Strycker’s Bay’s Eviction Prevention Program and Helpline Overwhelmed with Requests for Help

Did you know?

New York City's Homeless Shelter Population 1990-2010 has steadily increased over the past twenty years:

Total number of homeless people in municipal shelters: October 1990 19,877

Total number of homeless people in municipal shelters: October 2000 24,537

Total number of homeless people in municipal shelters: October 2010 37,987

and

According to Testimony given at the Rent Guidelines Board Hearing by Community Service Society’s Victor Bach and Tom Waters in April 2010: 

…“The RGB 2010 Income and Affordability Study does a thorough job of updating some of the key indicators of economic stress and housing hardship in New York City from 2008 to 2009. It presents an unmitigated picture of mounting stresses for New Yorkers across the city:

·         NYC jobs lost 106,800 (2.8% decrease since 2008)

·         Average Unemployment Rate 9.4% in 2009, compared to 5.4 % in 2008

·         Inflation-Adjusted Wages Decrease of 3.4 % since 2008

·         Homeless Shelter Census Average 35,915, 7% increase since 2008.

·         First-Time Homeless Clients 17.0 increase since 2008

·         Non-Payment Housing Court Filings 2.3 increase since 2008

·         Evictions 7.5 % increase since 2008 .”..

Even at a time when our state funding has been cut by $30,000, our Eviction Prevention Program and Helpline has experienced an overwhelming increase in requests for assistance. During the last 30 days we have received more than 70 requests for assistance and are now managing more than 30 eviction cases. We work with each tenant until there is no longer a threat of eviction. Cases can take anywhere between two weeks to two months to resolve.

Janice Bethea, our lead Eviction Prevention Counselor and Gerry Peralta a Housing Intern from Hunter College have been diligently working with families and individuals to stop their eviction. The people they are working with have found themselves in a position that has upset the stability of their households and has placed them in a frightening situation. Janice and Gerry do all they can to connect them to the resources that will help bring stability back in to their lives.

But I will admit here that we struggle to keep up with the request as we find ourselves having to relocate our office space that will cost more than twice the rent we pay now in addition to moving and repair expenses. More about our move in a later post

It’s a tough time for all right now, but with support from volunteers, contributors and our strategic partners we will get through this difficult period.

If you, your friends and family are considering year end contributions, please consider giving to Strycker’s Bay. We are also in need of some immediate in-kind contributions of items such as:

Paint
Primer

Paint Rollers, Brushes and Pan
Cleaning Supplies

Volunteers to Help Clean, Paint and Move

Also please look out for other opportunities to contribute and get involved with Strycker’s Bay through individual and corporate sponsorship of our upcoming fundraising “New York City: Through My Eyes” a photographic exhibit by neighborhood and NYC photographers scheduled to take place in April 2011 and an event – Community Matters -- we have planned for January 20, 2011 I will share more about the both next week.

Until the next post….

Kelley

Yep, We're Still Here -- Alive and Kicking ...and Fighting Too!

I feel terribly guilty for not posting to Neighborhood Commons for more than two weeks. I started this blog as a way to keep the community informed of and connected to the goings on here at Strycker’s Bay. I knew it was a huge undertaking when I started and I/we are committed to keeping this blog open and flowing with “All the news that’s fit to print”…at least as it relates to all matters Strycker’s Bay (smile).

Now with that apology out of the way and the heavy weight of my guilt lifted, let me tell you what has kept this blog silent over the past few weeks.

Well first of all as I reported here last month, we are being evicted by the five unit low-income HDFC on West 87^th Street.  We secured renovation funds for this building (and a dozen others) and helped obtain its annual tax abatement of more than $60,000 reducing their yearly tax bill to just over $5,000 per year. 

We are scrambling to represent ourselves in court since they broke their promise to allow us to remain in our space until December 31, 2010 with no rent payments. I was in Housing Court on Friday November 5^th and had to deal with the HDFC’s horrible and heartless attorney. I am afraid this is going to get ugly.

