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Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Homeless Shelters in Bronx Apartment Buildings: The Story Behind the Story

Henry Perry, a 68-year-old substitute teacher and Mosholu Parkway resident, is a star today. Not only did he appear in the first paragraph of a NY Times front page story, but also in the first paragraph of the Norwood News' top story on its Web site. (It will appear as a front page story in the Norwood News print addition, which will hit streets tomorrow morning.) Here's our editorial on the situation with Perry's building and others like it.

The Times story and the Norwood News story have some similarities, but also many differences, which I'll get to in a minute, but first let's rewind to see how this story unfolded.

In mid-January, I learned that a homeless shelter had quietly moved into a notorious and poorly-managed Bedford Park apartment building, 3001 Briggs Ave., which happened to be directly across the street from a school, PS 8. Teachers at the school were irate. They contacted the community board, 311 and the Norwood News. On Jan. 22, Community Board 7 invited an increasingly angry neighborhood to weigh in and, wow, did they. On this blog the next day I reported about the meeting and some of the other things I had found out. In the next issue of the paper, I wrote up a more in-depth story about it that focused on how upset residents were and how previous tenants may have been harassed to make way for the shelter.

Soon after that story appeared on Feb. 5, Perry called us to say he too was living in a building, 15-19 Mosholu Parkway, with a homeless shelter and said he would be attending the next Community Board meeting to discuss his situation and express his opposition to it. The Bronx Times published a story about Perry's building and the Bedford Park building on Feb. 27.

Regardless of how it started, we now have a better picture of what the city is doing with its homeless population and how it's affecting tenants.

The NY Times story focuses on the city's new policy of creating so-called "cluster-site" homeless shelters, which are similar to the controversial "scatter-site" policy, which was denounced in the early 2000's as an "expensive failure." It includes some good details and stats like the fact these cluster sites are growing exponentially and mostly in the Bronx.

The Norwood News story focuses more on the events leading up to Perry's building becoming half a homeless shelter -- mass evictions and landlord intimidation, no tenant notification, 3 suspicious fires -- and how it mirrored what happened at 3001 Briggs. We also report that the outcry over this is forcing the city's Department of Homeless Services to rethink its policies.

Combined, they make an even more complete story. And that's our goal as reporters and journalists.

Note: One of our ideas to open up dialogue on this blog is to give some of the back story behind what you see in print or on our Web site and this our first attempt to do that. Let us know what you think. Is it interesting? Does it help you understand the story better? Is it pointless? Whatever the case, we want to know what you think.

13 comments:

  1. I read your blog every day. As a blogger myself I know how it feels not to get feedback.

    Why the Bronx? Why are they always doing these "experiments" here.

    I worked for a time on E. 30th st in Manhattan and saw first hand the devastation a homeless shelter wreaks on a neighborhood especially in the morning when the men, it was a men's shelter nearby - leave. Defecation and urination in full public view in the street, men off their medication or high, it was awful. And this was in Murray Hill.

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  2. I find this posting's insight into both the Norwood News articles/blog postings and the NYTimes article fascinating. I also enjoy when larger city-wide papers benefit from the investigative reporting of community journalism. Please keep these types of posts coming.

    And while I appreciate the policy issues raised by the NYTimes, I am concerned about two aspects of the article. First, the author allowed a tone to ring out through the article that homeless families are the problem. These families have a right to housing and services that will help them get on their feet and live independently. The problem is that the current DHS policy may be driving tenants in permanent affordable housing out of their homes while only providing transitional housing to homeless families. We should be raising questions to the overall policy and it's effectiveness in reducing family homelessness.

    The second issue is the NYTimes' limited coverage of tenant harrassment that may be taking place by landlords of buildings with cluster-site housing. It wouldn't take much sleuthing to find former tenants of the building and find out reasons why they left. This focus of the Norwood News' reporting really shows it's strength as a paper.

    If DHS is committed to ensuring that current tenants are not harrassed to make room for more cluster-site apartments, it seems to me that investigative energy should be focused to make sure this isn't happening.

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  3. Thanks Savannah, we appreciate the comments and the readership.

    In the two cases cover in our article and the Times piece, there wasn't a lot of anger about the actual homeless residents, who are mostly women and children. The problem is more how the shelters are integrated, how it makes previous tenants feel and how the landlords made way for the shelters in first place. It's also about the loss of affordable housing in exchange for transitional housing. The question is: where are these people going to transition to if there's no affordable apartments to move in to.

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  4. And thank you, Anonymous. Loved your analysis. We'd also love to know your name or at least give yourself a nickname so others can more easily refer to your comments.

