Tenants association president Alicia Barksdale advocates for low-income residents. Photo courtesy of Alicia Barksdale

Santana, who receives welfare and Section 8 funding to subsidize her rent, claimed that since MetroNorth transitioned from the Mitchell-Lama program to private ownership under Urban American Management, home hasn’t been the same. She alleged that she was asked to pay rent she’s not responsible for and struggled to get repairs in her apartment, even going to housing court to demand improvements. According to Santana, this is harassment aimed at pushing Section 8 tenants out of MetroNorth, located on First Avenue between 101st and 102nd Streets.

Urban American Chief Operating Officer Douglas Eisenberg denied the allegations in a statement and said that the company is committed to affordable housing.

“While we are by no means perfect, we take all complaints seriously and we respond quickly and as efficiently as we can to our residents’ concerns,” he said.

Santana, however, described a vastly different situation.

“I have to beg for my home to be kept and maintained in good condition. Why should I have to go through that?” she said.

Tenants like Myra Santana, who use Section 8 vouchers to remain in former Mitchell-Lama buildings, are on the ground floor of an affordable housing upheaval. When private investors buy these buildings, new tenants move in and pay market rate rents on renovated units formerly preserved for low-to moderate-income tenants. Disparities in conditions between market rate and Section 8 units, and the alleged mistreatment of Section 8 tenants, have led to claims of harassment. Yet this is only one piece of the housing puzzle. As Mitchell-Lama buildings transition to private ownership, the long-term effects on affordable housing – and on residents like Santana – are unknown.

Mitchell-Lama Housing in East Harlem

MetroNorth, the Upper Park Avenue Community Association, or UPACA, buildings 1 and 2, and The Heritage, formerly Schomberg Plaza, are East Harlem complexes once part of Mitchell-Lama, a city program providing affordable housing to moderate-income families. According to Citizens Housing and Planning Council, a nonprofit research organization dedicated to improving housing conditions, when Mitchell-Lama began as co-operative housing in 1955, there was no incentive for private investors to enter into the program. To attract investors, the laws were re-jiggered a few years later to add rental units in addition to co-ops; landlords could eventually opt out of the program and turn a profit.

“You wouldn’t have had all this housing if they didn’t have incentives,” said Harold Shultz, a senior fellow from the housing and planning council.

The housing remained affordable under the Mitchell-Lama program until 2005, when developer Jerome Belson purchased the three East Harlem properties and two additional Mitchell-Lama buildings for $295 million, according to a 2007 report compiled by the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board and Tenants & Neighbors. Two years later, the five properties were sold to the Urban American Management Corporation for $918 million.

In 2005, rents increased to market rates, and many residents could no longer afford their housing. To prevent them from being displaced, the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development made tenants earning up to 95 percent of the area median income eligible for subsidies known as enhanced Section 8 vouchers.

The Section 8 Voucher Program is federally subsidized and supplements what tenants can afford to pay, thereby allowing them to live in privately owned rental housing of their choice. Tenants pay 30 percent of their income or what they paid under Mitchell-Lama; vouchers cover the rest.

Currently, HPD subsidizes 1,785 families within four of the five Urban American properties. The New York City Housing Authority also subsidizes an additional 943 households in East Harlem through the Section 8 Voucher Program, according to the agency’s research director, Anne-Marie Flately.

Yet Section 8 vouchers designed to prevent tenant displacement can’t guarantee security. According to Tenants & Neighbors, an organization dedicated to the preservation of affordable housing, Urban American indebted itself when it purchased the properties, putting tenants at risk.

“They’ve been severely overleveraged. That means the model calls for one or two things concurrently. One, to get in as many market rate tenants as possible, and two, to skimp on repairs. If you buy something where the cost can’t be covered by the rent, what are you going to do?” said Dave Powell, advocacy director at Tenants & Neighbors.

Eisenberg, the COO of Urban American, said in an email, “The suggestion that our finances are in bad shape is false. Our company is healthy, we never take on debt beyond our means and we are continuing to invest in these properties.”

Alleged Harassment

Residents at MetroNorth and 3333 Broadway, another Urban American property, alleged that getting anything fixed – from basic repairs to replacing deteriorating floors and cabinets – required continual prodding from tenants.

Alicia Barksdale, president of the 3333 Broadway Tenants Association and a longtime resident, cited discrepancies between renovated apartments rented at market value and Section 8 units – such as wood floors and new appliances compared with tile floors and older fixtures – as a form of discrimination.

“Because we’re Section 8, they feel we don’t deserve upgrades,” she said.

Barksdale also said that management put money toward improving the appearance of the buildings while ignoring issues within units.

According to Eisenberg, the changes went far beyond cosmetics. Urban American has made tens of millions of dollars in improvements to elevators, plumbing and security systems since it purchased the properties two years ago, and improved the quality of life for residents.

The City Council passed the Tenant Protection Act in 2008 to protect tenants from prolonged harassment. The legislation “creates a violation for harassment in and of itself, providing a new layer of protection for renters in New York City,” according to a March 2008 news release from the office of City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn. Yet according to Powell, the legislation’s effectiveness was mitigated by challenges to the statutes from landlords.

“The Tenant Protection Act’s potential has not been realized,” he said.

Affordable Housing Today: Losses and Gains

As affordable housing dwindles, many residents fear that losing their apartments will force them to leave their neighborhood.

More than 65,000 units of Mitchell-Lama housing were lost throughout the city, according to Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stinger’s Web site. New affordable housing is being created, but slowly. On Nov. 4, the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal announced that $7.75 million in federal stimulus funding is slated for the East Harlem Media, Entertainment and Cultural Center. The center will provide 49 units to low-income individuals and people with physical disabilities.

Around 2,000 vacant housing units are available in East Harlem based on 2007 American Community Survey data. MetroNorth contains 103 apartments available for rent, according to an annual report from the Mitchell-Lama Housing Corporation.

What is considered affordable and how many such units are available are often vaguely defined. “There’s no such thing as affordable housing, there’s housing affordable to people at specific incomes,” said Shultz.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Income Limits set the affordability benchmark. “Low income” is considered $61,450 per year for a family of four in Manhattan. Yet low-income housing is not monolithic. For a family of four, “very low income” slightly exceeds $38,000 a year. The median family income in East Harlem is $34,700, according to the 2007 American Community Survey. At $1,250 and $1,525 a month for MetroNorth studios and one-bedrooms, respectively, units are unattainable for many longtime residents.

Availability isn’t the only issue. While current tenants can stay where they’re at, buildings hesitate to accept new Section 8 tenants.

“The larger problem is that voucher goes with them and the unit becomes market rate,” said UPACA Tenants Association President Alvin Johnson.

Yet Shultz suggested that vouchers are a viable solution. Referring to Section 8 tenants, he said, “Despite claims of harassment, they are more protected than most tenants are and substantially less vulnerable.”

Solutions

“It’s time that we stop treating housing for low-income communities as a tradable commodity for the benefit of people who own and start treating it as a basic right,” said Diego Quinones, an advocate against gentrification in East Harlem.

Some advocates suggested returning the buildings retroactively to Mitchell-Lama. A proposed housing bill in the state Senate named for Democratic Sen. Andrea Stewart-Cousins, whose district covers Greenburgh, Mount Pleasant and Yonkers, would put all former Mitchell-Lama buildings into rent stabilization.

Yet Shultz cautioned that if housing were made affordable indefinitely, the city could end up with less money and fewer units.

“Is that a trade-off you’re willing to make? I’m not even sure what the right answer is. If I predicted what New York City would need in housing today 30 years ago, I would’ve gotten it completely wrong.”

For now, Myra Santana remains in her apartment, where she hopes to stay.

The answer to the housing difficulties, according to the tenant association’s Barksdale is plain and simple.

“Fix the place. Treat us equally.”

His students watched closely from their seats on the floor of the school’s central hall, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel I. Klein stood near the improvised stage. It was Oct. 28, three days before Halloween, and the lectern was flanked by two “Pumpkin πs” – jack-o-lanterns carved with the famous mathematical symbol.

“First of all,” began the principal, before stepping forward and thrusting the silver trophy aloft. “Yeah!”

Principal Kenneth Baum raises the trophy after being presented with the Intel Schools of Distinction Award. Photo: Sasha Chavkin

From their makeshift seats, the students responded with a burst of laughter and then cheers. The Urban Assembly School for Applied Math and Science had just won the Intel Schools of Distinction Award for its innovative teaching of mathematics, one of six schools in the nation selected for the prestigious prize.

