For your

Monday, January 3, 2011

Red Hook’s Zoning Battle: Housing versus Industry

By Lea Khayata.
Jay Amato thought he had it all planned. He was going to build his own house on a piece of land he bought at the corner of Van Brunt and Conover streets in Red Hook, Brooklyn. But the city rejected his construction permit for not complying with the zoning requirements. Amato’s property is zoned M (manufacturing). His construction plan called for workshops and offices on the ground floor of the building, with his apartment on top of it. But the residential part of the building was considered too important to comply with the requirements of an M zone.

Amato’s struggle is one of many identical fights over zoning in the neighborhood, a battle that has been going on for years. In 1961, the city zoned the five boroughs for the first time and designated almost all of Red Hook for manufacturing.

Historically, it had always been a mixed-use neighborhood with factories and houses standing side by side. Coffey Street, for example, is zoned manufacturing even though one side of the block between Ferris and Conover streets is lined with 19^thcentury brick houses.

Department of City Planning zoning of Red Hook. (Credit: The Manhattan Institute)

But manufacturing has been on the decline in the area for decades and the demand for housing is growing in the city, leading to a growing movement to revitalize Red Hook around a core of new housing. The advocates in the community and allies like the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research are pushing for rezoning to convert the M zones to residential or MX (mixed-use).

Part of the community has been advocating for decades for more housing as the key to redevelopment of the neighborhood and their voices are getting stronger. The Red Hook Civic Association paired with local businesses and proposed a plan with guidelines for developing the area around the creating of 2,600 housing units.

During the first half of the twentieth century, maritime industry was thriving in Red Hook. The Erie Basin was a major shipping hub and the Atlantic Dock Company was the most important employer in the neighborhood. Longshoremen would live in Red Hook and walk to work every day.

Containerization in the 1950’s ended Red Hook’s status as a major harbor. Big shipping companies preferred to move their business to New Jersey’s larger harbor. The land on the waterfront was abandoned and seized by the city, which undertook major reconstruction projects, demolishing some warehouses and renovating others. Maritime workers left the neighborhood, unable to find a job.

The neighborhood then went through a dark period plagued with crime and drug. New Yorkers didn’t go there, it was considered too dangerous.

In the last twenty years, Red Hook has undergone a revitalization process. Local businesses have flourished on Van Brunt Street, from restaurants to clothing shops, and the number of people moving to Red Hook is increasing every day. People come to the waterfront during the weekend, whether by car, by bike or by ferry. They go to the Ikea and the Fairway supermarket, which both opened in 2004, visit the farmer’s market and enjoy the sun on Valentino Pier, watching the fishermen set their lines on the dock facing the Statue of Liberty.

Despite this renewed interest, Red Hook’s population is still only half of the 20,000 people who lived there in the 60s.

“It means that Red Hook has the infrastructure to accommodate a much more bigger population.” says Mitchell Korbey, an urban planner and land use attorney in New York City and a former director of the Department of City Planning’s Brooklyn office.

The movement to redevelop Red Hook around the twin pillars of rezoning and new housing began in 1994 with Plan Red Hook.

Red Hook, a Plan for Revitalization, identified guidelines to turn Red Hook into a dynamic neighborhood where light industry and mixed-income housing could cohabit harmoniously.

In addition to the extra 2,600 housing units, the plan identified thirteen blocks on Van Brunt Street down to the waterfront to be rezoned from manufacture to mixed-use, precisely to reach this balance between housing and industry. The plan only enunciates recommendations in the hope that they will be followed when decisions concerning the neighborhood will have to be taken by the City or the Community Board. The City approved a lighter version of the plan in 1996, but it isn’t binding in any way.

For example, only a portion of those thirteen blocks was rezoned in 2004 as a private zone change. It belonged to Greg O’Connell, Red Hook’s biggest landowner. He was consequently able to turn the Civil War era warehouse he bought into a Fairway supermarket, adding rental housing units on top of the building. A member of the Community Board, O’Connell first opposed the plan advocating for this area to be rezoned.

One of the main arguments in favor of keeping zoning as it is in Red Hook is that there is still some unused land in the residential zone and that no change should be made before this space is occupied. Tom Angotti, an urban planning professor at Hunter’s college who worked on the plan, refutes that idea: “It’s strictly a market approach. It’s logical from a short planned point of view but if the Department of City Planning were real planners, they would see beyond that to what is needed for Red Hook’s future.”