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  5. So many issues here. First of all, the financial structure is out of whack. It makes no sense that it’s more profitable for a landlord to house homeless families for the city than to have paying tenants. As tenant harassment grows and the city seeks more apartments to house the homeless, the ultimate result will not be a solution to homelessness, but a revolving door that will simply switch the families who are homeless.

    Also, it’s completely insane that a landlord will renovate apartments to attract homeless placements from the city, but paying tenants have to live in the squalor of hundreds of outstanding violations. Of course, these conditions are not particular only to buildings that house homeless, but are an unchecked epidemic throughout the Bronx.

    Further, Savannah’s question about the Bronx being an ongoing guinea pig cuts to the heart of a related matter. Namely, who ought to be the gatekeepers to represent Bronx interests on trial balloons like the frozen meals on wheels consolidation program, the astronomically expensive design for an environmental disaster known as a water filtration plant under a public park, and this homeless housing program... not to mention giving the Yankees two stadiums that now stand in the dense south Bronx?

    It’s hard not to notice that there are no comments from any elected officials in either the Times nor Norwood News stories. The leadership void is monumental. Clearly, tenants have no one representing their interests and so the city has no reason NOT to try anything it wants in the Bronx. Who’s to stop them?

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  6. Excellent, love the 'story behind the story' feature! Keep em coming...

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  7. It's important to note that DHS has implemented temporary cluster-site housing for families in private buildings in other neighborhoods of NYC. The practice started at the beginning of the Bloomberg administration in 2002 and occured in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Bronx. City Limits wrote an article back then (http://www.citylimits.org/content/articles/viewarticle.cfm?article_id=2719). The difference being their elected city representatives were vocal in their concerns about eliminating permanent housing to temporarily house homeless families (http://www.nynewsnetwork.com/ArchiveArticle.php?article=Tenants+Suing+City+to+Prevent+Eviction+to+House+the+Homeless.xml). Perhaps our Bronx electeds could bring together a task force of non profits that work with homeless families and DHS to develop a more effective policy to permanently house the homeless.

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  8. Alex, Thanks for clearly documenting patterns of harassment in your article. It is extremely noteworthy that the Times article did not touch on this issue at all.

    Gary & Nick, You are right to point out the lack of support Bronx tenants get from their elected officials. It's extremely frustrating that the Bronx political families are actually part of the problem instead of advocates for our solutions to our neighborhood problems.

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  9. Thanks for these great comments. We will be asking all the elected officials about their positions on this. This is the kind of story we'll be riding for quite a while.
    Nick Napolitano has also educated me on "supportive housing" -- a phrase I used in my editorial incorrectly -- which this transitional cluster housing most certainly isn't. You'll be hearing more about that here and in the Norwood News next issue. Thanks to all of you for the input. It really keeps us on our toes, helps our reporting, and informs the community. Keep it coming.

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  10. I am currently working on a story with The Bronx Times as well as will be publishing it in my blog regarding first hand experience with a friend of mine who lives in Hunts Point. He is going through the same thing where they are turning his apartment building into a homeless shelter essentially and collecting obscene amounts of rent for subhuman conditions.

    stay tuned.
    http://welcome-to-melrose.blogspot.com

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  11. Its a true story and i felt very bad after read the post "behind the story" by knowing the harassment of the helpless shelter less people its so embarrassing moment that Times article does not show any helping hands due to this big issue.

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  12. I AM A HOMELESS MOTHER OF FOUR CHILDREN I RECENTLY BECAME HOMELESS,AM SCARED AND FEEL LIKE A FAILURE I WAS TAKEN IN BY MY OLDEST DAUGHTER FATHER AND NOW HE SAYS I HAVE TO LEAVE SOON AM THIRTY.0TWO AND HE'S IN HIS LATE FOURTIES I LOST MY PARENTS WHEN I WAS FOURTEEN THE STATE GAVE ME CUSTODY.AND NOW FIFTEEN YEARS LATER HE HAS A GOOD JOB AND AM SUFFERING HAVEING HOPE IS HARD WHEN PEOPLE LOOK THE OTHER WAY. I HOPE TO HAVE MY LIFE IN ORDER SOON BUT I NEED HELP SO NOT ALL HOMELESS PEOPLE DESTROY COMMUNITIES I WISH RAPPERS WOULD OPEN UP COMMMUNITY ESPECIALLY JAY-Z

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  13. NEVER GIVE UP HOPE YOU PUT IN APPLICATIONS AND MOST CHARITIES HELP YOU GET ON YOUR FEET. EVERY BODY TAKES A FALL IN LIFE AND GET BACK UP.AND PEOPLE DO TEND TO TURN THEY BACK WHEN YOU NEED THEM. I WAS HOMELESS BEFORE I KNOW.ALWAYS PRAY TO THE GRACE OF GOD AND HE WILL ANSWER.

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