The school seemed an unlikely candidate for the honor. The 6-year-old public school is located in Morrisania in the South Bronx, one of the country’s poorest neighborhoods. The area’s students got their biggest headlines recently, when a 15-year-old girl was struck by a stray gunshot fired by a 16-year-old boy. Between 81 and 90 percent of Urban Assembly’s students come from families receiving public assistance, with 94 percent eligible for free or reduced-price lunch, according to 2008 data from the New York City Department of Education.

Chancellor Klein called the improbable honor proof that the Bloomberg Administration’s policy of creating new small schools was working. Urban Assembly admits less than 100 students per grade, and according to a June 2009 report by the New School, it is one of 200 new small schools opened under Klein’s tenure since 2002.

“It’s so clear to me these schools are effectively creating options in places where there are very few options,” Klein said following the awards ceremony.

The chancellor’s embrace of small schools like Urban Assembly in Morrisania – one of 22 Urban Assembly schools, each with its own theme – indicated a dramatically different phase for a vision that began as a radical grassroots movement. The idea of creating small schools was first championed by leftist educators and community activists, who envisioned these schools as hubs for social change in poor communities. Mayor Bloomberg seized upon this idea in 2002, when he first took office and placed educational reform at the heart of his legacy.

As small schools have sprouted up across the city, some activists say that the movement’s original ethic of innovation and empowerment has been lost. Roughly 58,000 of the city’s 300,000 high school students now attend small schools, according to a report by the New School.

“The bureaucratic proliferation of small schools feels more like a management strategy,” said Michelle Fine, a Distinguished Professor of Urban Education at the City University of New York and longtime small schools supporter.

Advocates such as Fine doubt that a citywide decision to establish small schools can produce the sense of community that she said is essential in order for these schools to succeed.

Fine’s misgivings point to a broader concern: whether Urban Assembly represents a model of the small schools initiative, or an exceptional case trumpeted by the chancellor to mask a policy that has lost its moorings.

Bringing Math to Morrisania

In a 10th grade Alegebra II section at Urban Assembly, teacher Tim Jones taught his class about piecewise linear functions.

“As you know, I am Senator Jones,” he said. “You are my advisers and you need to tell me which is the best tax policy.”

The class was split up into two rows, preparing to face each another in debate. One group advocated a flat tax, an unchanging linear function, while the other promoted a progressive tax, a piecewise function for which the formula changed in each tax bracket. To get points in the debate, students had to back up their claims with references to graphs handed out by the teacher.

The students’ arguments were longer on social policy than on algebra. “The money from the rich can be used to help the poor,” said one student on the progressive side.

Still, Jones kept bringing them back to the graphs.

Assistant Principal David Krulwich said that the approach showed the school’s broader strategy for teaching seemingly abstract concepts such as piecewise functions.

“This is a really boring topic that no one wants to learn,” said Krulwich. “But tax policy debate is what makes it interesting too. To teach kids to think about a graph and make a logical argument based on it, we would argue, is much more important than learning to manipulate variables.”

The school has introduced a number of these types of innovations to spark students’ interest in mathematics. The key program is the school’s unique, internally developed curriculum that pairs math with a more traditional liberal arts subject such as architecture or social justice. This allows the students to think of math outside of its usual confines of equations and graphs and to see how it’s applied to real world settings.

The school has also adopted block scheduling to allow math to be taught in 102-minute periods. These longer classes provide laboratory-style lesson plans with more time for hands-on learning.

“We get to do activities to help you understand the math,” said 7th grader Iliana Lopez, 12, at the Intel award ceremony. “As you hear it, you can also visualize it.”

In addition, the school tries to build its community by sending teachers on home visits to the families of all incoming students.

Recent test scores and city assessments have shown that Urban Assembly’s approach seems to be working. Roughly 82 percent of its students scored at or above grade level in math, with 92 percent of parents attending parent-teacher nights, according to the Intel Foundation. The school’s most recent assessment from the New York City Department of Education also cited “a dynamic and talented principal,” “hard-working and fully committed” teachers, and a “challenging and stimulating” curriculum.

In Tim Jones’ algebra class, he stopped his students on several occasions as they tried to interrupt each other in the tax policy debate. The material seemed to have captured their interest – even if the enthusiasm was not devoted just to piecewise linear functions.

The Small Schools Movement

In New York City, the movement for small public schools first picked up steam in the 1990s. The campaign, said CUNY’s Michelle Fine, was a grassroots effort driven by parents, educators and community groups who wanted to promote equal opportunity and civic engagement in poor neighborhoods.

Deborah Meier, who created a network of small schools in East Harlem and was a founding figure in the movement, emphasized that school size was a means to creating communities where teachers can learn from experience and develop new practices accordingly. “Small schools give teachers the opportunity to use their minds,” said Meier.

As small progressive schools reached a critical mass in New York, the idea caught the eye of a new mayor, Michael R. Bloomberg, who had pledged to apply the management acumen that earned him billions in the corporate world to improving city government. In 2002, Bloomberg won mayoral control of the schools and launched a sweeping initiative to open new small schools to replace failing high schools. The campaign was backed by outside funders, including the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The foundation has since contributed more than $78 million to the program.

For many of the movement’s initial backers, the victory was bittersweet. The centralized initiative seemed to undermine the spirit of local empowerment that their movement had advocated.

“Somehow Bloomberg and friends and Gates took small as though it were the point rather than a vehicle,” said Fine.

The Urban Assembly School in Morrisania was founded as part of the wave of new schools launched by Bloomberg and supported by the Gates Foundation, in a program called the New Century High School Initiative. Serving in his first job as a principal, Baum has led the school since it opened its doors in 2004.

Baum is a strong believer in the virtues of small schools. He said that the current system has not inhibited him from developing a creative curriculum.

“This award by Intel is outside recognition that not only are we doing things that are innovative, those things are working,” he said.

So far, the data has suggested that small schools have been getting results. An Oct. 2007 report prepared on behalf of New Century Initiative Schools found that the small schools graduated students 78 percent of the time, 17 percent more often than comparable larger schools. New Century schools also graduated students on time at a 20 percent higher clip than city high schools generally, at 78 percent rather than 58 percent.

But questions about their sustainability and their mission remain unresolved.

“A lot of the new small schools have been sort of splashed together without the critical elements of having educators and parents shaping and owning the school,” said Fine.

A 2006 report by the New York Immigration Coalition and Advocates for Children also found that small schools were not providing equitable access to English Language Learners or legally mandated bilingual services.

As the debate on small schools continues, the Department of Education is forging ahead. Department spokeswoman Ann Forte said that all 13 high schools that the city opened in 2009 were small schools. At the Intel award celebration, Chancellor Klein vowed to expand the program during Mayor Bloomberg’s third term.

“There is no question in my mind that it has improved graduation rates,” said Klein. “We are going to continue to create small, rigorous schools.”

“It’s just a mess,” said Evelyn Curry, 75, a retired social worker who has lived in the neighborhood since 1971.

Agnes Johnson (left), a Highbridge resident, and Nadine Foster (right), the principal of Public School 126, have a discussion after the public hearing at P.S. 126 on Dec. 8, 2009. Photo: Delphine Reuter.

The city’s proposal is aimed at making all 10-year-olds start middle school on the same level. In Highbridge, there is no middle school and only one K-6, Public School 126, which will be truncated to a K-5 if the proposal is approved. About 125 children will be sixth-graders next September, according to the principal, Nadine Foster. She added that the pupils would have to travel outside the neighborhood for their next classes. Anxious parents say bullying and other problems are likely to occur on these long trips.

“I’m not ready for my 9-year-old granddaughter to take the bus by herself,” said Yvonne Montague, a 47–year-old nurse and Highbridge resident whose grandchildren attend P.S. 126.

Montague and Curry were among about 150 people who attended a public hearing at the school on Dec. 8. Community leaders, parents, pupils and residents asked Dolores Esposito, the community district superintendent, to convert the school into a K-8.

“This would be a wonderful opportunity for the kids,” said Foster.

It would also go against the standardization wanted by the education department.
But the Highbridge community is growing. Even though a new middle school is slated to open in 2013, it will only offer 389 seats when 2,000 are needed, said Chauncey Young, a community activist who volunteers for United Parents of Highbridge.