For John McGettrick, a member of the Red Hook Civic Association, the math is simple: “More housing means more workers for the area, and more customers for local businesses.” It also means replacing industry with houses, and raising the value of the land, if one takes the other point of view on the question.

Officially, the Department of City Planning keeps an “open door policy” to any zone change request. But Red Hook’s waterfront has been identified as an Industrial Business Zone (IBZ). According to the mayor’s office website, “the IBZs represent areas in which the City provides expanded assistance services to industrial firms in partnership with local development groups.? In addition, IBZs reflect a commitment by the City not to support the re-zoning of industrial land for residential use within these areas.”

Manufacture is not dead in Red Hook. “It is certainly changing, and niche manufacturing, particularly in the food industry and design, is still on the rise. “ says Southwest Brooklyn Industrial Development Corporation (SBIDC) executive director, Josh Keller. Those activities are compatible with M zonings, and even protected by them, because the zoning designation ensures low rents. If it was to be switched to MX zoning, the price of rent would rise and small manufacturing businesses might get pushed out by commerce or housing.

Jay Amato, the unlucky owner of the corner of Van Brunt and Conover Streets, thinks his construction permit was rejected to avoid “setting an example” in the neighborhood. According to him, a lot of people expressed interest in his project and in reproducing it in Red Hook.

Amato didn’t want to build just one more building in Red Hook. He wanted to build a house that wouldn’t consume any energy, a project he labeled “Red Hook Green”. Renewable technologies were to provide the house with the energy it needed, making it completely independent from the traditional energy suppliers.

Amato has been blogging about it for a little more than a year, and now considers attracting too much attention on the project might have been a mistake after all. He is considering going for a variance – an appeal that would take between one and two years and cost him as much as $100,000 in various fees, with no guarantee of succeeding. It would allow him to build his house despite the zoning, a process many people decide to go through in the neighborhood to get around the zoning issue.

But some disagree with this strategy. Greg O’Connell, who built the Fairway and owns more than 80 properties in Red Hook considers zoning in Red Hook as the chance to keep it as a balanced neighborhood. “People want to live here. I can understand why and there’s nothing wrong with that. But the small business owners are happy here and it’s productive for them. If you lose the working waterfront, if you give it up to residential development, you never get it back.” said O’Connell to the Center for an Urban Future in 2005.

The zoning issue is at the heart of Red Hook’s future. Keeping the dominant M zoning on the waterfront would preserve and supposedly bring back industries to the neighborhood, a prospect about which there is much skepticism among developers like Amato.

“It’s like waiting for Santa Claus to come,” he says.

On the other hand, allowing for more residential zoning has its own risks. It would bring more people to Red Hook, but some fear the threat of high-rise building being erected on the waterfront and pushing away manufactures.

For Mitchell Korbey, Red Hook is a very complicated area, with a lot of history and undergoing changes. “It is hard to strike the right balance.”

This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php
Five Filters featured site: So, Why is Wikileaks a Good Thing Again?.

View the original article here

Community Programs Fill Childhood Obesity Policy Gaps

Teens pass out information on childhood obesity and healthy eating outside Lutheran Medical Center (Courtesy Health Plus)

By Faaria Kherani

Over the past year, Mayor Bloomberg has implemented a variety of policies to combat childhood obesity, but New York City doctors, health educators, and the Health Department’s own representatives are now saying the policies alone will not be enough to lower the childhood obesity rate.

“There’s no one answer,” says Health Department representative Cathy Nonas.

Nonas says the city’s policies, which include providing healthier foods in schools, stipulating 120 minutes of exercise per week in school, and providing food stamps for farmer’s markets, cannot inherently change children’s behavior outside of school. Children are strongly influenced by their home and community environments, which are difficult for the city to reach.

Nonas, many pediatricians, and families dealing with childhood obesity say the mayor’s policies need to be supplemented by local initiatives.

And that seems to be happening, at least in an incipient way in Brooklyn and across New York City, where community organizations are filling policy gaps by stepping up to provide individualized health alternatives in low-income, immigrant communities.

According to the Health Department, 40 percent of kindergartners through eighth-graders – over 250,000 kids – in NYC are overweight or obese. Compared to the national child obesity rate of 30 percent, New York City is one of the leaders in the childhood obesity count.

