City Limits articles from June 2002

City Limits archives from June 2002

Taxing times. (Editorial).(New York City taxation and budget)(Brief Article)(Editorial)
June 1, 2002... "When New Yorkers work together they can meet many challenges," begins Mayor Bloomberg's preface to his proposed budget for the city (ah, the glamorous literary life of a City Limits editor). Working together--it's a fantastic idea. A $5...

Letters.(Letter to the Editor)
June 1, 2002... BAD NEIGHBORS I found the article "Good Neighbor Policies" [April 2002] interesting but incomplete. For the last 23 years I have lived in the building next to the brownstone targeted by the Fifth Avenue Committee. During that time the...

Listen up, whitehead. (Frontlines).(plans for redevelopment of World Center site)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... A REFLECTING POOL THAT FLOWS around the buildings of downtown Manhattan. Model Twin Towers filled with 2,830 crystal balls, one for each person killed on September 11. These visions may not be found in the Lower Manhattan Development...

Down to business: the council's liberal love-fest may be short-lived. (Frontlines).(New York City Council)
June 1, 2002... IN ITS FIRST FIVE MONTHS, the new City Council has introduced a raft of legislation--with significant numbers of sponsors--the likes of which has not been seen for years. There's a bill to prohibit die city from doing business with predatory...

Getting canned. (Firsthand).(former drug addict describes his life)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Rigoberto "Tito" Quinones THEY CALL ME THE KING OF CANS, but I don't like to label myself. I've been canning for eight years. Full-time. It started 'cause I got laid off from my job. I needed an easy way of making money without selling...

Money hits: stemming an epidemic of co-op crashes. (Frontlines).(housing cooperatives in New York City)(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... THE NUMBERS JUST don't add up, and the situation is getting worse, says Audrey Griffin. The building whose cooperative board she heads, 100-106 West 141st Street, pulls in only $20,000 a month in income, half of what it needs to pay its...

Nonprofit dumps buildings. (Housing).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... FOR THE FIRST TIME in decades, tenants at three Central Harlem apartment buildings starred feeling optimistic this winter. The city planned to put an end to leaks, rats, lack of hot water--and years of unpaid taxes and bills--by taking the...

Unfit to work. (Welfare).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... M.S., 54, LOST HER public assistance benefits for forgetting to make a phone call. A depressive suffering from severe cardiovascular problems, she failed to check in with HS Systems (HSS), a company that performs medical screenings of welfare...

Dead end jobless: Why New York's unemployment lines aren't working. (Inside Track).
June 1, 2002... WHEN FRANCIS MARTINEZ CALLED the number at 8:30 in the morning, she heard the familiar, peremptory message: "All circuits are busy now. Please try your call again later." She tried two hours later; busy again. She tried at 1 p.m., at 4, at 10,...

Active parenting: Sharwline Nicholson's journey from domestic violence to local heroism.(Interview)
June 1, 2002... Sharwline Nicholson could have been just another victim. After being beaten by her boyfriend and then bullied by child welfare caseworkers, who took her children while she was in the hospital and sent them to foster care without explanation,...

Pass discrimination: high-stakes testing kicks out teachers New York needs to keep.
June 1, 2002... Victor Acevedo grew up in the South Bronx, the oldest in a family of nine children, scraping by on welfare. His dad, a day laborer, was an alcoholic, so it usually fell to Acevedo to get his brothers and sisters off to school and to hound them...

Social promotion: crime is down, the streets are clean--and public education is still the shame of the city. Could affluent families who love a revived New York be the force that reclaims the schools?
June 1, 2002... When Jeanne Kassler's sons were still in elementary school at P.S. 6 in Manhattan, she started to think about the paths they would take through school as they got older. From parents with bigger children, Kassler knew about the difficult...

A fighting chance: a vision for urban utopia gets in the ring with a legendary boxing club. Will Bedford-Stuyvesant be the winner?
June 1, 2002... Meet Shavaris Buie, a young man with a purpose. On a cool spring morning, the 18-year-old is working out at Gleason's Gym, the Limed home to boxing champions past and present, located in an old warehouse beneath the Brooklyn Bridge. He...

The flattering tax. (Intelligence the Big Idea).(Earned Income Tax Credit )
June 1, 2002... IF TIME OUT OR NEW YORK magazine rated social programs along with boites and botox clinics, there's no question the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) would be "In." From Mayor Bloomberg to Tommy Thompson, policy makers agree that this is one...

Wholly Moses. (Intelligence City Lit).(The American City: What Works, What Doesn't)
June 1, 2002... The American City: What Works, What Doesn't By Alexander Garvin 528 pages, McGraw-Hill, $49.95 IN FEBRUARY, WHEN urban planner and veteran City Hall insider Alexander Garvin was tapped to oversee the rebuilding of lower Manhattan,...

Global village. (Intelligence Making Change).
June 1, 2002... A FEW MONTHS AGO, a strange thing happened at Desh Priyo, a Bangladeshi restaurant and sweets store on 36th Avenue in Long Island City. The owners of the restaurant happened to overhear Seema Agnani describe Chhaya Community Development...

New York state of blind. (Intelligence NYC Inc.).
June 1, 2002... SURE, NEW YORK is still "The Greatest City in the World." And Elizabeth Taylor is still "The Most Beautiful Woman in the World." Just ask her publicist. To hear the city's boosters tell it, the Big Apple is still No. 1, and any...

A shortchanged city. (Frontlines).(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... THE WORLD TRADE CENTER attacks and the national recession may be largely to blame for the city's current fiscal crisis, the worst one since the 1970s. But if it weren't for a series of actions taken by Governor Pataki and the state legislature...

New reports.(Brief Article)
June 1, 2002... Most Americans say they want their own home, yard and garage, but the percent who prefer denser neighborhoods is growing, says this USC study. Surprisingly, older adults are most likely to want a pad in the city--with their kids grown, they're...

Misplaced: New York City's Street Kids. (Now Read This).
June 1, 2002... Misplaced: New York City's Street Kids By Alexia Lewnes, Xenium Press, $25 No one knows exactly how many homeless young people live in New York, or where they sleep, or what blend of poverty, abusive parents and homophobia drove them...

Settlement Houses Under Siege: The Struggle to Sustain Community Organizations in New York City. (Now Read This).
June 1, 2002... Settlement Houses Under Siege: The Struggle to Sustain Community Organizations in New York City By Michael B. Fabricant and Robert Fisher, Columbia University Press, $24.50 This city's settlement houses have a rich history of working with...

Muckraking!: The Journalism That Changed America. (Now Read This).
June 1, 2002... Muckraking!: The Journalism That Changed America Edited by Judith and William Serrin The New Press, $25 From a 1765 decree opposing British taxation to the National Catholic Reporter's 1985 expose of priest sex abuse, the 125 excerpts from...