We have secured office space at the DOME Project offices located at 486 Amsterdam Avenue. We have been developing a strategic partnership with The DOME that we believe will help both organizations increase their capacity to serve the community. We are looking forward to becoming office mates.

We will also have a satellite office space located at 72 West 109^th Street. We are very excited that we will be able to offer easy access to our programs to the residents in the Manhattan Valley community.

So far we have Strycker’s Bay facing eviction, going to court, developing strategic partnerships, moving and trying to find an interested reporter to investigate the sale of HDFC units for hundreds of thousands of dollars while they benefit from generous tax abatements designed to keep the buildings affordable to low-income people. Whew!

Oh wait there’s more. We have an event planned for January 20, 2010 to be hosted by City Council Member Gale Brewer at her home. It a community networking event and information sharing opportunity for West Side organizations, associations, residents, leaders and elected officials. The theme “Community Matters” will offer an opportunity for West Sider’s to connect and exchange information about their organization and community matters of interest to them.

We will also recognize three teens for their leadership and work in the community. The 2010 Doris Rosenblum Youth Leadership Awards will be presented at the Community Matters event as well. We have some awesome young people doing great things and we can’t wait to share their stories with you.

There is so much more we have going on, but I have to keep this post short. However, I will be posting more information about the many new and exciting things going on at Strycker’s Bay. Just in case you were wondering, no we have not received any new grants to manage all the activity buzzing around “The Bay”. We are fighters and resourceful fighters at that. The fighting spirit of those who led Strycker’s Bay before us, Father Harry Brown, Doris Rosenblum, Sondra Thomas, Bob Shur, Louise Singleton, and many more still continue to live on in every staff member, board member and volunteer. 

However, please take note, we are still looking for financial resources to replace the $55,000 in funding we recently lost – please do not hesitate to send any leads or ideas our way (wink).

Until the next post…

Kelley

Community Matters

Last Friday afternoon, I nervously took the podium in front of a small audience at The Municipal Art Society’s Summit for New York City. I was honored to accept the Yolanda Garcia Community Planner Award. I prepared a speech that I hoped would be able to tell the story of how I became involved in urban planning at the community, grassroots level.

I knew the facts, I had to it was my story, but what I didn’t know is how deeply I had been hurt as an a small child by my own housing conditions and my family’s inability to access decent affordable housing in our economically and culturally diverse community – The Upper West Side.

I felt a lump in my throat while tears rolled down my face as I shared with everyone how devastated I was when my mother had to tell my brother and I that we wouldn’t be moving into 65 West 96^th Street. Also known as Tower West, a newly constructed Mitchell-Lama building in 1971, was to provide affordable housing for low and moderate income tenants. My mother applied for Tower West when I was 10 years old back in 1971, but we were ineligible because my mother did not earn enough money to pay the monthly rent of $300. 

We would have to remain where we lived at 328 West 96 Street, just off the West Side Highway near Riverside Drive. It was a very scary building where muggings often took place and heroin junkies used to shoot up.

I didn’t know until I shared my story at the MAS Summit for New York City, how painful that memory was for me.  Last Friday, as I recalled how I became involved in community organizing and planning I uncovered how deeply hurt I was by these particular events in my childhood. I discovered that my personal pain was the fuel for the important work I am involved in at Strycker’s Bay. It wasn’t only the injustice I believed families of this community were facing; it was my own very painful experience as a little girl that drew me in. I knew what it was like to be a child living in a place that was not only over crowded, but unsafe. 

Home should be a decent, safe place to live. Without the safety of a place to call home, it is difficult for children and their families to thrive. Research has shown that "risk factors such as poor physical conditions and low economic resources in a neighborhood threaten school outcomes" (Woolley et al.) The West Side is and has always been a wonderful place to live and working to maintain its diversity as a community for ALL has always been part of Strycker’s Bay’s mission. 

All of our programs focus on supporting families and their efforts to thrive and remain in their community. As I discovered a longtime ago affordable housing matters, community matters, and people matter. 