Some new initiatives are easy to spot, like “Let’s Move” in Brooklyn led by Michelle Obama to target childhood obesity. But there are countless initiatives happening every week that have the local resources to target specific neighborhoods and families. These initiatives include Lutheran Family Health Center’s adult and child educational programs in Sunset Park, local distribution of information on healthy eating in different Brooklyn neighborhoods, and events held by a number of community gardens and food co-ops by neighborhood.

One community program was created by Health Plus, a not-for-profit healthcare plan. In 2008 it started a Teen Advisory Board program in 2008 as a way to change behavior by getting children involved in their own health. These teens believe that it is more effective to listen to each other than to a wide-sweeping government policy. So far the Teen Advisory Board has published pamphlets distributed throughout the community and invited guest speakers for educational meetings.

Health Educator Wendy Dominguez says the kids know how to reach other kids better than policies or teachers, because they know how a child’s mind works. This is one area where policy is currently less effective.

The Board’s participants come largely from the Sunset Park area, a neighborhood with a large Hispanic population.

Studies have shown a distinct correlation among high rates of obesity, race, and income. ?Hispanics and African Americans tend to be heavier than Caucasians and Asians.

Mayor Bloomberg has been doing his part by targeting low-income, immigrant neighborhoods through the school system. School vending machines no longer carry sodas and vegetable portions have been increased in lunches.

In November, Journey for Change, an organization that encourages children in the Greater New York area to become active in social change, asked kids to comment on its blog why they think one in three children are overweight or obese in New York City, and what they think of Mayor Bloomberg’s policies.

“Today in the school ‘salad’ they served raw broccoli and tomatoes,” wrote Rochelle. “I notice that many children throw it in the garbage because they did not think it was right to serve raw broccoli and call it salad.” Many kids also asked for a variety of fruit throughout the week instead of the same one day after day. Some policy changes are unattractive to kids, who then throw out their lunch and go to McDonald’s when school is out.

“I think it’s hard to fundamentally change what kids eat in school, because then they go outside and could completely negate that,” says Dr. Mary McCord, Associate Professor of Pediatrics and Public Health at Columbia University. McCord works with children whose eating habits are too deeply ingrained to be completely overhauled in school. “A lot of kids I’ve worked with think that drinking soda is their birthright!”

Health Plus’ Teen Advisory Board encourages teens to talk about health and how to make healthy eating choices seem attractive to kids. Participants use bold fonts, bright colors, and easy to understand language to write articles on a variety of topics including healthy eating and exercise. The articles are personal and funny, written by teens themselves, which is a far cry from the standard, bullet-point Health Department pamphlets previously distributed.

“They thought the old pamphlets were boring,” says Dominguez. “They said, ‘No one’s going to read that!’”

Child participation in healthy living initiatives would also help solve problems like negative peer pressure, says one Chinese resident. When she first moved to the United States, her children hated fast food. But as time went by, her children wanted to fit in with their classmates, and now they eat McDonald’s regularly.

“It’s a social thing for them, to be able to go to McDonald’s with their friends and hang out,” she says.

Dominguez says children need to take part in changing the way kids eat and exercise because ultimately children have the most persuasive power over one another.

“If they invest in it, they’ll tell their friends, ‘Hey, look what I’m doing!’” says Dominguez. Dr. McCord and Nonas say community initiatives have the power to make Bloomberg’s policies work faster.

While Health Plus addresses teen participation in health education, other initiatives are working to supplement lack of exercise time in schools. According to Dr. McCord, the most effective way to combat childhood obesity is to make sure children get the 120 minutes of exercise per week that is mandated by New York State. This is not yet happening in many schools.

On October 28, NETS basketball player Daryl Dawkins greeted approximately 400 students from four schools in the Sunset Park area to talk about fitness and dietary habits at the third annual Shoot for Better Health event. Students were able to learn from someone they looked up to as a role model.

“It is essential that we aggressively prevent childhood obesity now, before these kids grow up with a disadvantage,” said Principal Jack Spatola of P.S. 172 at the first Shoot for Better Health event in 2008. “Many of our students’ parents don’t understand and don’t trust the healthcare system.”

Many low-income families find healthcare and healthy food too expensive to rely on regularly. Kids often show up to school with quarter water – artificially flavored sugar water – and chips for an unhealthy breakfast that costs only two quarters.

