Hunt on for Bone Marrow Donor

BronxWorks (formerly known as the Citizens Advice Bureau) is asking Bronx residents and other New Yorkers to help save the life of a Brooklyn mom.

Next Monday, people can drop by the organization's community center at 1130 Grand Concourse (between 12 and 6 p.m.), for a mouth swab which will determine whether they would qualify as a bone marrow donor for Jennifer Jones Austin, who has leukemia.

See here for more information.

New Name, New Headquarters for CAB

The Citizens Advice Bureau has a new name: BronxWorks.

The name was unveiled this morning at a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the organization's brand new administrative headquarters at 64 East Tremont Ave., near Morris Avenue.

According to staff, "BronxWorks" better reflects what they now do. Citizens aren't the only people they help, said Executive Director Carolyn McLaughlin, and they don't just offer advice.

Plus, the old name had a habit of perplexing the general public. On more than one occasion, people have confused the acronym CAB with a livery service, said Ken Small, CAB's development director.

The new name also gets across that fact that they're Bronx-based, and serve Bronx residents.

CAB opened its first Bronx office in 1972, but the organization has roots in 1930s Britain. Here's a little history. Today, they have more than 25 locations in the borough, and provide services to nearly 40,000 people a year, among them immigrants, seniors, the homeless, and people with HIV/AIDS.

"This is one of the greatest organizations I think we have in the country," said Congressman Jose Serrano, at today's ceremony.


PHOTOS: Top - Carolyn McLaughlin, BronxWork's executive director; bottom - their new headquarters on East Tremont Avenue.

Arrest in Bronx Leads to Protest in Chinatown

Community activists rallied in Chinatown last Sunday, in support of Bronx resident Jian Zhong Chen, 46, who claims he was falsely arrested and imprisoned in the Bronx on March 23 on charges of menacing and possession of a weapon.

Chen (pictured), who speaks little to no English, said that the police did not allow him to use a 911 translator to explain himself. He was arrested near 184th Street and Jerome Avenue as he was running errands in his new neighborhood. More here in the Mount Hope Monitor.

Also in the Monitor this month:

Food pantries in the west Bronx have experienced an uptick in foot traffic as the recession deepens and more people lose their jobs.

A middle school on Webster Avenue has won the Chase “Multimedia in the Classroom” award for the fourth year in a row.

Local leaders react to one man's plan to drain the Harlem River.

The Citizens Advice Bureau been selected by the New York Times Company as one of 10 semi-finalists for the 2009 Nonprofit Excellence Awards.

Changing Times: Bank Note Building's New Landlord Wants Homeless Out

The Bronx's only drop-in center for homeless people is in the process of being forced out because the building's new landlord wants to attract a different type of clientele, according to the center's director, Noel Concepción.

The Living Room, which is run by the Citizens Advice Bureau, is located in the historic American Bank Note Building in Hunts Point. It currently serves 130-140 people a day, says Concepción. There are on-site medical services, showers, storage facilities, free meals, but no beds - which differentiates it from a shelter. Clients sleep in chairs. Many stay for months on end.

In January, the 400,000-square-foot building was sold to Taconic Investment Partners and Denham Wolf Real Estate Services for $32 million. "I think that the new owners envision Hunts Point as being the next place where there’s going to be a great deal of gentrification," said Concepción, speaking yesterday. "So they're planning to make this place a large multi-cultural arts center, and they’ve told us that our services and what we do here just don’t fit."

As one of the new owners told the Daily News: "Ideally, our tenant mix would encompass visual arts, performing groups, architects, Web designers, film production/studios, emerging green businesses and an international food market."

An international food market - whatever that is - sounds a little ambitious, but you get the picture: Yes to fancy art galleries, no to the mentally ill and those with drug and alcohol problems.

Other Bank Note Building tenants may not be safe either, because rents, of course, are set to rise. Concepción says he heard they might jump by as much as 75 percent, which is worrying Per Scholas, a non-profit that refurbishes old computers. (Majora Carter's Sustainable South Bronx, the Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, and others, are also based in the building.)

The Living Room's lease is up in August. If staying put isn't an option (and at the moment it isn't), Concepción wants to find another location nearby. The neighborhood, he says, attracts the homeless, particularly homeless men, because it's easy to find day jobs, such as loading and unloading trucks. Hunts Point, all talk of gentrification aside, remains poor and industrial.

The Citizens Advice Bureau was involved in the Department of Homeless Services' annual Homeless Count, held Jan. 28. Results are due in the next few weeks. Concepción says he expects the borough's unsheltered homeless population to be down on last year's count, in part because of the Living Room's success in moving the chronically homeless into permanent housing.