City Limits articles from April 2004

City Limits archives from April 2004

How to be a part of City Limits.(Editorial)
April 1, 2004... WRITING THIS COLUMN is one of the finer pleasures of my job. In the nearly five years I've been editor of City Limits, I have never passed on the monthly chance to share my observations with you about the events and ideas that drive public life...

Size matters.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
April 1, 2004... David Fischer correctly identifies the largest problem we have in ensuring a qualified teaching workforce here in New York City: the high teacher turnover rates, particularly in high-need, low-performing schools ["Ditching Class," NYC Inc,...

Corrections.(Correction Notice)
April 1, 2004... "Money for Nothing" [February 2004] reported that City Councilmember Eva Moskowitz declined to comment about her campaign finances, including $14,627 in payments to her husband, Eric Grannis, for work on her reelection campaign. While the...

Body count.(Front Lines)(of homeless people, New York city)
April 1, 2004... THE CITY CAN TELL YOU exactly how many people quit smoking last year. It can estimate how many New Yorkers had sex with more than three people. And, thanks to a controversial initiative begun last year, it's hoping to soon have a count of...

Building assets: as Section 8 shrinks, can the Housing Authority help families move up and out?(Front Lines)
April 1, 2004... FOUR YEARS AGO, Jara Correo moved, in more ways than one. The city's housing agency wanted her out of her Bronx apartment building so it could be fixed. It gave Correo a Section 8 voucher, to help her pay for a new apartment, which she found...

Urban pirates.(First Hand)(undercover builders)
April 1, 2004... I DISCOURAGE my men from wearing work boots or hard hats. I want them to blend into the crowd on the street when they break for lunch because concealing a workforce is part of my job. I practice a specialized field: stealth construction. ...

Headed for a breakdown: the battle over the city's private buses is bad news for riders--whoever wins.(Front Lines)
April 1, 2004... BROKEN WINDOWS and flat tires are minor symptoms compared to the busted valves and burnt-out engines of rows of out-of-service buses at the Triboro Coach garage in Jackson Heights, Queens. These buses are "against the wall"--shop talk for...

Extra credit.(Taxes)
April 1, 2004... AN INTERNAL REVENUE SERVICE plan to make low-income families prove they qualify for a popular tax credit program has been radically scaled back, following a whirlwind of controversy that the proposal sparked when first unveiled last spring. ...

Watchdog gets put to sleep.(Child Welfare)
April 1, 2004... SINCE 1995, the Child Welfare Project of the Office of the Public Advocate has provided assistance to parents, young people and others who needed help resolving problems with the city's Administration for Children's Services. But February...

Less carrot; more stick.(Welfare)
April 1, 2004... GOVERNOR PATAKI proposed a budget in late January that would cut $362 million in state welfare spending and drastically change eligibility requirements. While it highlights the importance of creating incentives and removing barriers to work,...

Who shapes New York? Angry communities are telling developers to follow zoning limits. But the law, and the panel that enforces it, may speak even louder.(Inside Track)
April 1, 2004... FOR MORE THAN a year now, a war has raged over the fate of a former warehouse in Red Hook. The developers of 160 Imlay Street have sought to transform the six-story building into apartments. They enlisted a team of lawyers, consultants, real...

Psychiatric wards: an underground of unregulated adult homes is the only thing keeping hundreds of mentally ill people from homelessness. But where do they go from here?
April 1, 2004... Sometime in the early morning of March 23, 2000, Theresa Gugliano, a legally blind 77-year-old, and Hugh Fearon, 22, argued in the kitchen of the upstate boarding house they shared. Fearon, a Queens native, had a history of mental illness and...

Betting on a green building boom; New York can become a leader in environmentally sound development--if big business buys in. Here's how well-paid professionals are building a marketplace movement.(Cover Story)
April 1, 2004... On a frigid morning in early February, about 30 building-industry executives gathered in the conference room of Bovis Lend Lease, on the ninth floor of the MetLife building. It was by all appearances an unremarkable event, except that this...

Wretched refuge: each year, thousands of immigrants seek political asylum at America's airports. These days, many say they get mistreated instead of helped.(news)
April 1, 2004... WHEN LEWIS ARRIVED in New York a year and a half ago, he thought he'd finally reached safety. He had escaped months of detention and death threats in his home country, Liberia, where he had been arrested by government officials. They...

Home remedy: we could rein in prescription drug costs--as a bloc of 19 million picky consumers.(Intelligence the Big Idea)
April 1, 2004... IN DECEMBER, pharmaceutical giant Abbott Laboratories stunned the AIDS community by quadrupling the price of its anti-HIV drug Norvir--to $6,180 for a year's supply. Doctors and activists alike condemned the move, and the state attorney...

New reports.(Intelligence the Big Idea)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... New York City leads the country in federal campaign contributions, but 93 percent of donations come from majority-white zip codes, according to this report. One zip code--Manhattan's 10021--is the largest contributor in the country, and it's...

New reports.(Intelligence the Big Idea)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Union membership continued its 20-year decline in 2003. Membership dropped to 12.9 percent of wage and salaried workers, falling by 369,000 people (primarily in the private sector) to 15.8 million. In fact, the rate of union membership in the...

New reports.(Intelligence the Big Idea)(Brief Article)
April 1, 2004... Researchers surveyed 236 nonprofits around the country and found more than half testifying to "severe" economic difficulties in the last year. And yet, more agencies said they had expanded than said they had cut programs. To do so, four out of...

Working our nerves: one culture's flip-out is another's catharsis.(The Puerto Rican Syndrome )(Book Review)
April 1, 2004... The Puerto Rican Syndrome By Patricia Gherovici Other Press, 320 pages, $30 TWO YEARS AGO, a middle-aged friend of mine in Washington Heights suffered a devastating blow. On a quiet, leisurely Sunday afternoon, she walked into her...

Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2004... Breathing Space: A Spiritual Journey in the South Bronx By Heidi B. Neumar,; Beacon Press, $26 Neumark's memoir walks readers through both her own personal journey as a spiritual leader-cum-community activist and that of her South...

The "Huddled Masses" Myth: Immigration and Civil Rights.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2004... The "Huddled Masses" Myth: Immigration and Civil Rights By Kevin R. Johnson, Temple, $19.95 Why should women and minorities be concerned about how immigrants are treated? Johnson's answer: There, but for the grace of civil rights law,...

The Minds of Marginalized Black Men.(Brief Article)(Book Review)
April 1, 2004... The Minds of Marginalized Black Men By Alfred A. Young, Jr., Princeton, $35 With all the talk about poverty and the "crisis" of the black man, Young says scholars have hardly asked poor black men what they think of their relationship...