Strycker’s Bay programs include:

Eviction Prevention Helpline

Affordable Housing Helpline

LACASA After School Program

LACASA Summer Camp Program

Projects Now Under Development

LACASA Parent and Student Advocacy Program

LACASA Academic Tutoring and Support Program

Community Matters

We have a "Community Matters" event planned for early December where we will hope to network with our neighbors and share the projects and programs we are engaged in. We also want to hear from our neighbors on the work they are doing to create and maintain a livable West Side.

Until the next post...

Kelley

ZERO TOLERANCE

I don’t like jumping on bandwagons but as I have been bombarded with news reports, commentary and statistics on bullying, I feel compelled to jump in here. Especially since Strycker’s Bay provides after school programming for more than 200 children each school day.

First of all I must offer full disclosure here. I was bullied in elementary school from the time I was in third grade until I graduated the sixth grade. I attended PS 75 on West 96^th Street and West End Avenue from 1967 to 1972.  The last three years of school where torture. I never wanted to go to school and spent a good part of my day dodging those who thought it was necessary to pick on me unprovoked.

What I want to point out here is that victims of bullying are not only physically and verbally abused, they are abused emotionally because they are targeted for no apparent reason. I think this is what makes bullying so harmful and makes children feel helpless. They can not make sense of their perpetrators actions. They can’t understand what it is they have done to make someone obsessively target them for harm. Getting into an argument or disagreement on the playground that results in a physical fight or exchange of verbal insults can be made sense of, and shouldn’t be confused with bullying. Those situations can be mediated and diffused.

Perpetrators or bullies have another agenda which only makes sense to them and can not be mediated because there goal is to make their victim powerless. Are children who bully evil? No. But they need to be dealt with and their victim’s pleas for intervention should not be ignored.

When I was ten years old, one of the school bullies (I still remember her name to this day) arbitrarily targeted me. She came to my classroom door, knocked on the window and let me know that I needed to watch out at 3 o’clock. I didn’t even know her. Her threats, taunts and physical attacks haunted me everyday. But one day I lost it. I went to the Vice-Principal’s office and told him and his assistant what was going on. I was crying and telling them that I needed them to help me. They told me to ignore her. Frustrated, I stormed out of their office. They ordered me to return to the office. I screamed at the top of my lungs in the school hall “YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO PROTECT ME!” and proceeded to run down the three flights of stairs to the school’s entrance and burst out of the school building with adults calling after me. I went straight home feeling outrage that the adults who are charged with keeping order in the school building would tell me to ignore this bully’s threats of physical harm especially since she had followed through on them before. I was not making a big deal out of a small matter.

The message here is that there must be a ZERO TOLERANCE for bullying on the part of the adults in charge. Period.

At Strycker’s Bay’s youth program LACASA, there is zero tolerance for bullying, fighting, and targeting others for teasing and taunts. If children engage in that type of behavior, they are called on it immediately and we discuss it with them. We work to teach them the impact their taunts and bullying has on others,  themselves and the overall program

This approach has made LACASA the safe place it has been for over 18 years. If children do not feel safe how can they learn? How can they feel free to express themselves, explore and learn about the world around them, if the have to constantly look over their shoulder  to make sure their perpetrator isn’t sitting and waiting to pounce.

Teachers, counselors and parents, we have an obligation to create an atmosphere for learning that is safe and promotes freedom of expression and individuality. Children must learn early on to embrace the differences in others.

I met one of the parents of a new LACASA kid last Friday in the supermarket. He asked me how everything was going and then proceeded to tell me that LACASA is one of the reasons his daughter gets up to go to school everyday. I am proud to say that we have been able to create a place of inclusiveness. LACASA kids do not have to worry about anything other than…”do we have soccer today?” I had to worry if I was going to get out of school early enough to escape the wrath and rage of the angry little girl who made me her target for verbal and physical harm.

Until the next post,

Kelley

Leaving You This Week With A Snippet From Our Art Auction

The Underground Art Collective event held at El Taller on September 11, 2010 was AWESOME!!! The crowd was diverse and engaging. It was wonderful to see so many people from all walks of life come together to support Strycker's Bay and the Artists that contributed their work.