“Having a K-8 would give more space,” Young said. “P.S. 126, as a K-6, has always been a refuge for kids who would otherwise have to travel outside the neighborhood.”

Highbridge is bordered by the Cross Bronx Expressway to the north and the Grand Concourse on its eastern side. The pupils cannot reach their schools outside the neighborhood without taking the bus. The impact assessment made by the education department for the K-5 proposal concluded that middle schools like the Science and Technology Academy, three blocks east from the Grand Concourse, should be able to host Highbridge sixth-graders.

Some residents parallel the decision to reduce P.S. 126 activities to the general lack of resources in Highbridge: a year and a half ago, the public library was closed, and it has been years since they could walk to the post office or to a bank. Today, they need to drive there.

Agnes Johnson, a teacher and activist who used to live in Harlem, said the clock was ticking and the community had to work as one.

“You have to tell the people: ‘We cannot afford to live like this anymore,’” she said. “The community has to make their issues a priority for politicians, and not an afterthought.”

Nancy Santiago, parent coordinator at P.S. 126, said the school’s principal could be trusted to raise people’s awareness about the proposal, especially since the fight to get a new middle school has gathered a lot of interest over the past years.

“People are here even if they don’t fully understand,” said Santiago.

Ted Garcia, president of the Community Education Council of District 9, which comprises Highbridge, is confident that people will oppose the city’s proposal with their own.

“If parents don’t stand up for their kids and their rights, the city will do what they want,” he said. “And parents are organizing right now.”

The city’s decision will be made public on Dec.17.

“I saw how many people came to help the family. They didn’t care about their religion, where they came from or what their name was,” said Bourema Niambele, 47, who was a political activist in his homeland.

Niambele, who left Mali in 1998 and has been living in the Bronx ever since, was then volunteering for the High Council of Malians, an association that promotes Africans’ rights and businesses in New York City. After the fire, he organized a news conference that brought together local officials, the police, firefighters and the rest of the community.

Naby – Life of a Bronx activist from Delphine Reuter on Vimeo.

Today, Niambele, aka Naby by his friends, sees that the role he took on then has expanded, since he will be part of the Bronx borough president office’s new African Advisory Council. The council will meet monthly with representatives from the borough president’s office to discuss West Africans’ issues including immigration rights, education, and unemployment. In total, 27 African immigrants from 16 different countries will volunteer for the council, which Niambele will coordinate. He said one of his priorities is to get an African on each of the 12 community boards in the Bronx.

Ololade Toba LaCrown, the vice chairman of the council, agreed more political representation is needed. “We’re not saying we’re not black, we are black; but the difference is that we have language issues, we have different clothes, etc. People need to know that,” said LaCrown, a 37-year-old U.S. Air Force veteran originally from Nigeria, who owns a recruitment company for people based in Africa.

According to the Bronx borough president, the creation of the council is recognition of the growing political importance of West Africans in the borough, which is mainly populated by Hispanics (45.8 percent) and African-Americans (33.8 percent), according to the 2006-2008 American Community Survey.

“There are 1.4 million people in this borough, and that includes the Africans that have chosen the Bronx to be their home,” said Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr.

According to U.S. Census data, the number of Africans living in the borough has grown 66 percent from 36,361 in 2000 to 55,000 in 2007. LaCrown said the 2010 Census would better capture this reality. But many Africans fear this government-sponsored initiative would put their immigration status at risk. Niambele, betting on people’s trust, said he wants at least 70% of Bronx Africans to be counted.

“If I go tell people why it is important, maybe people will do it because ‘Naby said so,’” he said.

Activism as a way of life

Niambele became an activist when he left his homeland to study in Ivory Coast. In 1977, at 15, he was elected to head a secret student organization opposed to the government. Seven years later, he joined a more radical organization, Front Populaire Ivoirien, a grassroots association devoted to creating a democracy in the country. He started wearing fake mustaches or glasses to move around discreetly. He quit law school three years later, in 1987, and traveled frequently between Ivory Coast, Mali and Burkina Faso on behalf of the FPI. In 1988, he got married but kept hiding to pursue his political activities. His first son was born in 1991 in Mali, the same year it became a democracy. He moved to the U.S. in 1998 and started to send money to his family – his wife and son, a 4-year-old daughter, and newborn twins. Every year, he visits them for seven or eight weeks.

“The worst part of my life is for me not to be with them,” he said.

But, he said he would probably not be able to financially support them if they immigrated to the U.S. because his earnings have significantly diminished from a year ago. In 2007, after the house fire, he quit his job managing a car service company – where, on a good week, he could make as much as $3,000 – to work for his community. In 2008, he joined AmeriCorps, a national program that comprises community service projects across the U.S. As an AmeriCorps VISTA worker, Niambele is paid a little above poverty level – around $14,000 a year and cannot have any other earnings, according to Karen Talbot, state program specialist at AmeriCorps. He sends home about $6,000 a year to pay for his four kids’ private school education.

“Once they receive the money, it’s theirs to use,” said Talbot about AmeriCorps workers.

Niambele said he would rather not know how much his former colleagues earn so that he can concentrate on his grassroots activism without resenting his low salary.

The growing population brings tensions

“Naby” is known across the Bronx’s burgeoning African population. He usually wears a suit with two badges pinned to his jacket: “Peace On Earth” and AmeriCorps. Around his neck is a medal with the Twin Towers. He walks with a cane because of recent knee surgery and sports a leather cowboy hat, when other African Muslims prefer a traditional white cap. He is proud to say he has applied for U.S. citizenship.

Although he mainly works with the Highbridge Community Life Center in the southwest of the Bronx, where he has been living since 2007, he also reaches out to his community in other ways. During the past four months, he has worked more closely with police of from the 42nd and 44th precincts. In June, a few African immigrants were randomly assaulted on their way to a Claremont mosque, on Webster Avenue. Some of them were seriously wounded. The police set a temporary surveillance unit in front of the entrance.

Haja Hydara, a Gambian immigrant, cooking in her kitchen in Morrisania on Nov. 22, 2009. A bullet shot from the outside wounded her last June. Photo: Delphine Reuter.

The same month, a Gambian native, who has been living with her family in a housing complex on East 163rd Street in Morrisania for the past 11 years, was hit by a bullet shot through her kitchen window. Haja Hydara, 33, spent eight days in the hospital and came home with a patch on her left eye. Today, she can hardly open it. Hydara said she would rather not wander out of her apartment even to cross the street to buy groceries.

“I don’t like it here anymore,” she said, sitting in her living room with the curtains drawn.

When her husband, Dembo Jawara, was absent, she heard people knocking on her door and shouting she should go away.

“This is discrimination, because we are getting larger and we have to live with them,” said Jawara, 42, referring to other residents of the South Bronx.

Jawara said Niambele helped to bring the media’s and the borough president’s attention on the shooting. The police at 42nd Precinct are still investigating and so far have no suspect.

“I’ve been here since 1989 and never had problems,” Jawara said. “The only thing is that we need security.”

Nii Lante, 35, a construction contractor from Ghana who is Christian, said African Muslims are known for not being aggressive.

“They’re an easy target. They’re not running around carrying guns and stuff,” he said.

For Niambele, dissuading the attackers is only the start of a long campaign to improve living standards in the South Bronx.

“I think that my duty is to talk to everybody because these people are not just enemies of my community, but of all communities,” he said.

Clashes also happen within the African immigrant community.

Last August, Niambele mediated disputes at a mosque on Southern Boulevard, not far from the Cross Bronx Expressway. Tribal tensions forced a Muslim congregation to split, leaving its imam, Mohammed Sefou, with the task of creating another mosque. He said about 30 people gather every day for the 5 p.m. prayer at the new mosque, which opened on Nov. 8 and is located two blocks away from the other one.

“We have so many projects to achieve,” said Bawa Abrourazakou, a member of the new mosque. He has known Niambele since the 2007 blaze. “Naby can help us because we saw him helping so many people before.”

The family center, his own project

In the future, Niambele will have to juggle between his duties for different organizations.

Niambele lives on the house to the left. It is the same building that partially burned in 2007 and where ten Malians were killed. Photo: Delphine Reuter.

In Highbridge, he plans to create a family center to offer language classes and after-school programs to Africans. According to Nurah Amat’ullah, executive director of the Muslim Women Institute for Research and Development, based in Highbridge, more and more immigrants who now move to the U.S. never lived in their capital cities and only speak their mother language. Once here, they struggle to fit in their new neighborhoods.

