City Limits articles from September 2004

City Limits archives from September 2004

Supporting the storytellers.(Editorial)(Editorial)
September 1, 2004... FORGIVE YOUR EDITOR, Alyssa Katz. She let her boss heist this column to say goodbye. It's a rare opportunity for an executive director to say a few parting words in print. I figured the best thing I could do is explain what I thought this...

More ways to encourage healthy eating.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... Tracie McMillan's July/August article about the food justice movement ["The Action Diet"] was an excellent overview of programs that are working to ensure that kids are developing life-long habits for healthy eating. As the article highlights,...

Supporting life after prison.(Letters)(Letter to the Editor)
September 1, 2004... As the director of Hour Children, a nonprofit charity providing five residential programs for incarcerated mothers and their children, the article on Fortune Academy ["Return Address," June] was of particular interest to me. Its work deserves...

Domestic partnership.(FrontLines)
September 1, 2004... AS THE JUNE SUN shone on the white siding of 205 Macon Street, officials from the federal and city housing agencies took an hour to celebrate a precious event: a successful collaboration. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is...

Running against the elections: in a record year for fundraising, nonprofits get shortchanged.(FrontLines)
September 1, 2004... HUGH HOGAN FEARED an election year might make it tougher to do fundraising, but he never thought it could get this bad. With more money being sucked up by the Bush and Kerry campaigns this year than ever before for a presidential election,...

Begging for bennies.(Civil Rights)
September 1, 2004... THE CITY COUNCIL made history in June when it overrode a mayoral veto and passed the Equal Benefits Bill, requiring any enterprise with a city contract of $100,000 or more to provide health insurance for domestic partners. But there's still a...

Left out, not behind.(FirstHand)(Interview)
September 1, 2004... MY FAMILY MOVED to Puerto Rico, but we were back in the Bronx a week later. Because I came late to CIS 166, they put me in a messed-up class--the only one with space. The teacher left after a few months for a better paying job in Maryland. We...

Doctoroff's end run.(FrontLines)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... This spring, Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff pulled off a winning play in his quest to redevelop the far West Side of Manhattan and construct a new stadium for the Jets there: The city switched from a financing scheme that requires outside approval...

Government goes green?(Environment)
September 1, 2004... SAN FRANCISCO has done it. Seattle has done it. Even Dallas, Texas, has done it. Now some City Council members want New York to join the list of cities with green building codes for government facilities. This spring, Councilmember Jim...

TIL: it's too late.(Housing)(Tenant Interim Lease)
September 1, 2004... THREE YEARS AGO, the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development sent tenants in several buildings in Washington Heights notices that their homes were entering the Neighborhood Redevelopment Program. NRP would bring in a community...

The green lady: a landmark brownfields law mutates into a massive tax giveaway to the times and other big developers.(InsideTrack)
September 1, 2004... IN WILLIAMSBURG, Brooklyn, Hasidic, Latino and African-American residents are locked in a ferocious battle for living space. Yet 12 acres on the border between East Williamsburg and Bushwick stand empty, save for barbed-wire fences and tangled...

Making rent: City Hall wants to help poor New Yorkers pay their landlords. The new vouchers are supposed to prevent homelessness. They may also have a hidden cost.
September 1, 2004... Anthony Labaschi wasn't going anywhere. Seven months behind in rent and about to lose his Queens apartment, the retired Army vet barricaded himself inside and fired three shots through the door at a city marshal who had come to evict him....

Adios, Nueva York: as New York gets unbearably pricey, tens of thousands of Puerto Ricans are heading for the hinterlands to find el sueno americano. But it's not so easy to leave the old city behind.
September 1, 2004... Squint and you could be in Bushwick, the South Bronx or East Harlem. Unsquint and you're in a place once known--to old-timers' delight and newcomers' disgust--as the "All-America" city. It's a warm, stroll-the-sidewalks evening in spring, and...

The match game: Individual Development Accounts are a popular way to help people without assets invest in their futures. But what started as a boost for the poor has become a subsidy for success stories. Here's how it happened--and what we can do to invest in equity.
September 1, 2004... ALMOST A DECADE after credit unions, community development groups, banks and other organizations started opening Individual Development Accounts to give struggling Americans a boost, the results from this national experiment in promoting...

Getting back to work: black male unemployment is here to stay--unless we reconstruct jobs policy for the real economy.(How to Keep New York Working)
September 1, 2004... IT'S NOT NEWS that the economic damage of the recent recession and subsequent "jobless recovery" was unevenly spread. While employment has ticked upward in 2004, many of the groups hit hardest in the downturn have endured the added injury of a...

Though single women flooded the workforce in droves after welfare reform, they've also been some of the first to leave, notes this brief.(New Reports)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Though single women flooded the workforce in droves after welfare reform, they've also been some of the first to leave, notes this brief. Employment among single moms grew by 11.2 percent between 1995 and 2000, but that level dropped 3.2 points...

New York felons may have a tough row to hoe, but it's still the softest in the country, according to this assessment of state policies affecting people with criminal records.(New Reports)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... New York felons may have a tough row to hoe, but it's still the softest in the country, according to this assessment of state policies affecting people with criminal records. Gauging the "road-blocks" ex-offenders face upon their release from...

Now that the welfare masses have moved into jobs, the big question is how to ensure they make ends meet.(New Reports)(Brief Article)
September 1, 2004... Now that the welfare masses have moved into jobs, the big question is how to ensure they make ends meet. As an overview of previous research and an assessment of new data, this policy brief argues that workers' social mobility may well depend...

Roman a klepto: a gadfly's predatory-lending potboiler.(City Lit)(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Predatory Bender: America in the Aughts: A Story of Subprime Finance By Matthew Lee Inner City Press, 456 pages, $19.95 BRANDING MATTERS, even on the Left. Think of the "Battle for Seattle" demo. Was it the most important...

Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, and the Neoliberal City.(Now Read This)(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Barrio Dreams: Puerto Ricans, and the Neoliberal City Arlene Davila University of California Press, $19.95 Spanish Harlem, East Harlem: Both are monikers for a stretch of Upper Manhattan now hot turf for gentrification. Davila...

Check it While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere.(Now Read This)(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Check it While I Wreck It: Black Womanhood, Hip-Hop Culture, and the Public Sphere Gwendolyn D. Pough Northeastern University Press, $20 Find yourself drawn to the spunk and politics of hip-hop, but repelled by the misogyny of...

Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap.(Now Read This)(Book Review)
September 1, 2004... Class and Schools: Using Social, Economic and Educational Reform to Close the Black-White Achievement Gap Richard Rothstein Columbia University Teachers College and Economic Policy Institute, $17.95 Heroic teachers and model...