Do We Tell Them To Move? A Resounding NO!

No, not at Strycker’s Bay, we never tell a tenant to move. There are a variety reasons tenants face eviction. Loss of income, family emergency, increased rent, etc.; and there are many financial resources through charities and government agencies that can provide emergency relief. That’s the good news. The unfortunate news is that unless tenants can meet the “future ability” to pay requirement, none of these resources will come through for the tenant and they are left to fend for themselves

.

If a tenant that has recently lost their job  and is receiving unemployment insurance, but the income is not sufficient to cover all living expenses including rent they will not receive the emergency financial assistance they need. This is true even if you owe as little as one or two months’ rent. Yes, folks things are that tough!

Strycker’s Bay, does not turn people away who are facing eviction because their eligibility for assistance is not neatly lined up for easy access. We work with tenants to identify and take inventory of their own resources and support and then we get to work on helping the tenant map out a strategy to access employment, a roommate, work supports such as food stamps and Medicaid – whatever it takes. Sometimes all it takes is time. 

Getting additional time for tenants while they secure a job or make life altering decisions can help save a family from eviction. Our staff “strategists” never turn anyone away because their circumstances do not fit nicely into an eligibility category – these are usually the individuals and families that fall through the cracks. Strycker’s Bay works very hard to insure there is a “safety net” for tenants in crisis. 

In 2009 more that 250,000 tenants were taken to court for non-payment of rent; more than 47,000 tenants had judgments entered against them because they failed to respond to court actions initiated against them, while there were more than 124,000 residential warrants of eviction issued.

During the 12 month program year that ended June 30, 2010, Strycker’s Bay provided more than 950 housing counseling services to area residents and prevented 425 evictions.

THE STRYCKER’S BAY NEIGHBORHOOD COUNCIL EVICTION PREVENTION HELPLINE

Strycker’s Bay has set aside time each weekday for tenants facing eviction to call in to our Eviction Prevention Helpline. 347-770-SBNC. The Helpline operates Monday through Friday from 10:30AM to 12:30PM. Incoming calls for assistance outside of the designated hours will be returned the next weekday.  Walk in assistance is available on Wednesdays from 10:30AM to 12:30PM.

WE NEED YOUR HELP

We are looking for volunteers and college interns to help staff our helpline and eviction prevention program, if you or someone you know are interested, please contact Strycker’s Bay at 212-874-7272 and ask for Kelley or Ramon.

Until the next post,

Kelley 

Just Thought I Would Share...

Winner of Grassroots Community Planning Award Announced

-- From The Municipal Art Society website:
MAS congratulates Kelley Williams, the winner of the 2010 Yolanda Garcia Community Planner (YGCP) Award. The award acknowledges the hard-working leaders of grassroots, community-based planning. MAS created the award in 2007 to commemorate Yolanda Garcia, a community activist in the South Bronx. Yolanda Gonzalez, the daughter of Ms. Garcia, will present Williams with the award on October 22, at the MAS Summit for New York City.


Ms. Williams has been a community organizer for more than three decades, working to maintain an ethnically, racially, and economically diverse Upper West Side. At the age of thirteen, she became involved in community and tenant organizing. Since then, Williams has organized hundreds of low-income tenants on the West Side. In 1991, she organized parents to form a small, community-based public middle school named the Community Action School (CAS). Today, CAS has an enrollment of 230 students, and is committed to serving an academically and culturally diverse student body. Then, in 1993, Williams developed and secured funding for the Learning Action Center for Academic Success and Achievement (LACASA). The program is designed to help school-age children of all learning abilities reach their academic potential through after-school and summer programs. LACASA is now operating programs in two public schools and enrolls more than 250 participants each year.

Currently, as executive director of Strycker’s Bay Neighborhood Council, Ms. Williams assists low-income residents of the Upper West Side in overcoming challenges related to affordable housing, economic self-sufficiency, and neighborhood revitalization.




I am truly honored...



Enjoy the weekend...until the next post




Kelley