“This can be very traumatizing,” said Amat’ullah, 46, whose own origins are in Trinidad and Tobago.

Niambele credits the idea of the family center to Moussa Magassa, a Malian immigrant who lost five children in the 2007 fire. Today, Magassa’s family and Niambele share the same house that was partially burnt. There, after his long days, Niambele plays the balafon, a Malian xylophone, or reads books on politics.

“I’m just this African guy who happened to do a lot in his life,” he said.

When Fowler shuts his heavy, windowless door and turns to administrative tasks, the sight is still not pretty. Donations and other revenue fell far enough to put Neighbors Together in the red this past summer for the first time since 2001, even as the 27-year-old group is serving more meals than ever.

New York City residents wait for doors to open at the city Human Resources Administration office in Williamsburg. Local applicants for food stamps must come the office to submit a finger image. Photo: Ryan Tracy

Yet those same applicants must still travel to an HRA office before receiving their grocery money, namely because New York City is one of a few places in the U.S. where food stamp applicants have to submit a digital finger image in order to be approved. The city’s requirement, in place since 1996, remains even though New York state dropped its finger imaging system in late 2007.

Anti-hunger advocates credited Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s administration for its efforts, including partnerships like the one with Neighbors Together, to expand access to food stamp benefits to more people than at any time since the mid-1990s. Still, even as Fowler and other anti-hunger advocates help the city expand its food stamp outreach, many are dumbfounded by the city’s stance on finger imaging, particularly as citywide unemployment has risen above 10 percent and pantries and soup kitchens have been catering to longer lines.

“The fact that we have titans of Wall Street making out like bandits and we are still fingerprinting people in New York City to receive food stamps is absurd,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York Coalition Against Hunger, an advocacy group for emergency food organizations. Today New York City is one of four places in the U.S. where finger imaging is required to receive food stamps.

Though debate over finger imaging is not new, Berg and other advocates argued that recent stress on local emergency food programs has underscored the importance of quick access to federally-funded food benefits. If more at-risk people receive a monthly federal stipend to buy groceries, anti-hunger advocates say, soup kitchens and pantries can further stretch their resources.

“I don’t have to worry about a soup kitchen. You don’t have to be in a certain place at a certain time,” said Tom Vig, a 42-year-old former stadium concession worker, said when asked about his food stamps outside HRA’s office on Thornton Street in Williamsburg.

A survey conducted this past spring by the Food Bank for New York City found 90 percent of the city’s pantries and soup kitchens reported an increase in demand in 2008. In Bedford-Stuyvesant, where the U.S. Census Bureau estimated there were already more than 11,000 households receiving food stamps as of 2007, emergency food providers said they had seen larger crowds.

“I don’t run out of food, but I find myself putting less in the bag,” said Olivia High, food program coordinator for Union Baptist Church on Decatur Street. Neighbors Together, according to Fowler, served more than 104,000 meals between July 2008 and June 2009 compared with about 90,000 during the previous one-year period.

Finger imaging was designed to reduce fraud and save money by preventing food stamp applicants from receiving benefits under more than one name. The practice was implemented in eight states by 1999, but it has fallen out of favor as some academic studies have concluded that it deters people from signing up for the program. Today, finger imaging remains a requirement in New York City, Texas, California, and Arizona.

In New York City, where about $253 million worth of benefits from the federal food stamp program reached nearly than 1.6 million people in September 2009 alone, even a small deterring effect could leave thousands of people without a monthly stipend for groceries purchased at local markets.

Those who make it their mission to feed New York City’s hungry, however, have not been able to draw on a grassroots push to remove the finger imaging requirement. In fact, many people who received food stamps said they understood why a finger image was necessary.

“There’s so many people that know so many schemes,” said Darryl Jones, 30, who worked counted inventory at various stores before joining the ranks of the unemployed.

Cinthia Garcia, 18, said she and her 2-year-old daughter needed food stamp benefits because her job with a company that transports disabled people does not pay well enough. “I don’t have nothing that would make me feel guilty about it,” Garcia said of the finger-imaging requirement as she waited to apply for food stamps at the HRA office near Broadway and Flushing Avenue in Williamsburg.

Another 18-year-old applicant, Jade Cruz, was surprised when told of the food stamp requirement, saying, “I don’t think that’s necessary, it’s not like we committed a crime or something.” Yet Cruz, who is unemployed, said she would submit an image of her finger if it meant receiving the “Electronic Benefit Card” that eligible applicants can use to buy food each month. Among households in New York City that received food stamps, the average monthly food stamp benefit was $293, according to the most recently available statistics from the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance.

While no study has specifically evaluated the costs and benefits of New York City’s finger imaging program, local anti-hunger advocates insisted that it had deterred applicants.

Fowler attributed the apathetic comments from some food stamp recipients to their experience with government welfare programs. People with that experience “are so used to being poked and prodded in the system that it’s like, ‘Oh whatever,’” Fowler said. “The difficulty is the other 40 percent of people eligible for food stamps who are not applying.”

“There are people who are working, where having the couple of hundred dollars they are eligible for under food stamps could really help their family,” Fowler said. “Those people are not going to waste their time going to a food stamp office to get fingerprinted. They may be affronted by that.”

Meanwhile, opponents of finger imaging said, the city catches relatively few cases of fraudulent food stamp applications. In 2006, the city used finger imaging to detect 31 cases of fraud, HRA Commissioner Robert Doar told a City Council committee the following year.

In City Council hearings this year, Doar continued to maintain that the finger-imaging requirement deters fraud and identifies people receiving double benefits even when it does not catch outright fraud. “Finger imaging is a simple process that saves valuable taxpayer dollars,” Doar told the City Council’s General Welfare Committee on Nov. 24. A spokeswoman for HRA referred questions for this story to the organization’s Web site.

Uphill battle

The recent push from city officials and anti-hunger advocates to increase access to food stamps comes partly in response to the policies of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, whose administration oversaw a significant drop in participation. During Giuliani’s tenure, between December 1994 and December 2001, participation in the program decreased from 1.45 million people to 798,000, a 45 percent reduction, according to a January 2008 report from the city’s Independent Budget Office. The office attributed the decline to improving economic conditions and policies that made food stamps harder to access.

Bloomberg has successfully reversed that trend at the urging of nonprofit organizations, advocacy groups and politicians. The city has extended hours at HRA offices to accommodate more food stamp applicants and rolled out additional locations where New Yorkers can submit applications for food stamps and Medicaid, including Bedford-Stuyvesant’s Neighbors Together. The city also sent Medicaid recipients a letter this year informing them that they might also be eligible for food stamps, a more proactive step than might have been expected in the past.

Advocates say this progress, while noteworthy, leaves room for improvement.

Even after the city’s recent increase in participation, 26 states exceeded New York state’s participation rate in the federal food stamp program, which is known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, in 2007, according to the most recently available statistics from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which oversees the program. The USDA estimated the participation rate among New York state residents eligible for food stamps was between 59 and 64 percent – below the national average, which was estimated to be between 65 percent and 67 percent.

“There are more people on food stamps now in New York City than there were before,” said William Ayers, executive director of New York City-based nonprofit group WHY Hunger. “But when you consider the new amount of poor people. We haven’t caught up with the food demand.”

As the manager of the high-end boutique Slope Jeans on Garfield Place in Park Slope, Stoykova caters to clientele with cash to spend, people who don’t flinch dropping $200 on a pair of jeans.

Slope Jeans was targeted by an armed robber on Nov. 12. Photo: Lauren Sausser

But that peaceful scene was shattered when Stoykova, working at the store on Nov. 12, was targeted by a gunman.

“He pretended to be a customer,” Stoykova said. “He said not to press any buttons or try something clever.”

She opened the cash register and handed over the merchandise he demanded.

The man, wearing a green jacket and a hat, took off with $200 and more than $1,500 of clothes, including several pairs of designer jeans and a leather jacket.

“I was terrified after he left. While he was in here I wasn’t really thinking, I just wanted him to get out,” she said. “The detectives come in almost every day with pictures. They are still trying to find him.”

***

By most accounts, Park Slope is a safe neighborhood. Its statistics show that it is the second-safest precinct in Brooklyn, the borough with the second-highest crime rate in the city. But a rash of armed robberies in the past month has set off shock waves in the community, making local store owners fearful that their businesses may be targeted next.

