Recent happenings: We noticed last weekend that for the first time in many years the Westchester Square library display window was tagged. We went right back there at night and removed the graffiti, and I am happy to say that the library was also aware of it and had put in for it to be removed as well. This kind of behavior will not be tolerated, and we wanted to send a personal message to that effect by removing the graffiti right away.

Also, we had our holiday crafts workshop at the library this past Saturday. 55 kids attended, and we all had a fun time. Afterwards, we went over to the homeless shelter on St Peter’s Avenue to help out with Councilman Vacca’s Christmas party for the kids who live there. It was very nice, with Santa and his helpers, and we did crafts and facepainting. I must say here, that the kids were really great. They were patient and very sweet, and very friendly. After I painted a rainbow and a smiling cloud on her hands, one little girl of 4 took the rainbow paint cake and a sponge and painted my hands and even made a smiley cloud too. She really got into the paints and enjoyed watching us as we painted everyone’s face. She was so cute. The way their face lights up when they see how they look in the mirror is why we enjoy doing the kids’ activities. Their smiles are priceless.

These were our last events for 2011; all together we organized or participated in 17 events last year. Thank you to the loyal and intrepid WSZIO volunteers Woody, Tony, Stephanny, Ellen, Diana, Paul, Desiree, Katherine, Dorothy, Ricky, and Robbie who made our events so successful this year, and to our supporters and friends. We had a great year, and look forward to a better year coming up!

The winter holidays are my favorite time of year. I enjoy the glittery displays (you all know how much I LOVE glitter; Stephanny says I’m a magpie) and the beautiful lights, and the baking, and decorating, and the entertaining and spending time at home with family. It’s a gentle way to ease into the bleak, gray, cold days of the upcoming winter.

This year has been a very difficult one for a lot of people: so many are jobless or homeless. Money’s tight for most of us (we in the 99%, that is). No matter what your beliefs may be, I think we all can appreciate a time of kindness, cheer, warmth and compassion.

To all our friends and neighbors, we wish you a happy, warm, and loving Christmas, Kwanzaa, Hanukkah, and a healthy and prosperous New Year. May this be a year of peace and joy, and “God bless us, everyone.”

More rants to come in 2012, but for now: TTFN.

In a joint statement, issued by Stephen Kaufman, Esq. and Robert Swetnick, Esq., and their clients, merchants and residents of the Westchester Square community, it is announced that:

The Appellate Division First Department released an order today, entered on November 22, 2011,denying the City of New York’s motion for a stay and leave to appeal a lower court order dated May 18, 2011 in the case of Westchester Square v. the Department of Homeless Services, et. al.

The Certificate Denying Leave (see attached) was dated November 14, 2011.  It sought to appeal a decision of the lower court, which granted the Westchester Square community and the New York City Comptroller’s office (who intervened in the case) the right to perform discovery and subpoena witnesses in an Article 78 proceeding arising from the City’s placement of a homeless shelter in a building that was zoned and built as a residential housing complex.

The Appellate Division’s decision is seen as a major blow to the Bloomberg administration’s homeless policy, which has come under attack this year from groups throughout the City, most recently by the City Council which voted to sue the administration over a new policy requiring new homeless applicants to prove they have nowhere else to go.

In the Westchester Square case, the suit challenges the City’s policy of claiming “emergency” needs under an outdated case, Ferrer v. Dinkins, that allowed the conversion of a motel into a homeless shelter.  Petitioners here argue that Ferrer is misapplied since the complex in question, a shelter located at 1564 St. Peter’s Avenue in the Bronx, was zoned and built as a permanent residential facility (unlike a motel that is zoned and built as a transient facility) and that the City’s subsequent contract with the shelter’s landlord, required a new ULURP proceeding under the provisions of the New York City Charter.  The Department of Homeless Services skipped these requirements, claiming that they were not required to notify the community board or hold a Fair Share Hearing because they didn’t enter into a lease. The lower court disagreed and ruled in favor of the Petitioners, calling the City’s procedure in this matter a “sham” when it was revealed that the City subsequently moved to contract with the landlord.

This latest decision opens the door to complete discovery of the City’s records in the case, including communication between DHS, Basic Housing, the landlord, and others.  It also enables Petitioners to subpeona testimony from City officials and the former Commissioner of DHS.

For further information, contact:

Stephen Kaufman, Attorney For Petitioner, 718-822-0500  or

Robert Swetnick, Attorney For Petitioner, 212-349-2800

So, how has this strategy worked? Test scores and graduation rates (after accounting for cheating and faking of data) have not significantly improved. Only 21% of kids graduating from high school are college-ready. Overcrowding is much worse than before because each one of these mini schools (up to 7 in a building) needs administrative staff offices that take away valuable classroom space. What it HAS achieved has been the destabilization of the school system in this city and the invited but dangerous and insidious interference of corporations and billionaires in public education and the introduction of the profit motive into the educational process.

And what of those few traditional public schools that have managed to somehow survive and actually work well for their students and communities? They become overwhelmed by the sheer number of kids trying to get in. It’s like the survivors of the Titanic all trying to climb aboard the same lifeboat; you can’t have a few isolated successes in a sea of failure.

