Special Election Day!

It will be interesting to see how many people get to the polls today to vote for their next Bronx Borough President. By most accounts, the outcome has already been determined. 

It would take a miracle for underdog Republican candidate and former "Sopranos" actor Anthony Ribustello to upset Democratic Assemblyman Ruben Diaz Jr. who was working with a nearly $100 to $1 fundraising advantage, backing from all the major Democratic clubs and parties and the fact that the Bronx is overwhelming Democratic (though the BP election is nonpartisan). 

Despite his obvious and impressive advantages, Diaz has done an extensive ad campaign to get folks out to the polls so he can head into office (and the upcoming regularly scheduled general election later this fall) with a strong show of support.

Polls opened at 6 a.m. and will remain open until 9 p.m. To find out where you can vote, call (866) VOTE-NYC. 

Still haven't made up your mind: 

Click here for more on Ribustello. (Here's his IMDb page.)

Click here for more on Diaz. (Here's his official campaign Web site)

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.

Outrage, Apologies Over New Bedford Park Homeless Shelter

The outrage was on the part of local residents who, at a Community Board 7 housing committee meeting inside the Bedford Park Senior Center, vehemently opposed the opening of a new homeless shelter on Briggs Avenue, directly across the street from PS 8. Teachers, parents and other residents found out about the shelter only after it began taking in homeless families on Christmas Eve.

The apologies came from Peter Rivera, the director of the firm, Aguila, Inc., that manages the new facility (and several others in the city), who said he took "ownership" for making the mistake of not coming to the community sooner. "Mea culpa," he said, trying to explain, but was soon drowned out by a chorus of angry yelling.

This story is a can of worms that we'll only open slightly on the blog today, but here's a few notes of interest.

-The homeless shelter will cater only to homeless families -- parents with children. However, there is no guarantee that the residents will not have prior criminal records (something residents were extremely apprehensive about). Most of the families currently in the building are single mothers with their kids.

-One woman, who's 91-year-old father lives in the building, said the families all seem "earnest" and that conditions and the atmosphere of the building had greatly improved in the past few months.

-The building, 3001 Briggs Ave., has a terrible history of housing violations and landlord neglect.

-There may be evidence that previous tenants were harassed out of the building to make way for the homeless shelter. If the evidence is compelling, the Dept. of Homeless Services says it will terminate the contract with Aguila and move the transitional residents elsewhere.

-If the evidence is not compelling, it's very unlikely DHS will terminate the contract or move the facility elsewhere simply based on residents' complaints.

-PS 8 teachers are worried the influx of children from the shelter will overburden an already vastly overcrowded elementary school. But only one child from the center has enrolled at PS 8 and they have yet to show up for school.

-Housing advocates say the bigger issue, aside form overcrowding or bringing in criminal elements to the neighborhood, is that the city is knowingly taking away affordable, rent-stabilized housing, and replacing it with transitional housing. This only perpetuates one of the main factors of homelessness, which is a lack of affordable housing.

-Rivera, the son of Bronx Assemblyman Peter Rivera, did not lose his cool once, despite an incredible amount of anger and animosity directed at him. He also couldn't explain why he didn't come to the community beforehand or how the building became empty and available for lease as a homeless shelter.

-The owners of the building, Briggs Realty, LLC, declined to show for the meeting.

-In the end, the CB7 housing committee said it would not support the new shelter and they would bring it up at the next general board meeting, Feb. 17, at the Bronx Library Center. At that meeting, they will also discuss Rivera's plan to open a similar shelter just a couple of blocks away at 2903 Valentine Ave.