City Limits articles from November 2003

City Limits archives from November 2003

Trojan horse at the gates?(ethics of private fund raising by local governments)(Editorial)
November 1, 2003... BACK IN JANUARY, I broke news of a striking behind-the-scenes maneuver: City Hall was revamping ethics laws so that officials could raise private money for public services. At the time, private fundraising by and for government was nothing...

Incorrect assumptions.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
November 1, 2003... In the recent "The Growth Dividend" [September/October]," reporter Alex Ulam quotes real estate consultant Jaye Fox stating "all of the sites where the New Housing Opportunities Program (HOP) has succeeded are in places like Harlem, where...

No taking orders anymore.(Frontlines)(Restaurant Opportunities Center of New York represents restaurant workers)
November 1, 2003... ALL SUMMER LONG, former busboys, waiters, and other volunteers roamed the streets, paced up and down subway platforms, and dawdled in back alleys, stopping passersby and asking, "Do you work in a restaurant?" Very often, the answer was...

Mothers' helper: parent advocates ease the pain of foster care. Will their jobs survive?(Frontlines)
November 1, 2003... THE FIRST TIME the caseworker came to Robin McCutheon's door, shortly after the city took her son into foster care, she refused to open it. For the previous 10 years, McCutheon had been addicted to crack, and she knew that in order to bring her...

Growing apart.(Firsthand)(high school students discuss effects of New York's education system)
November 1, 2003... HEYDY CASADO: I heard there's a lawsuit against the schools for not letting kids stay in high school and telling them to get GEDs. It's not fair that the city did this to me. I came to New York with dreams of finishing school, but I couldn't....

Class dismissed: small schools grow in Brooklyn, but seats are scarce.(Frontlines)
November 1, 2003... AMALIA MARTINEZ felt assured that her 15-year-old twins, Ernestine and Edgar, were going to start ninth grade this September just a few blocks from her apartment, attending one of the new small schools located in the Irving Avenue building that...

Guv withholds foster kids' allowance.(Child Welfare)(George Pataki)
November 1, 2003... MORE THAN A YEAR AGO, Governor George Pataki gave abused and neglected young people a badly needed ally: He authorized a new independent commission, with a $500,000-a-year budget, to monitor the quality of care in group homes and institutions...

Taking a (keg) stand.(Energy)(Brooklyn Brewery switches to wind power)
November 1, 2003... IT WASN'T AN EASY DECISION for Steve Hindy to make but, hell, he thinks it was the right one. Instead of subscribing to Con Edison's cheaper blend of coal, natural gas, nuclear power, oil and hydropower, Hindy, the president and co-owner...

Any volunteers?(Public Housing)(unemployed tenants have to do community service)
November 1, 2003... LIVING IN PUBLIC HOUSING just got a little bit harder. Beginning this Halloween, unemployed tenants will have to put in eight hours of community service each month--or face eviction. How seriously New York City will take this mandate,...

Joint purpose: in a brutal business environment, nonprofits explore the once-unthinkable: merging with the competition.(Inside Track)
November 1, 2003... FIVE YEARS AGO, one of the city's most celebrated youth service agencies faced a conundrum. The Door was an innovative grassroots group that had consistently won lavish praise and funding for its teens-only services like legal aid, homework...

Racial downsizing: will black and Latino social service agencies be casualties of government shrinkage?(Inside Track)(New York City's Administration for Children's Services phasing out contracts)
November 1, 2003... NONPROFITS ARE CALLING it the perfect storm: Government, foundations and private donors are all cutting back on their support for social services. But no nonprofit agencies are quite as petrified as community-based groups founded in the last...

Busted out: the D.A. has set up shop in Housing Court. It's there to displace big-time drug dealers. Who gets evicted is often another matter.(New York City District Attorney's Narcotics Eviction Program)
November 1, 2003... WHEN CITY DETECTIVES SEARCHED for the secrets hiding in Maximo Perez's bedroom closet this past winter, they found small plastic baggies, more than 50 of them, along with a $60 digital scale, a quarter ounce and more of cocaine and, under the...

Buying a piece of hell: thousands of New Yorkers have relocated to the Poconos seeking bargain homes--and found themselves embroiled in a mass real-estate ripoff.
November 1, 2003... On a Saturday afternoon in early September in the Pocono Mountains town of East Stroudshurg, the air and sky seemed cleaner than they ever do in New York City. But Louis Brown, an MTA bus driver from the Bronx, had not made the trip for fun in...

Home economics: a wave of foreclosures washes the gloss off homeownership.
November 1, 2003... Ali and a friend, both speculators, stood outside the courthouse with certified checks in their pockets, mapping strategy for the day. "I'm not buying that house," said Ali. "When I passed by to look at it, a guy came out and screamed, 'Go...

Record time: documenting police interrogations on video protects defendants and helps prosecutors win cases, too. In many cities, it's the law. To New York cops, it's anathema--which is why the Central Park jogger debacle won't be the last.
November 1, 2003... These days Frank Esposito lives anonymously, in the shadow of the Central Park jogger uproar. The five young Harlem men convicted of attacking and nearly killing a Manhattan woman became causes celebres earlier this year, after an...

Service interruption: if HUD gets out of the homeless services business, who's going to pick up the slack?(The Big Idea)
November 1, 2003... FLOYD WILLIAMS doesn't look much like a gourmet chef. The 52 year old has sharp cheekbones and a concave smile, physical remnants of a long-term heroin habit. But on this particular Thursday, he's the consummate professional: twisting calamari...

Keeping it real: a collection of first-person narratives bypasses pathos to illustrate immigration's rich complexities.(City Lit)(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... Crossing the BLVD: Strangers, Neighbors, Aliens in a New America By Warren Lehrer and Judith Sloan W.W. Norton & Company, 400 pages, $35 "ALWAYS MY MOTHER is with problems in her mind which is why she almost got hit by car crossing Queens...

Working Stiffs, Union Maids, Reds, and Riffraff: an Expanded Guide to Films About Labor.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By Tom Zaniello Cornell University Press, $52.50 Here's the most fun you'll ever have reading a 400-page tome on labor. Zaniello, a National Labor College professor, has updated his encyclopedia of movies about the blue-collar world to...

The Betrayal of Work.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By Beth Shulman The New Press, $29.95 You read Barbara Ehrenreich's Nickel and Dimed, now here's the study companion. Shulman's slim volume offers an articulate round-up of the policy decisions that leave millions working for pennies. A...

No Fire Next Time: Black-Korean Conflicts and the Future of America's Cities.(Book Review)
November 1, 2003... By Patrick D. Joyce Cornell University Press, $45 Here's a cautionary note for voters considering Mayor Bloomberg's nonpartisan elections proposal this month. Joyce asks why L.A. and New York City neighborhoods dealt with inter-ethnic...

Model cities: what New York can learn from the economic recoveries in Houston and L.A.(NYC Inc.)
November 1, 2003... NEW YORK'S ECONOMIC policymakers probably don't spend a lot of time sitting around lamenting, "Why can't we be more like Houston?" But maybe they should. New Yorkers are not known for their willingness to look outside the city limits...