And now, this planned instability hits home, right where we live:

Lehman High School, which was always among the best in the Bronx, began its decline several years ago when its enrollment reached an all-time high of 5000, in a school originally built for 2700. It is now rated an “F”, and I have no doubt will soon be closed down to reopen with 6-7 “new” charter schools or mini-academies, but with LESS classroom space.

The PS/MS 194 debacle: For 10 years we fought to get the city to build a school for the Westchester Square-Zerega community because there was no public school for our kids to go to (they went to PS 108, PS 83 in Morris Park, and later schools in CO-OP City) and we didn’t want the busing of thousands of kids out of the community each day to continue destabilizing our neighborhood. It was a long, hard fight, but FINALLY the school was built in 2003, is considered one of the best in the Bronx, and has become a magnet, attracting families to buy homes and live nearby, revitalizing the area. But our dream (after only 8 years) turned into a nightmare, with overcrowding so severe (1400 kids in a school built for 1000) in 194 that kids are being taken out almost 3 months into the school year and bused to schools miles away AGAIN (ironically, PS 108 is one of the schools, so we have really come full-circle). This is heartbreaking.

It does not take the genius of an Einstein to figure out that there is a critical need to BUILD MORE SCHOOLS because all the expensive technology in the world cannot make up for the instability and damage being caused by such severe overcrowding, and that rather than dismantling and selling off pieces of the school system, we should be working to support and reward success with the resources needed to maintain it.

Between this and the failure of the homeless housing policies in NY, we will be living with the fallout from these disastrous policies for decades to come. Is anybody listening?

New York City is in the midst of an ongoing homeless housing crisis. This involves several facets: Mayoral punitive policies on housing the homeless, the state of available subsidized affordable housing, and the end of direct rent subsidy programs.

The State of the Homeless 2011 report by the Coalition for the Homeless begins :

“In the midst of high unemployment, the steady loss of affordable housing, and years of failed policies under the Bloomberg administration, an all-time high number of New Yorkers turned to homeless shelters last year and the New York City homeless shelter population is now larger than at any time since the City began keeping records.

An all-time record 113,553 homeless people – including 42,888 children – slept in municipal shelters in FY 2010, an 8 percent increase from the previous year and a 37 percent increase from FY 2002 when Mayor Bloomberg took office.

This includes a record 28,977 families, a 10 percent increase from the previous year and a remarkable 81 percent more than when Mayor Bloomberg took office.”

Mayor Bloomberg put in 2 time-limited rent subsidy programs when he took office (Housing Stability Plus and Work Advantage), both of which were doomed to failure; as the subsidies stopped after 2 years, the families lost their apartments because they could not make up the entire rent. These policies have thrown thousands of formerly homeless families with children back into the shelter system (5020 repeat families re-entering the shelter system pert year, a 151% increase from previous administrations). And now the Advantage program, deeply flawed as it was, has just been ended. This ruling was just confirmed by the NY Supreme Court, that just being a social welfare program,  it can be terminated by the city at will. These time-limited subsidies have already forced thousands of formerly-homeless children and families back into the shelter system at tremendous expense to taxpayers. The record number of repeat families re-entering the shelter system has already cost taxpayers $370 million, and this can only get worse.

In putting in these flawed programs, Mayor Bloomberg deviated from several sound policies regarding the homeless that were used successfully by his predecessors. According to the Coalition For the Homeless, allowing the homeless to be placed in NYCHA public housing and allowing them to receive Federal Section 8 vouchers for housing would make a tremendous difference to thousands of families.

In addition, we must consider the state of subsidized affordable housing. The SHIP database tracks 2500 rental properties including 235,000 units of subsidized affordable housing in 4 large programs (HUD Financing, HUD Project based Rental Assistance, Low-Income Housing Tax Credits, and Mitchell-Lama). (I’ll just explain here that these programs provide subsidies to the landlords and developers, often for a limited time, not to the renter, such as the Advantage and Section 8 voucher programs). (BTW, The Bronx has the largest percentage of subsidized housing, at 13%.) Of projects financed through these subsidies, 27% are no longer under affordability restrictions, and have returned to market value; of 593 HUD Project Based Rental Assistance properties, 400 will be leaving the program within 5 years.

While the other housing programs will remain relatively stable, clearly there will be a major loss of affordable housing in the city. This coupled with the failed timed-subsidy initiatives and the tanking economy have created a nightmare of homelessness for almost 140,000 of our fellow New Yorkers.

And of course this also has to have a major impact on our communities, with a huge influx of homeless, and our daily lives. It is also wasting billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money to build multi-million dollar shelter “warehouses” throughout the city, when reasonable rent subsidy programs are so much cheaper and have so many benefits, allowing people to stay in their homes or to get a new one in NYCHA housing. We have said this for the past 3 years. This was a very predictable emergency; it has been like watching a train wreck in slow motion. I hope the Mayor will now go back to the policies that have succeeded in the past and stop this shoddy, stop-gap warehousing of people and the timed subsidy concept that only creates homelessness. These policies did not serve the homeless or the communities of this city well. The only ones who benefitted were the developers, landlords, and middle men. I said it in 2009 and I say it now.  Mayor Bloomberg must shift his strategy on housing this most vulnerable population of New Yorkers.

