Mott Haven Herald

Mercy Center throws lifeline to Mott Haven families

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Toyin Adebanjo.

Heidy Rios knows what it’s like to be poor. Born and raised in the Bronx, for a time she had so little money that she and her children lived in an apartment that had no stove or refrigerator. She kept food cold by putting it on the windowsill during the winter.

She remembers being fearful and embarrassed when she went to job interviews. She didn’t know how to turn on a computer, let alone use one.

Then, one day when she dropped her children off at St. Pius V School on East 144th Street, Rios found a flyer advertising the services of Mercy Center, which was headquartered at the school at the time. (more…)

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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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Can $4 million paint Mott Haven green?

Posted on 06. Jun, 2010 by Nick Loomis.

Chances are you’ve heard it all before.

• New York’s 16th Congressional District, which includes Mott Haven, Melrose and Port Morris, is the poorest in the country.
• The Bronx has the highest unemployment rate in New York at 14.1%, and unemployment is worse still in the South Bronx.
• The area is home to New York City’s most polluting facilities and fume-filled streets, creating health problems for those who live and work there.

Now, a growing number of programs are seeking ways to help out-of-work Bronxites and those in low-pay, dead-end jobs find more gainful employment, while making the city more energy-efficient and ending wasteful throwaway practices that propel hundreds of air-polluting trucks through Mott Haven and Hunts Point to garbage trains and waste transfer stations. (more…)

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Workers learn by doing in Project H.I.R.E.

Posted on 04. Jun, 2010 by Carla Candia.

A brand-new duplex apartment in the University Heights section of the Bronx is ready for inspection. Equipped with bamboo floors, a ceramic kitchen and a spacious bedroom closet that would make more than one New Yorker jealous, it would rent for at least $2,000.

Instead it will be demolished. And the construction workers who built the apartment won’t mind seeing it go. (more…)

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Mott Haven co-op preaches gospel of reuse

Posted on 04. Jun, 2010 by Vishal Persaud.

Sounds of power sanders filled the warehouse of ReBuilder’s Source on Timpson Place on a recent afternoon. They didn’t buzz, they boomed. Six people were at work, two or three times the usual staff at the worker-owned cooperative.

ReBuilder’s Source didn’t hire more workers. It was hosting a weeklong training program in cooperation with the Osborne Association – a non-profit that provides job training for people who were once in prison. (more…)

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A Mott Haven bridge to the information highway

Posted on 10. May, 2010 by Vishal Persaud.

By Vishal Persaud
persaud@mottthavenherald.com

Hunched over a keyboard in the second row of a computer lab at the Phipps Opportunity Center in Melrose, Ricardo Avillan, 51, chats with his grandsons in Puerto Rico on Facebook.

Avillan began making the trek across the 145th Street Bridge from East Harlem to the Bronx to attend computer classes every Monday and Wednesday because he realized that knowing how to use the Internet might give him a better chance to find a job. Learning to connect with his family via Facebook was a bonus. (more…)

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Grant promises unemployed 300 ‘green jobs’

Posted on 29. Jan, 2010 by Bernard L. Stein.

The recipient of a $4 million federal grant is promising that 300 unemployed residents of Hunts Point, Longwood, Mott Haven, Melrose and Port Morris will find jobs under a new training program for “green” jobs.

The Consortium for Worker Education will use the money to establish a Center for Environmental Workforce Training to teach both job skills and offer general education.

The organization will partner with several non-profit organizations, including Mott Haven-based SoBro and Greenworker Cooperatives to train residents to build or retrofit energy-efficient buildings.

Most of the participants will “learn how to work with their hands—being able to fix things,” said Rebecca Lurie, director of development at the consortium.

Jobs will include window installation and building repair, installing insulation and repairing or installing boilers, she said Some participants in the program will also learn to conduct energy audits and market energy upgrades to building owners,

Lurie said the consortium hoped to launch the program, which will last for two years, within a month.

Sustainable South Bronx and The Point CDCthe Osborne Association, the Association for Energy Affordability, the Bronx Overall Economic Development Corp. and Bronx Community College’s Project Hire will also serve as partners in the program, which was hailed by Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. as “a big step toward becoming the ‘greenest’ borough in New York City.”

All told, the program, which is funded by the U.S. Department of Labor, aims to provide training and education services for 425 participants, while placing 297 of those who receive a degree or certificate in jobs.

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Mott Haven job programs offer hope

Posted on 28. Jan, 2010 by Joe Hirsch.

Two programs to help residents find jobs received hopeful news in January.

The Disconnected Youth Training Program and the Entrepreneurial Development Program, both run by Mott Haven based non-profit SoBRO, each received funding to help economically strapped local residents improve their prospects for earning a living wage.
(more…)

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Searching for work on a Mott Haven street corner

Posted on 28. Nov, 2009 by editor.