Rossman Fruit and Vegetable District on Third Avenue is one of the very few fresh food providers in Sunset Park.? Many shoppers are surprised the store even exists in Sunset Park, and they are worried it won’t last long. Its location across from a liquor story and adult video shop only increases the skepticism.

“I’ve been noticing a steady increase of Park Slope types as of late,” said a regular shopper, “which more than likely means that Rossman’s days as a reasonably-priced, unpretentious produce market are numbered.” He is worried the prices will jump and he will be forced to search for cheaper fresh produce in other areas.

Nonas says the city is trying to increase access to affordable, healthy food by giving out “health bucks,” which are food stamps that can be used at farmer’s markets only. For every $5 of food stamps a family receives, they then get $2 of health bucks. Nonas says the Health Department has given out a quarter of a million dollars in health bucks this year.

But the minute people run out of food stamps, it’s back to cheap meals at McDonald’s. Some families are also trading health bucks for normal food stamps so that they can buy more of their favorite foods. Children may be eating healthy in school, but they go home to an environment that endorses unhealthy behavior.

In an area like Sunset Park where the out-of-school environment promotes unhealthy behavior and Mayor Bloomberg’s policies are not necessarily changing children’s eating and living habits, community groups are necessary to supplement Bloomberg’s policies.

“You really need both,” says Columbia University’s Dr. Dodi Meyer of policy and community initiatives. “I think it’s not either or, it’s all of them working together.”

View the original article here

Goodbye, 2010

Friday December 31st, 2010

11:00:00 PM

If you’re looking for total blowout to ring in the New Year, or an all-night dance party, or both, we have 11?idears here. We also recommend nonsensenyc for your party planning.

Published on 12.30.10.

View the original article here

Psych 101

Tuesday January 4th, 2011

07:30:00 PM

PARK SLOPE The Adult Education lecture series kicks off the new year with an enlightening show on “Abnormal Psychology” at Union Hall. Host Charles Star will examine Toxoplasma Gondi,?”the parasite that you love when you think you love your cat”; comedian Catie Lazurus will delve into her Jane Austen-obsessed childhood, and three other speakers will edify the audience on mentally unstable couples, the fear of flying, and the shortcomings of the DSM-V. Doors 7:30, show at 8. $5.

Published on 12.30.10.

View the original article here

Fighting For Their Freedom: The Ongoing Struggle between New York’s Psychologically Disabled and the Adult Homes They Live In

Surf Manor in Coney Island is one of the 28 "impacted" adult homes in New York City that are represented in an ongoing legal battle against the state. (Brian Park/The Brooklyn Ink)

By Brian Park

Coney Island winters can be unforgiving. Gone are the tourists and beachgoers of the summer months. The cold winds, exacerbated in their fury by the Atlantic, bite at exposed skin like an unyielding flurry of tiny whips. The sidewalks are mostly bare.

But there is at least one place in Coney Island where it isn’t hard to find people moving about. Down a barren avenue, past Nathan’s Famous and MCU Park, is where you’ll find Surf Manor. The building’s red brick fa?ade stands out against the general brown, grey and black of its surroundings. Despite its glamorous name, Surf Manor is not some fancy hotel or local hot spot. Surf Manor is an adult home for the psychologically disabled.

Outside its doors, it is common to find a number of residents huddled together against the cold, smoking cigarette after cigarette. With every swing of the door, the smoke penetrates indoors and permeates every level of the four-story building.

“[Smoking] is a routine for a lot the residents here,” said Norman Bloomfield, a resident of Surf Manor. “There aren’t many stimulating activities for the residents to partake in, so if they’re not in the lobby watching television or sitting idly in their rooms, a lot of residents choose to smoke.”

Bloomfield, 63, is one of the nearly 200 residents at Surf Manor, the overwhelming majority of whom suffer from a psychological disability. In New York City, there are 63 adult care facilities in operation, 17 of which can be found in Brooklyn, the second most of any borough, only behind Queens with 23 facilities.

Surf Manor and other like facilities are specifically classified as adult homes—privately owned, for-profit residential facilities whose tenants are largely made up of the psychologically disabled. The medical profiles of New York City’s 4,600 adult home residents span the gamut of diagnoses, but the way in which they find themselves there is often the same.