Mitch Spizek, president of the Park Slope Chamber of Commerce and owner of Little Things toy store, remained calm amid chaos as technicians worked to install security cameras and phone lines throughout the shop before Thanksgiving. Pre-holiday customers flooded the small store on Seventh Avenue, possibly portending strong December sales.

Spizek, a retired lieutenant of the New York Police Department, is keenly aware that desperate economic times can drive would-be thieves to take desperate measures. Before Thanksgiving, he organized a meeting with an officer from the 78th Precinct to offer tips to local business owners on how to better protect themselves from crime.

“Incidents are going to happen wherever you are. If you live in a city, something can happen. What we’re trying do is share information,” said Spizek, who decided to install the cameras after three armed robberies occurred in Park Slope within one month, including the robbery at Slope Jeans. “It’s something that I wanted to do anyway and this just solidified the fact that I wanted safety and security and I wanted to nip that in the bud.”

Luckily for Stoykova, Slope Jeans had security cameras installed before the robbery. Police have not arrested a suspect, but have a clear image of the man they are searching for.

In an unrelated case, police arrested a suspect in the armed robbery of the McDonald’s on Fourth Avenue in Park Slope on Oct. 13. In that incident, police said Neb Morrow, wielding a .380-caliber handgun, entered the restaurant and demanded money.

After fleeing the premises, police wrestled Morrow, 41, to the pavement. The gun and $1,500 in stolen cash were confiscated.

Franchise owners declined to comment on the case. The manager of that location, who identified himself as Widnil, said, “It’s something that we dealt with and now we want to move on.”

A third man, who demanded cash at gun point at a Game Stop in Park Slope in early November, is still on the loose.

***

New York City is an extremely safe place to live, insists Eugene O’Donnell, a professor at the John Jay College of Media, Crime and Justice. In fact, he said it’s safer than many other smaller cities around the country.

“It’s not clear why crime has improved and nobody really knows for sure. It has something to do with better policing strategies, but that’s just part of it. More cops make the city safer, but now the department is shrinking and the city is still getting safer,” said O’Donnell, a former New York City policeman.

Gentrification has played a huge factor in reducing pockets of crime across the five boroughs, he said.

“There are higher real estate values and less people with lower incomes, and this is definitely connected to the crime being reduced. There used to be no-go areas that now have million-dollar condos,” he said. “New York City is palpably safe and it’s reflected in neighborhoods I go into where people wouldn’t have been on the street 20 years ago. You can’t even fathom how safe it is.”

Officers from the 78th Precinct and representatives from the Office of the Deputy Commissioner, Public Safety declined to comment for this article.

***

In light of the recent armed robberies, it is clear Park Slope is not crime free.. On Christmas Eve 2007, Park Slope resident and writer Douglas Rushkoff was mugged at knifepoint outside his brownstone. Before calling the police, both he and his wife, Barbara, blogged about the incident online.

“The deep, dark secret about Park Slope is that there’s tons of crime here,” Barbara Rushkoff wrote on her blog, “A Girl Grows in Brooklyn.” “According to the detectives … Manhattan is safe, but Brooklyn is decidedly not.”

The post set off a maelstrom of controversy from Park Slope residents who were concerned their property values would decrease and from residents throughout New York whose neighborhoods are much less safe.

Douglas Rushkoff, who included a description of the incident and the ensuing media frenzy that followed in his book, “Life Inc.,” published earlier this year, declined to be interviewed on the subject, but wrote in an e-mail message, “The mugging was more about gentrification and the neighbors’ reaction to bad publicity. I don’t have good data on crime in Park Slope, and don’t trust the data that is out there.”

But Louise Crawford, author of the hyper-local Park Slope blog “Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn,” agreed with both former police officers Spizek and O’Donnell that the crime statistics released by the local precinct appear accurate.

“They were just being honest,” Crawford said of the Rushkoffs. “It was a trauma. It was not a very pleasant experience and they got criticized for dissing the neighborhood and there were a lot comments. Invariably, in the age of blogging and commenting, anything you say someone is going to jump on your back.”

Park Slope is a relatively safe place to live, she said, but it is still part of the largest borough in the largest city in the country.

“I don’t feel particularly safe on any street in any city when it’s dark,” she said. “This is Brooklyn. It’s New York City. In Park Slope, we feel safer because there are always a lot of people out and about and that’s always gong to create the feeling of safety in numbers. But as a New Yorker, I tend to be very, very confident when I walk down the street. I’m very wary and very alert.”

But Sean O’Brien, assistant manager of Video Forum on Seventh Avenue, has no qualms about walking 20 minutes from Park Slope to his apartment in Crown Heights every night.

“I’ve never felt threatened here or run into anyone that made me feel nervous,” O’Brien said. “I know there are a lot of families here but there are also just a lot of people who have been here forever. It’s way more like a community then some of the other neighborhoods. I think that makes it feel safer.”

Marc Garstein, president of Warren Lewis Realty in Park Slope, is a longtime resident of the community. He said people move to the neighborhood because it has a reputation as being safe and family-friendly.

“We live in a big city and I think it’s relatively safe here,” Garstein said. “I have no idea if the statistics are accurate or not but back in the 70s it was a lot less safe. You wouldn’t go anywhere near Prospect Park unless you could get out by dark. Now, it’s just too expensive for there to be that much crime.”

Tucked away at 80 Pitt St., near Manhattan’s largest concentration of public housing buildings is Grand Street Settlement, a nonprofit, community-based organization that dates back to 1916. About a half-a-mile away at 197 East Broadway is the headquarters of Educational Alliance, a 120-year-old Jewish nonprofit organization that runs 49 programs at 30 locations. These institutions have been among the few safe havens for lower-income immigrants and their families in an increasingly gentrified neighborhood.

Headquarters of Educational Alliance. Photo: Shanthi Venkataraman

Spiraling rents and upscale boutiques tell the tale of a prosperous Lower East Side. Still, nearly 30 percent of the residents live below the poverty line, most of them are Chinese and Latino immigrants. With multimillion-dollar budgets, Grand Street Settlement and Educational Alliance reach out to tens of thousands of these residents, offering services ranging from early childhood and after-school programs to mental health counseling, legal services and senior care.

But sustaining these services is proving to be a challenge in this recession, with donations from foundations and donors dwindling. And many nonprofits fear that the worst is yet to come, with cuts in government funding adding to their woes.

“It is like the perfect storm. We cannot seem to catch a break,” said Allen Payne, director of development and public relations at Grand Street. The nonprofit services more than 10,000 clients on the Lower East Side and has an annual operating budget of $11 million, more than half of which is funded by government contracts.

The New York Senate on Dec. 2 approved a measure to reduce the state’s budget deficit by $2.8 billion. A week later, Gov. David A. Paterson announced that he had directed budget officials to begin reducing aid to local governments, education programs and nonprofit service providers. The move places a heavy burden on the budgets of these settlement houses, which rely significantly on government aid. Government contracts often run into several hundred thousand dollars and are therefore, harder to replace with contributions from other sources.

Nonprofits are starting to see almost all their funding options dry up, even as demand for services is on the rise. Until now, they have managed to power through a challenging funding environment by reducing staff, trimming employee benefits and cutting non-essential components of programs. But with an already stretched workforce, nonprofits may be forced to withdraw even core service offerings in the next wave of cuts.

The pressure on nonprofits has been building for quite sometime. In the past 16 months, Grand Street has lost a total of $2 million worth of previously budgeted funding. It has had to close programs such as L.E.S. Teens, an after-school program that lost government support. Two other youth programs run by Grand Street absorbed the 60 students enrolled in L.E.S. Teens. But the program’s employees were laid off because funding was tied to the government contract. Grand Street could not specify the number of employees affected.

The nonprofit also lost Lehman Brothers as a sponsor for its College and Career Discovery Program after the investment bank filed for bankruptcy in September 2008. Grand Street was able to plug the $50,000 hole with support from other foundations. It continues to run the program at three schools and has about 500 students.

Educational Alliance, which operates on an even larger scale with an annual budget that exceeds $30 million, also has been affected. Earlier this year, its city-sponsored child- care center, which served 119 children, lost funding to the tune of $114,000, a tenth of the program costs. The organization managed to absorb the cuts by taking fewer field trips and reducing kitchen staff. “We did our best to reduce less essential expenses that don’t diminish the classroom experience,” said Daniel Rosenthal, senior vice president, external affairs, at Educational Alliance. “But it’s not possible to absorb a cut of that size without effect.”