By Carla Candia
carla.candia@journalism.cuny.edu

Dozens of day laborers dressed in ripped jeans and worn t-shirts stood on the corner of East 141st Street and Jackson Avenue in the Bronx one morning this Fall.

The wind was blowing, and many workers wore sweaters and had their hands tucked in their pockets. They were eating sandwiches and drinking coffee provided by an evangelical group called Together in Misericordia.

“We see their needs and want to help them,” Ramon Mendez, a member of the religious organization, speaking in Spanish, as did all those interviewed for this story.

These days the men who wait for contractors to hire them for the day need all the help they can get. Things have been slow at “La Parada,” which means “The Stop.” (more…)

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New mall threatens Mott Haven businesses

Posted on 12. Oct, 2009 by Jeanmarie Evelly.

By Jeanmarie Evelly
Jeanmarie.evelly@motthavenherald.com

Third Avenue and 149th street would be the heart of many cities’ downtown. Shoppers crowd its sidewalks.

But many storeowners are worried that the Hub—as the neighborhood is known because its four streets intersect to resemble the hub of a wheel—will not remain the retail heart of the South Bronx. They’re afraid a new mall at the Bronx Terminal Market will lure customers away.

“The business community along Third Avenue feels they’re going to lose a significant amount of business,” said Mario Bodden of the South Bronx Overall Economic Development Corporation. “It’s going to be very hard for them to compete.”

Their competition is the Gateway Center, 1.1 million square feet of retail space that opened in September at the Bronx Terminal Market. The mall features a number of brand name retailers and big-box stores like Target, Home Depot, Best Buy and BJ’s Wholesale Club.

“The smaller businesses, they don’t even realize it’s coming,” said Vincent Valentino, executive director of the Third Avenue Business Improvement District (BID), which promotes shopping in the Hub on behalf of storeowners.

“The bigger businesses know it’s going to be quite a change.”

On a Friday afternoon in September, much of Gateway’s six-story parking structure remained vacant. Rosa Pena emerged from Bed Bath & Beyond carrying several shopping bags. She’d taken the subway here, her third trip to the mall since its first stores opened in the spring.

“It’s the best thing they could do for the Bronx,” Pena said. “This is very convenient for me. Everything is kind of here.”

Pena, who lives on E. 198th Street, said she still goes to her local stores for small items, but she likes the option of having the mall nearby. If she needs paper towels, it just makes more sense to go to the new BJ’s and buy them in bulk, she said.

While several of the stores at the Gateway have been operating for months, Valentino believes it’s still too early to tell what the full impact of the new mall will be. But he predicts that many business owners, already reeling from the effects of the recession, might not survive.

A few local shops have already closed their doors this year, and several are asking their landlords to lower their rent.

“You can’t handle both of them at the same time,” Valentino said. “You can handle the recession, but not with a major shopping center opening up.”

Valentino, a retired NYPD officer, recalled working in the neighborhood during the early 1970s when many of the shops along Third Avenue stood vacant. He sees a thriving commercial street as a safeguard against the return of bad times for the entire neighborhood. The absence of a business and retail community makes the neighborhood more vulnerable to crime and drugs, he said.

In an attempt to keep residents shopping locally, the BID is petitioning Community Board 1’s Land Use Committee, asking for its support for a plan to build a parking lot on vacant land between Westchester, Brook and Bergen Avenues. Parking would be free.

Many business owners here think free parking is the key to competing with the Gateway Center, where parking costs $2.40 an hour. They also intend to launch a marketing campaign that emphasizes their low prices and the personalized experience of shopping with community stores.

“We’re proactively trying to go after this,” said Mario DeGiorgio, who runs Young Land Kiddie Shop, a children’s clothing store on Third Avenue. While he’s worried about the impact the Gateway will have, he’s hopeful his customers will remain loyal.

“Businesses like mine have been here for 50 years or better,” he said. “We don’t just have customers—they know us on a first name basis, and we know them.”

But supporters of the Gateway see the shopping center as a means to rejuvenate the borough. Most of the buildings of the Bronx Terminal Market were in a state of disrepair before the Related Companies took over to develop the shopping center.

The rebuilt site will “contribute to the resurgence of the Bronx and the revitalization of the immediate neighborhood,” Gateway’s website boasts.

The Gateway Fast Track Unit, in charge of job referrals, has held a number of job fairs for the new stores. Omarro Benjamin, Business Development Officer at the Bronx Terminal Market, insists that most of those jobs went to local residents.

BJ’s Wholesale Club filled 250 new jobs, 150 of which went to Bronx residents, according to Benjamin. Numbers were similar for Target and Best Buy.

“Residents are eager in getting opportunities for employment,” Benjamin said, adding that the turnout for job fairs was overwhelming.

“That’s great,” Valentino countered. “But what about the people that are losing their jobs here when the stores close?”

A version of this article appeared in the Fall 2009 issue of the Mott Haven Herald.

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