Bloomfield, who will have lived at Surf Manor for nine years this coming January, was once a college student at New York University’s now defunct Bronx campus. He was and still is a passionate musician, having attended the Julliard Preparatory School. But somewhere along the line, Bloomfield lost his way, and after a three-month stay in the psychiatric ward at Maimonides Medical Center, he was left with no reasonable option except Surf Manor.

“I didn’t have much choice at the time,” said Bloomfield. “The choice is basically going to a shelter and being homeless or going to an adult home.”

Over the years, there has been plenty that’s been said and written of the abject conditions of New York City’s adult homes. The most notable and often cited of these works is the three-part, 2002 Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative report by the New York Times’ Clifford Levy entitled “Broken Homes.” Through his own investigation, Levy discovered that adult home residents were not only living in modern day squalor but that state and city regulatory groups were doing little to nothing to address the issues and to reprimand adult home operators.

“Whether it’s something as small and criminal as this dump we’re living in or something as sinister and large as the government, people don’t like the truth being told about them,” said John Glusenkamp, another resident of Surf Manor. “Especially when they’re doing bad things.”

But while improving current conditions in adult homes is still an issue, the controversy has shifted considerably in recent years. Since 2003, New York City’s adult home residents and their advocates have been deadlocked in a legal battle with the state over contested discriminatory practices.

At the heart of the issue is freedom. Adult home residents contend that they have very little choice in where they stay, how they live and whether or not they can advance beyond their lives in adult homes. They argue that the New York State Department of Health (DOH) and the state Office of Mental Health (OMH), the two governing bodies that oversee adult homes, have done little to alleviate their current situations and that they are reluctant to offer alternatives.

A victory for residents like Bloomfield and Glusenkamp would signal the most dramatic shift in care for the psychologically disabled since the deinstitutionalization movement of the 1970’s.

The More Things Change, The More They Stay The Same

The proliferation of adult homes came on the heels of the deinstitutionalization movement that began in the 1950’s, continued into the 70’s and to a lesser degree, in the 80’s.

The changes began under the Kennedy administration in 1963 when the United States Congress passed the Community Mental Health Act to provide federal funding for community-based mental health centers. Although President Kennedy’s belief—that “an ounce of prevention is worth more than a pound of care”—is viewed by modern experts as slightly misguided, the government’s growing interest in mental health signaled a shift in public perception of the mentally ill and the large institutions they are often sent to.

“In the 60’s, 70’s and even in the 80’s, if you were diagnosed as schizophrenic, there’s this huge negative perception,” said Glenn Liebman, chief executive officer of the Mental Health Association in New York State. “There’s no way conditions should be like that. There’s no excuse.”

As the poor conditions and ghastly treatment in large institutions came to light, the mentally disabled needed new places to go. Unfortunately, while fewer people with mental disabilities were being sent to psychiatric institutions, there was not yet a uniform system in place for these individuals to live in, receive treatment and rehabilitate.

Soon enough, adult care facilities began to spring up all across the country. These for-profit homes, shrouded by good intentions, were widely accepted by state officials as a relief from the growing number of psychologically disabled persons who were now homeless on the streets or in the prison system.

Unfortunately, adult homes have now become modern day versions of the large institutions America once tried to do away with. Residents are provided room and board but little else. In New York, the DOH and OMH have often promised change but it has come in small, unnoticeable increments.

“There are broad based regulations in place but the reality is, you can regulate forever but you have to change the mindset and direction of both the operators and the residents,” said Liebman. “A lot of residents of the homes have gone straight from a psychiatric center to an adult home. They’ve been run down by the system.”

Adult home residents and their advocates are now fighting for two things: freedom in and from adult homes, and new supported housing that provides a better opportunity to live a normal life. Naturally, adult home operators and state government, motivated by lost income and increased expenses, respectively, have fought against this change.

Trapped In The System

When the psychologically disabled are deemed well enough to leave psychiatric wards or institutions, their choices are often limited to surviving homeless or living in an adult home. Social workers arrange admissions interviews between the psychologically disabled and adult home operators. Once approved, these reluctant tenants sign a lease or an agreement to pay a monthly rent for room and board.