We have had/participated in several events recently; Family Fun Day, the Magic Show at Pearly Gates, the Native American Festival at Pelham Bay Park. Our face painting has become quite the thing, and we are pleased because we love doing it. A big, huge thanks to Stephanny and Woody, the other WSZIO artists, and to Ricky, Robbie, Tony, Ellen, Diana, and Paul our intrepid volunteers. There has been some friction at some of our events because of the popularity of the face painting and the long lines and waiting time. I would remind you here that we are all volunteers. Our events have set times, but we do try to get to everyone. We will be taking names from now on to make sure that those who wait get their faces done in order, with no line cutting, etc. Also note that we are available at times to do other events and private kids parties. Contact us at WSZIO@aol.com or check us out on Facebook. All we ask is a donation for supplies (we use only the highest quality supplies, and they are costly).

If you are in the Square, check out our Autumn display at the Westchester Square Branch Library window. Next up will be Halloween arts and crafts at the library on Oct 22 at 1 PM.

And I didn’t even get into politics! LOL.

TTFN

Like so many others, I am a Harry Potter fan, loved all the movies. This one was the inevitable and intense clash of good versus evil. It got me thinking about the nature of “evil.” In movies like this, or Star Wars, or Lord of the Rings, and in all the fairy tales, there is a huge, shattering, showdown between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. The good guys win, but only after being almost totally annihilated and paying a heavy price, but the incarnation of evil is destroyed and the world safe once more, at least for the foreseeable future. If only it were that simple to identify and destroy. There have been the tyrants, the Hitlers, the genocidal maniacs, the wars. But the problem with evil is that it is not only concentrated in a recognizable form, but also diffuse. That is why it is so impossible to deal with. It is a hydra with a thousand heads. Cut one off, and another grows right back, whether it be in lower Manhattan in 2001, bombings in Israel, Iraq, India, or Afghanistan, in London in 1888, in Villisca, Iowa, in 1912,  or on E 2nd Street in Kensington or Canarsie, Brooklyn, only  last week. You never know where it will strike next.

On Friday, as I waited at the corner of 45th and Madison for the Express bus home, there was an old homeless man lying in the street sleeping in the full blazing hot sun. A patrol car pulled up and 3 officers out got who said “Hey, my man, you can’t stay here.” The homeless man argued with them a little, then the officers drove away. The homeless man slowly picked up his stuff, the cardboard pizza box he was using as a bed, and a few other odds and ends, and began slowly walking down Madison Avenue to some other street corner or building doorway to sleep in. As I watched him I wondered: What will  become of him and the thousands of others like him in this city?

As you have read in this paper, our case Westchester Square  v DHS has been re-activated. That means we may proceed with discovery from the city, (so far they have not complied). The Mayor’s policies, as I have always said, helps create homelessness. With his timed rent subsidies and Section 8 gone, and more draconian cuts on the horizon, NY  is already facing a humanitarian crisis in homelessness that could have been avoided at least in part by extending existing subsidies and allowing people to stay in their apartments rather than throwing them back into the shelter system (mainly the 60,000 or so homeless families). Nonprioritizing the homeless from city housing (keeping them out), even with vacancies, also helps to exacerbate this problem.

The question is now that the damage is being done, what to do? The Mayor’s answer is to build huge warehouse facilities all over the city for the homeless, in Wakefield, Greenpoint, Chelsea, and other communities, as if that is some kind of real solution, which it is not, either for communities or the homeless. It does, however, help out construction workers and landlords and developers. Chelsea and Greenpoint are fighting theses shelters in court. Building these huge buildings is not a homeless policy, but a reaction to the mess his failed policies have helped create.

The fact that the Judge Wright in our case did not allow himself to be bullied by the City into dismissing our case is some small reason for hope, at least we can be heard. If our case makes it to court, it will set a precedent (one way or the other), for every community fighting this battle, and I hope along with this, Mayor Bloomberg will be FORCED to rethink his inhumane homeless policy. (I wonder has the Mayor ever read Jack London’s The People of the Abyss? It would be good summer reading for him).

On a much more positive note, we held our Family Fun Day this past Saturday, and it was a huge success. The weather was great, and we had a fun-filled day with our favorite, Simply Magic, a Punch and Judy show by Fred Greenspan (this show was really funny, both the kids and adults loved it), snakes, turtles, and an alligator brought by Snakes-n-Scales, and wonderful folk music by Kevin Kane, who entertained the people waiting on the face painting line. Thank you to all the WSZIO volunteers who worked so hard: Ricky, Stephanny, Tony, Paul, Ellen (a new volunteer), and of course Woody (the other half of the WSZIO steering committee of 2 LOL). Also thanks to Al and Marianne from Parks and their invaluable cooperation and assistance.

Our next event will be at Pearly Gates playground on Tratman and St Peter’s Avenues on Saturday, August  20 from 1-3. Simply Magic will be there, and we will have face painting as well. We hope to see you there.

A whole column, and no politics or DOE stuff? That’s TK.

TTFN.