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Public Housing Residents Face Loss of Their Community Centers

Ishmael Sylle, 12, focusing on a chess game at Parkside Houses’ community center in the Bronx. After-school programs are popular.

 Marc Anthony Reyes, 10, left, and Andre Delgado, 9, worked on a computer.

 Children made Father’s Day cards.

An average of 200 people of all ages use the center daily at Parkside Houses, where girls recently walked an imaginary fashion runway.

The community center at Parkside Houses, a public housing complex in the Bronx, has one floor, four rooms and many uses.

Adults work on their résumés on one of 10 computers or play Scrabble on Friday nights. Teenagers congregate around the pool tables in the game room or train for competition as part of the Parkside Knights track and field team. But the center, on the ground floor of a red-brick building across from a wooded stretch of the Bronx River Parkway, is really a children’s place.

After school on Thursday, about a dozen children sat in the multipurpose room making Father’s Day cards out of construction paper and buttons while several boys and girls played chess and video games down the hall. They ate turkey and cheese sandwiches. They got help with their homework.

Andre and Giovani Delgado spend their afternoons at the center, waiting for their mother, Ruth Delgado, to pick them up at about 5:30 p.m. Ms. Delgado, a building custodian and single mother, said she trusted the staff and liked the price: $80 a year to enroll Andre, 9, and Giovani, 11, in the center’s after-school program.

But Ms. Delgado and other parents are worried about the fate of the center. The city’s public housing agency, the New York City Housing Authority, announced last month that budget problems could force it to close Parkside and hundreds of other community centers, senior centers and recreational, job-training and educational programs throughout the five boroughs.

Ms. Delgado said that she made $11.10 an hour and could not afford to hire a baby sitter. She would be left with one option if the center closed: “I’m going to have to get my oldest one a key so they can be home by themselves,” she said, shaking her head.

The proposed cuts would affect hundreds of thousands of children, adults and older people who live in the city’s 343 public housing complexes, as well as thousands of others who are not residents but regularly use the centers. The plan has outraged tenants, public housing advocates and City Council members, focusing renewed attention on the New York City Housing Authority’s budget shortfall and its financial dealings with the city.

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 Former Co-op City Board President Sentenced To Jail Time For Accepting Kickback Payments

MICHAEL J. GARCIA, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced that IRIS HERSKOWITZ BAEZ, the former President of the Board of Co-Op City in the Bronx, New York, was sentenced today for accepting approximately $10,000 in kickback payments in exchange for her assistance in steering a Co-Op City painting contract worth approximately $3.5 million.

BAEZ, 59, a resident of the Bronx, was sentenced by United States District Judge RICHARD J. SULLIVAN to six months’ imprisonment and one year of supervised release. In addition, BAEZ was ordered to forfeit $10,000. According to the Indictment filed in Manhattan federal court and statements made during BAEZ’s guilty plea and sentencing proceedings:

Co-Op City is a New York State Mitchell-Lama housing cooperative located in the Bronx, New York. As a Mitchell-Lama development, Co-Op City was established for the purpose of providing affordable housing for middle-income residents. To effectuate that purpose, Mitchell-Lama developments such as Co-Op City charge rents that are considerably lower than the rents that qualified residents would have to pay for comparable housing on the open market.

The New York City Housing Authority ( “NYCHA” ) is a New York City agency responsible for, among other things, supervising a Section 8 rental assistance program, which program is regulated and fully funded by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development ( “HUD” ). As part of the Section 8 Program, HUD pays subsidies, typically in the form of vouchers, for people to live in private housing.

Neither HUD nor NYCHA place any restriction on how Co- Op City can spend the federal subsidies. Accordingly, the housing cooperative was permitted to use the federal funds for capital improvements such as renovations to, and painting of, apartment units. New York State, however, imposes certain regulations on how Co-Op City may spend money on capital improvements, such as requiring — for any job in excess of $50,000 — that Co-Op City put the work out for bid, memorialize the agreement with the bid winner in a formal contract, and subject the contract to approval by the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal ( “DHCR” ), which regulates the housing development.

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The Rev. Louis Gigante, who helped rebuild neighborhoods destroyed by poverty and arson in the 1960s and ’70s.

Bronx Leader Leads New Generation To Become Leaders

The man who helped rebuild the Bronx from the ashes is passing a torch of a very different sort.

The Rev. Louis Gigante, who founded the South East Bronx Community Organization in 1968 as a wave of arson began sweeping through the borough, stepped down last week as head of the renowned nonprofit after nearly 40 years at the helm.

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Former President Clinton Supports Bloomberg — But Not Over Hillary

December 7th, 2007

While in the Bronx with Mayor Michael Bloomberg Friday to unveil a new initiative to make public housing more environmentally friendly, former President Bill Clinton lavished praise on the mayor but admitted that he wouldn’t like to see the mayor as one of his wife’s presidential rivals. NY1’s Rita Nissan filed the following report.

Mayor Bloomberg versus Hillary Clinton in a presidential contest is a match-up former President Bill Clinton says he hopes never comes to fruition.

“He’s been a really good mayor. What he does with the rest of his life, he’ll have to decide. I have the highest regard for him,” said the former president. “Obviously, I hope they never wind up being opponents just because I like him so much.”

Clinton and Bloomberg teamed up in the Bronx Friday to announce an initiative to make public housing more environmentally friendly. Clinton was quick to pile on the praise on the mayor.

“None of this would be possible without the leadership of Mayor Bloomberg,” said Clinton.
“I think he’s a good man and a great mayor and I think he’s also been a positive change agent.”

Bloomberg insists he’s going to focus on philanthropy when he leaves office, but many think he is also flirting with the idea of running for president as an Independent candidate.

At Friday’s event he leaned towards giving away his billions, with this remark to the former president.

“I’m glad to see after public service you can still make a big contribution. So in 754 days, I’ll have something to do,” said the mayor.

Whether there’s even room for an Independent candidate, Clinton - a master political strategizer – would not speculate.

“No one knows the answer to any of those questions until they happen,” said the former president.

What is happening right now is a fierce contest on the Democratic side, with Clinton talking up his wife’s credentials with the same adjective he used to describe the mayor.

“We need to make a new beginning and I just think she’s the most proven agent of positive change,” he said of his wife.

Saturday, President Clinton will be in South Carolina, perhaps to bring some star power to the campaign trail, because Barack Obama will be campaigning there this weekend with Oprah Winfrey.

SOURCE: NY1 Bronx

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