Other organizations have been similarly affected, according to an October 2009 survey conducted citywide by United Neighborhood Houses, an umbrella agency of 37 settlement houses and community organizations.

Since September 2008, the beginning of the recession, 90 percent of UNH members said foundation grants fell; 60 percent said government funding declined; and 55 percent said individual contributions had dropped. As a result of reduced resources, more than 75 percent of UNH members have laid off staff and delayed or reduced planned salary increases.

During the past 18 months, Educational Alliance has laid off 10 percent of its full-time workforce. Management and nonunion employees have been asked to forego raises. Benefits under the health plan have been reduced. Grand Street has tried to keep layoffs at a minimum and enforced two-week unpaid furloughs to limit staff costs.

Now nonprofits everywhere are bracing themselves for more reductions. Youth services, after-school programs and senior care are generally among the programs most vulnerable to cuts, as government spending on these programs is discretionary.

At Educational Alliance, the drug-counseling programs may also come under pressure. Addiction services are funded by the New York State Office of Alcohol and Substance Abuse, which faces an $18 million cut in the latest reduction measures.

At Grand Street, senior services programs are estimated to be most at risk, with a $41 million cut to government spending on health care and aging programs outside Medicaid. “The senior population are always among the first to go on the chopping block. They are a very vulnerable population,” said Payne of Grand Street.

Grand Street celebrated the fifth anniversary of its Baruch Elder Services Team program in 2008. Courtesy: Grand Street Settlement

More than 15 percent of the neighborhood’s population of 85,000 is older than 65, according to 2000 Census data. And with its location smack in the middle of a number of public housing projects, Grand Street serves a large, lower-income, elderly population.

In the past year, state funding for Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities, or NORC, has been cut three times, according to Miriam Colon, director of senior services at Grand Street. That has created pressures both on staff and on the quality of services Grand Street can offer.

As it is, the senior services center is short-staffed, with its four staffers serving the needs of more than 2,000 seniors. Most of their clients are Asian and Hispanic. Yet, there is just one part-time employee who speaks Chinese and she juggles work at three sites.

Colon fears that further cuts would limit the nonprofit’s ability to reach out to the older community, most of who have significant language barriers and live in isolation. “If we do not have adequate staffing there is a risk that someone will fall through the cracks,” said Colon.

Colon hopes that the day will not come when she has to turn people away. Earlier this year, the organization had to cut activities such as yoga and dance classes to contain costs. Some seniors who are aware of the funding difficulties are stepping up with their own contributions of a few dollars to keep popular classes going, even though they can just barely afford it.

But activities keep them busy. Maria Martinez, 83, spends almost all her day at the Baruch Elder Services Team center on Columbia Street, where she plays bingo in the afternoons and takes art classes. She also volunteers to help reach out to some of her homebound peers. “This is my life. I cannot stay without this program. It would be like burying me alive,” said Martinez, at the prospect of funding cuts.

But it seems that little can be done to preserve these programs if they lose more funding. Said Payne, “It is not like we could shave off some things around the edges, give one staff member more responsibility…we have tweaked that already. Everybody is really stretched.”

Deciding which programs to cut is no easy choice when demand for services is so overwhelming. According to Payne, the demand for Grand Street’s Single Stop services, which helps with unemployment claims, legal issues, filing tax returns and so on, has grown exponentially.

At Educational Alliance, 400 children are waitlisted for the Head Start program. The waiting period for the organization’s subsidized housing facility is seven years.

In a way, nonprofits always have been used to doing more with less. “We have always had more demand than our funding allowed for,” said Robin Bernstein, executive director at Educational Alliance.

Only now, these organizations risk turning away even their existing clientele.

Nonprofits now seem to be pinning their hopes on advocacy efforts in Albany. In the past year, United Neighborhood Houses has campaigned successfully on behalf of its members to restore spending to youth services and senior care programs. But according to Nancy Wackstein, its executive director, the advocacy efforts might not work this time around. “One of the reasons our advocacy efforts were successful was that the city was able to use federal stimulus money to make up for the gaps in its spending. That is not an option now,” she said.

Wackstein believes that nonprofits will have to make some hard decisions about whether they can afford to deliver the same quality of service for the funding they are likely to receive.
“I think a successful organization in these times will have to determine what is core and essential about their work, and be bold enough to shed what is not.”

Viau, 45, is a former investment banker turned math teacher, who has a knack for explaining bone-dry concepts like price ceilings by turning them into something worthy of the Facebook generation’s attention.

For the last eight years Viau has been making math easy for her students to understand, and the proof is in the percentages. Last year her advanced placement statistics class had a 91 percent passing rate, compared with the national rate of 59 percent. But the disparity in numbers is consistent with the school’s reputation.

Jane Viau explains advanced microeconomics to senior students at Frederick Douglass Academy. Photo: Stephanie Marcus

The school, located at 148th Street and Seventh Avenue, is a bright spot for the New York City public school system; a predominantly African-American student population, that boasts a 90 percent 4-year graduation rate. Compared with the 60.8 percent citywide graduation rate, Frederick Douglass seems to be doing something different with its emphasis on structure and discipline, mandated uniforms, and intense focus on college preparation.

The other part of its success comes from one of its 91 teachers like Viau, who has been raising money through grant writing to get her classes the materials they need. In the past year Viau has raised nearly $25,000 to buy textbooks and fund field trips for her classes.

This year, Viau is teaching advanced microeconomics, a new course for both her and the school. The students wanted to be able to understand what was going on in the economy and get college credit at the same time. With an M.B.A. from the Leonard N. Stern School at New York University, and a 16-year career in real estate management and investment banking, Viau was a perfect candidate to teach the class.

In the spring before the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, the glamour of finance had faded. Viau did what very few ever do; she left Wall Street. Leaving Merrill Lynch to fundraise for AIDS research was her first attempt at a meaningful professional life. The terrorist attacks, she said, only helped her realize that she made the right decision.

But for Viau, fundraising felt more like writing a check. Eager to feel like she was doing more, she allowed fate to intervene. That meant seeing a subway ad for the NYC Teaching Fellows, which was seeking candidates for math positions.

“I thought, oh my god, I could teach math, because I love math,” she said. “So then my goal was to go and teach where they really have a dearth of good teachers.”

Jane Viau’s Microeconomics class from Stephanie Marcus on Vimeo.

She told herself that if she were going to take an even further pay cut, then she would really make it worth it. A fitting decision since the program is aimed at training teachers to place in hard-to-staff schools. Through the program she was certified to teach high school mathematics and received her Master of Education from City University of New York.

Viau’s first placement embodied the reality of what a hard-to-staff school really meant. She requested a transfer, citing safety concerns when a student threw a desk at her, and the administration asked her what she had done to provoke the student.

“I literally didn’t know what to do. Learning was not happening there. It was complete chaos. It was babysitting and it was a bad situation.”

Initially, her request was rejected, but through sheer luck and timing a position quickly opened up at her current school.

Frederick Douglass Academy’s demographics, she said, are the same as her previous school; predominantly African-American and from low-income families. “It’s not like the kids are any different than the kids at the other school. But the difference is that they know there is a ladder of command, and they know there are consequences if they don’t behave.”

Dr. Gregory Hodge is at the top of that ladder, as the school’s principal, where he’s been for the last 14 of his 33-year long career as an educator. Hodge seems to know how to make his school function. With budget cutbacks that means he’s acting as secretary; answering his own phone calls, e-mails, and letters that are piling high in his office. This saves the school $25,000 a year. This is also the first year he is teaching two senior classes where he is focusing on how to properly write college research papers.

“We are short on funds, what can I tell you?” he said. “It has been a very interesting economic year, but this is Frederick Douglass and without struggle there is no progress, so we keep stepping.”

Hodge sees no reason why his 1600 students shouldn’t have the same education as those who attend a private school. That means the school offers students the opportunities to study Japanese, Latin, music and dance. It also means hiring dedicated teachers, 76 percent of which have a Master’s degree or doctorate, and fostering their potential.

When Viau approached him last year with requests to teach advanced placement economics, he initially refused; the school didn’t have the funding. Hodge said that she was “borderline obsessive,” in trying to get the course up and running.

“She’s like a guard dog, very tenacious, very persistent, and you are not going to get past her,” he said, adding that he has faith the class will be a success.

