminal complaint charging the assemblywoman’s grandson with embezzlement.

Richard Izquierdo Arroyo and Margarita Villegas stole $200,000 from the non-profit SBCC Management Corp., which manages the Judge Gilbert Ramirez Building at 455 E. 138th Street and the Carmen Parsons Building at 441 E. 155th Street, the complaint, unsealed on June 10, charges.

Izquierdo Arroyo is the president of SBCC and Villegas is its director. They used the company’s American Express card to pay for $15,000 in clothing at stores ranging from Macy’s and Promgirl to Coach and Polo Ralph Lauren, according to prosecutors, and charged $66,000 for restaurant meals. Trips to Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic accounted for another $80,000.

Included in those travel expenses was the airfare for the assemblywoman and the councilwoman, who is Izquierdo Arroyo’s aunt, the complaint charges. It says Izquierdo Arroyo also paid nearly $4,000 to install a new floor in the assemblywoman’s office and drew on SBCC checking accounts to make more than $13,000 in campaign contributions to the assemblywoman.

SBCC is affiliated with South Bronx Community Corp., a nonprofit that shares an address with the Parsons Building. Maria del Carmen Arroyo headed the organization before her election to the city council, and it employed Izquierdo Arroyo and Iris Arroyo, the councilwoman’s sister. Last year, the Daily News reported that the councilwoman and her mother the assemblywoman had sponsored a total of $242,000 in city and state funds for the South Bronx Community Corp.

Neither elected official has been charged with breaking the law. Izquierdo Arroyo and Villegas pleaded not guilty and are free on $200,000 bail.

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