Viau’s grant writing achievements fits very well with Hodge’s model for funding: donations. “We are basically an inner city school but we do tremendous things with getting like-minded people; hustling, borrowing, begging, pleading. But you got to believe in what you are doing,” he said.

Viau raised nearly $5,000 for textbooks for her economics class through the online charity Donors Choose. Her background in fundraising alerted her to the wealth of donors available and she isn’t shy about asking companies to pitch in. Viau said she is also quick to acknowledge them in writing; her class is constantly writing thank you notes, since a little gratitude can go a long way.

Viau, like the school, is an anomaly; she isn’t concerned with making money and she really cares about her students. Longtime friend Matt Blank, who worked with Viau for nine years at the start of her career at MetLife Inc., classified Viau as one of the hardest working people he has ever known, and said the amount of time she spends with her students shows her dedication.

While she makes maybe a tenth of her old salary, Viau still logs late hours, staying after school until 7 p.m. so students can have a quiet place to do their homework or ask for help; something that has not gone unnoticed.

Dalifet Hernandez, 17, is one of the school’s top students, but is struggling to understand economic concepts like elasticity. Hernandez said she really appreciates how available Viau makes herself to students.

“Most other teachers aren’t willing to help as much. It’s either you come right after class or before school, and some people have things they have to do before school so they don’t get the chance to get the help they need,” she said.

Come February, Viau will be spending even more time in the classroom; leading tutorials during spring break, and every Saturday to get her advanced placement students ready to ace their exams.

“Most of this extra time is voluntary,” said Jennifer Hodge, head of the school’s math department, who stressed that Viau isn’t compensated for her long hours doing whatever is necessary to help her students.

This level of commitment seems to be Viau’s trademark according to her former boss at Fitch IBCA. Janet Price worked with Viau for five years and funded several class field trips last year. Price said that Viau’s work ethic translates into her many levels of success.

“I have a lot of respect for her. If you could find a school and fill it with her as the staff, you would have a school that works,” she said.

Price isn’t the only one who thinks that. Students, like 17-year-old Thay Brown, who spends most days after school in her classroom, also recognize Viau’s dedication.

Brown said that he has adjusted to Viau’s heavy workload, and thinks her methods like the organ transplants example, seem to be working.

“She really cares about us. You can sense it. She’s not just doing it for the money. I mean she has a business degree; she can go and do whatever. Not a lot of teachers around here are like that,” Brown said.

And Brown’s sentiments towards Viau have been recognized by a number of organizations. Last June she won the 2009 NYC Teaching Fellows Award for Classroom Excellence, where she accepted the award accompanied by her students.

Viau may have left Wall Street, but like many bankers she still takes her work home. Recently she and her husband became certified foster parents so they can legally house a former student, who is a ward of the state. Over the winter break Viau will take on this new challenge by having the student, now an 18-year-old college freshman, living in her house. An extraordinary measure, but for Viau it’s just the right thing to do.

The streets are lined with sleepy one- and two-story houses, out of which an aging, longtime resident occasionally emerges to take out the trash. Continue on for another few blocks, and up on the left between two houses is a solid wooden fence about 8 feet high. Covered in graffiti, the fence encloses a plot of land – just visible through a gap – which is overgrown, and littered with trash. A makeshift black metal mailbox is bolted to the outside, overflowing with envelopes including a dozen letters from the New York City Environmental Control Board. Passersby can hear the grind of a construction site in the distance.

Construction sites are on hold all over the city. This one, on Brighton 5th Street, is supposed to be a four-story apartment building. Photo: David Kessel

This plot of land along Brighton Fourth Lane, designated 2952 Brighton Fifth St., is one of at least three stalled construction sites in Brighton Beach, according to the New York City Department of Buildings. These are construction projects that were started, but were, for one reason or another, put on hold. The neighborhood’s previously strong real estate market of a decade ago has petered out.

“It was like a California gold rush over here,” said Pat Singer, founder of the Brighton Neighborhood Association. “A Little Odessa gold rush. But now the gold rush has ended. The market’s gone down.”

The result is a real estate environment with prohibitively expensive condominiums and apartments, where tenants can no longer afford to move and some developers can no longer afford to build. To purchase a new condo in the area ranges from around $400,000 to over $1 million. Rent has gone sky high as well; even the government-subsidized, low-income housing under Section 8 can cost up to $1,400 for a two-bedroom apartment, or $1,100 for a one-bedroom, according to Singer. Developers say they cannot get the financing necessary to finish the projects. This leaves residents forced to live among vacant construction sites.

Pat Kessler, who with her husband has been running Kessler Real Estate in Brighton Beach since 1975, described the current environment as a “soft market.” There is simply little demand in the neighborhood for real estate.

The developer of 2952 Brighton Fifth St. knows this well. The address is currently classified as “vacant land,” according to the Buildings Department. The most recent certificate of occupancy for this property is stamped Feb. 18, 1959, when two families were living in the one-story house that stood there. Since then, this piece of property has passed through many hands and several phases of development.

In 2003, the Department of Buildings issued a work permit to Aaron Cheung to create a second floor extension. Later that year, it passed on to Ahmet Sangiray, who was issued the same permit. In September 2005, Carlos Surita, representing Surita Contracting, obtained a permit with the following work description: “full demolition – construction equipment – fence.” The contractors conformed to all 16 necessary codes prior to demolition, including rodent control, gas cut-off, and an asbestos report. Finally, in late September 2008, Yury Skalet, of Bais Contractors Inc., received a “new building” permit. The planned construction was to be a residential apartment, 11 dwellings in four stories, with a proposed start date of Sept. 26, 2008. So far, the only things erected have been a blue fence and a garden of weeds.

The construction site has now become not only an eyesore, but an environmental hazard as well. Since June 2008, there have been 14 complaints filed against the address, 2952 Brighton Fifth St. Almost every complaint in some way concerns the fence surrounding the property – part of it collapsed or protruding nails presented a safety hazard. The fence was insufficient. The site had become unsanitary, and people were allowing their dogs to get in. All complaints have been resolved, except for one active complaint, from Aug. 3, 2009, about a stalled construction site. During the five inspections since the complaint was filed, the dispositions read, “excavation deteriorating, no immediate threat” — until Oct.7, when they began to read, “emergency declaration filed.”

In 2009, there were two Department of Buildings violations and 14 Environmental Control Board violations filed against this address, all of which are still active. Most of the ECB violations are for inadequate housekeeping, or “failure to safeguard persons/property affected by construction.” The combined total penalty imposed for all these violations is $90,500. Under “status,” each ECB violation reads, “No compliance recorded.” A few of these violations list Yury Skalet as the respondent; he works for Bais Contractors, but doesn’t know anything about the property on Brighton 5th Street.

During years of inaction, stalled building construction can lead to environmental concerns, if not properly maintained. Photo: David Kessel

The neighbors do know something about the property, though. For people who live nearby, or come up against these sites on a daily basis, its presence is felt. “I think it’s nasty,” said Wilfedo Hernandez, an 18-year-old student at William E. Grady High School on Brighton Fourth Road. He passes this vacant lot twice a day, on his walk to and from school. “It looks unpresentable, unsanitary – people throw garbage in there, and they’ve been saying it’s a work in progress for years.”

Traditionally, construction permits had a shelf-life of one year from the date they were issued, or after work was suspended. If developers had suspended work for over two years, they may not have been able to reinstate their permit. In order to combat this, the city introduced legislation that will make it easier for these stalled construction projects to be restarted. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, and Department of Buildings Commissioner Robert D. LiMandri developed the new legislation, which was signed into law in October 2009. Participating developers will now be required to notify the Buildings Department when work stalls and develop a detailed safety monitoring and inspection plan. In return, they will be able to renew building permits for up to four years, instead of starting over or going through the process of applying for a new permit.

“In every corner of our City, we can see the effect of the economic crisis in the stalled construction projects that are scattered throughout our neighborhoods,” said Quinn, in a June press release about the new legislation. “If these sites are not properly maintained, they can become safety hazards to residents and even havens of criminal activity. Our legislation is a real two-fer, in that it will allow us to have these sites maintained while construction is halted and to be ready to hit the ground running once the economy improves.”

This may be good news for the developers of another property, a stone’s throw from 2952 Brighton Fifth St. If you turn left from there onto Brighton Fourth Lane, and walk two blocks along a narrow path skirting houses on either side, you’ll come to another stalled building, but in a more advanced phase of construction. The building at 2952 Brighton 3rd St. is what Singer refers to as a “skeleton.” Another wooden fence encircles four floors — just the floors — with a strip of stone facade running down the center, the windows already cut out of it. It’s been that way for about two years now, according to Eugenia Iofe at Construction & Custom Remodeling Ltd. She said putting construction on hold is a matter of financing.

“Banks don’t give mortgages for construction anymore,” Iofe said. “We contracted with many banks. We worked with them as a construction company. We had good credit history. We knew everyone in the bank, like the underwriters, and had a good relationship with everybody. But now many of them have stopped giving construction mortgages altogether.”

For the time being, it appears as though these projects are going to stay as they are — an economic barometer in Brighton Beach, waiting for the market to improve.

It’s a typical morning at Alianza Dominicana, a community-based organization in Washington Heights that offers counseling and prevention education to people living with HIV and AIDS.

Nurse practitioner John Nelson works with HIV-infected teens at Project STAY, or Services to Assist Youth, in Harlem. Photo: Yaffi Spodek

Colon, 53, first discovered the haven on Amsterdam Avenue and West 176th Street while attending support groups for people infected with HIV. For the last decade, he has worked as a peer educator, administering free HIV tests and teaching about the dangers of unprotected sex. Each month, about 60 people are tested, while an outreach team travels to parks and street corners, handing out hundreds of safe sex kits each week.

“I wanted to help these kids because nobody was there to educate me when I was their age,” Colon said.

Colon learned that he was HIV positive years ago, but his healthy appearance belies his condition. Thanks to medication, he is able to enjoy a normal life. But others aren’t so lucky.

HIV, or human immunodeficiency virus, is a debilitating disease that infects people of all ages and backgrounds, and members of the Latino population in particular.

Hispanics comprised 15 percent of the U.S. population in 2006, but accounted for 18 percent of the 37,331 AIDS/HIV diagnoses, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

A 2007 report by the city Department of Health and Mental Hygiene stated that 1,669 people, or about 46 percent, of the 3,621 residents in Washington Heights and Inwood who were living with AIDS and HIV were Hispanic. Hispanics also accounted for 89 of the 174 new cases of HIV diagnosed in that community, slightly more than half the total.

While sexual education and testing have been promoted in the Latino community in recent years, the number of people being diagnosed with HIV is increasing. As outreach efforts continue, health experts are expressing frustration regarding the discouraging statistics and the spread of the epidemic.

At New York-Presbyterian Hospital, more than 3,000 people –– about 60 percent of whom are Latino –– are tested annually by the Counseling and Testing Services Program, according to Paula Merricks-Lewis, the manager of the rapid testing program. About 25 people a year are identified as HIV positive, a figure that has remained consistent for 2006, 2007 and 2008. This year, however, the program already had 35 patients who tested positive.

“I suspect that might mean that more people who have been infected for years without realizing it are finally getting tested because of publicity about the availability of the rapid test and the fact that it is free,” said Dr. Karen Brudney, the director of the Infectious Diseases Clinic at New York-Presbyterian, emphasizing that she is a clinician and not an epidemiologist. She added that the city Department of Health has “made a major effort to ‘normalize’ HIV testing.”

However, resistance to testing is prevalent among Latina women, who harbor the misconception that age is a barrier to contracting HIV. Others, who may feel secure in monogamous relationships, are often infected by unfaithful spouses, observed Merricks-Lewis.

“You encounter women, in their 50s, 60s and 70s, who feel that they are not at risk and so they don’t get tested,” she said. “What’s been happening is that people are getting diagnosed later, and we are finding people who are not HIV positive anymore, but who have AIDS.”

A 2008 study in the International Journal of Aging and Human Development explored the knowledge of adult Latinos with HIV/AIDS. It found that approximately two-thirds of the population ascribed to at least one myth regarding viral transmission of the disease, for example via mosquito bites or using public toilets. Less than half were aware of age and gender specific risk factors.

Resistance also stems from stigma associated with the virus. Though HIV is no longer viewed as a terminal illness, women who test positive are stereotypically labeled as promiscuous, and men as homosexuals or bisexual drug users. Adolescents, who usually contract HIV through sex, are typically asymptomatic and can remain that way for years without the disease manifesting itself.

Jenny Perez, 18, knows firsthand about the resistance, which she says is borne primarily from ignorance. Since she was 16, Perez has worked at Alianza Dominicana, first as a volunteer educator and now as a member of its outreach team.

“Some kids just don’t know what’s out there, and they’re embarrassed to even take a condom from us,” she said. “Others know about HIV, but don’t realize that they can be tested right in the neighborhood.”

Anna Potter of Project STAY travels to schools and administers free HIV tests like OraQuick, a rapid oral test. Photo: Yaffi Spodek

Health experts highlighted a deeper problem. “There is a fear of being rejected, victimized, and emotionally and physically abused,” observed John Nelson, a nurse practitioner with Project STAY, or Services to Assist Youth, a Harlem-based organization providing counseling, testing and treatment to adolescents. “As long as they feel OK, they don’t feel the need to get tested.”

At the same time, people will knowingly engage in unprotected sex with partners who are HIV positive. In communities such as Washington Heights, Nelson noted, Latino adolescents suffer from low self-esteem due to racism, and view sex as a way to be more social. Many don’t envision their lives past age 30, believing that contracting HIV is insignificant, and can even be beneficial in terms of qualifying for government housing provided to poor people who develop AIDS.

“People don’t view it as a death sentence, especially when they have been living with it their whole lives,” Nelson explained.

Project STAY’s client intake has doubled since 2006, seeing a 5 to 10 percent increase each year. The organization now treats close to 70 people, about half of whom are Latinos from Washington Heights and the Bronx.

But while the number of cases rises, funding has remained the same, and Nelson says the staff and resources are feeling the crunch. Reflecting on more than a decade of experience working with youth infected with HIV, he believes that education, especially during the earlier formative years, is crucial.

“Abstinence is not the best policy because it’s not realistic,” Nelson said. “Our message needs to be directed to adolescents, teaching them self-esteem and to value their bodies.”

Others have different theories. Oscar Raul López, director of health policy for the New York-based Latino Commission on AIDS, maintains that part of the problem lies within the U.S. health care system. He says it is not culturally competent or able to address language barriers, particularly when dealing with an immigrant population.

“Latinos, many who are undocumented immigrants, are afraid of the system, and would rather wait until they’re deathly ill to see a doctor,” he said.

Two groups have experienced the largest increases in HIV diagnoses. Nationally, men who have sex with men account for only 4 percent of the population, but 53 percent of all HIV cases. A second group is young Latina women, who are often on the defensive in abusive relationships, says López.

“If their spouse or partner has HIV, women can’t advocate to protect themselves,” he said. “Women in general, and especially Latinos, tend to put children and spouses first, before their health.”

Joanna Pudil, a social worker for Project STAY, elaborated on this theme. “I can’t say for sure why the numbers are going up, but studies have looked at power within relationships,” she said. “Latino male partners have control over whether to use birth control or condoms. These women are afraid to stand up to them, usually older partners whose sexual history may not be known.”

Another factor in the rise of HIV cases can be attributed to a lack of sexual education.

“The Latino culture in general does not allow for open conversations about sex and drug use,” López said. “These are taboo topics. The kids hear about it, but don’t know how it’s spread… The numbers are worrisome.”

In response to the disproportionate statistics, López says the commission has shifted some of its outreach from education to encouraging people to get tested and be aware of their status, hoping to further reduce the spread of the disease, and hasten diagnosis and treatment for those who are positive.

According to López, Latinos usually get their AIDS diagnoses in hospital emergency rooms. “They are shaving almost 20 years off their life because they didn’t know they had it, or because they waited too long to start treatment,” he said.

On Dec. 4, the federal Office of National AIDS Policy hosted a community forum at the Alumni Auditorium of Columbia University Medical Center in Washington Heights, to help shape its national policy, which focuses on reducing new infections, increasing the number of people in care, and lowering HIV-related health disparities. The Latino Commission on AIDS chartered a bus to transport 50 clients to the meeting, where each person testified for a minute and a half, sharing their history of the disease.

“The Latino community needs to speak up to secure the proper funding and resources to address this issue,” López said, emphasizing that although progress has been made, there is more that needs to be done.

Nelson agreed. “It is frustrating,” he acknowledged. “We have come a little ways, but still have a ways to go.”