However, most adult home residents do not have jobs. Instead, they receive their income from monthly Supplemental Security Income (SSI) or Supplemental Security Disability (SSD) checks. Furthermore, when an individual signs an agreement with an adult home operator, the monthly state-regulated cost for room and board is roughly 87 percent of a resident’s SSI or SSD check. Adult home operators receive the residents’ checks directly from the government and the remaining amount—between $178 to $198 a month or roughly six dollars per day—is dispersed as “personal needs allowances.”

Included in room and board are three daily meals. As such, despite the poor quality of food and their meager allowances, adult home residents are not eligible for government food stamps.

“If residents can’t stomach the food in the dining room, then they have to use up some of their own money to buy [expensive] outside food,” said Bloomfield. “What you have are a lot of residents desperate for money, especially near the end of the month. A few residents will be begging out on the street.”

Residents have the option of filing formal complaints against adult home operators to the DOH but their concerns often fall on deaf ears. Prior to his current stay at Surf Manor, Glusenkamp was a five-and-a-half-year resident at Garden of Eden Home in Bensonhurst. “A very bad joke,” said Glusenkamp. “It was no garden and sure as hell ain’t Eden.”

Said Glusenkamp, “I should have known if you can’t get something corrected in five years of telephone calls and seeing politicians, then it’s like going to Las Vegas and trying to win. The deck of cards is stacked against you. You cannot beat the house.”

Adult homes are not places of treatment and rehabilitation. While residents do receive daily medication, there is not a system in place in New York City’s adult homes to re-acclimate the psychologically disabled back into society. Residents and advocates also say that while they can freely leave adult homes, operators discreetly discourage this through retaliatory threats such as hospitalization.

New York State does have alternative housing options available but until recently, none of those beds were earmarked for the psychologically disabled. These alternative housing options, or government subsidized, supported living apartments, offer far more freedom than do adult homes. While more money is taken out of SSI and SSD checks, residents in supported living apartments own their own rooms, have more personal spending cash and have the opportunity to integrate within their communities.

That is the focal point of the current legal battle between adult home residents and advocates versus the state. Adult home operators do not want to lose their monthly allotments and the state is reluctant to spend more money to place residents in these supported living arrangements. On the other side of the argument, advocates argue that adult homes, like racially segregated schools of the past, are a violation of an individual’s rights and freedoms. Adult home residents just want a chance to make more of their lives, they say.

The Legal Battle

In 2003, Disability Advocates, Inc. (DAI), a legal advocacy group based in Albany, filed a lawsuit on behalf of adult home residents against then-Governor George Pataki, the DOH and the OMH.

The adult home residents represented in the case were from 28 adult care facilities in New York City that are classified as “impacted.” That is, an impacted home is one that houses at least 120 residents of which at least 25 percent suffer from a mental illness.

DAI alleged that the state, DOH and OMH violated the rights of the psychologically disabled as set forth by Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) of 1990 and the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. DAI justified such allegations with the landmark decision Olmstead v. L.C. in which the U.S. Supreme Court stated that the “provisions of the ADA and Rehabilitation Act are violated when a state places people with mental illness in ‘unjustified isolation,’ and that a person with mental illness may sue the state for failing to place him or her ‘in the most integrated setting appropriate to [his or her] needs.’”

In September 2009, Judge Nicholas G. Garaufis found in favor of DAI and adult home residents. Later in March 2010, Garaufis offered a remedial plan based on DAI’s proposal that called for the state to develop 1,500 new supported housing units each year for the next three years. But instead of complying with Garaufis’ decision, the state appealed the decision and the case is yet ongoing.

“It’s really about people’s rights under the ADA to not be forced to live with deficient services,” said Cliff Zucker, executive director of DAI. “The state provides services but it insists that residents rely on institutions forever as a condition of getting these services. Supported housing offers a better alternative but the state has denied adult home residents of this.”

From Adult Homes to Supported Living

Following the New York Times’ investigative piece on adult homes, the initial reaction caused the formation of an adult home workgroup whose goal was to improve the lives of adult home residents.

The workgroup’s investigation found that at least 50 percent of all adult home resident were eligible for integrated housing communities, much like the supported units the state is currently fighting against.

“Levy’s work really exposed a lot of wrongdoing on the part of the state and forced them to respond,” said Geoff Lieberman, executive director of the Coalition of Institutionalized Aged and Disabled (CIAD). “But the state and the DOH and the OMH have done very little in response.”

Zucker agrees with the sentiment and said that while Levy’s work was important, its success in influencing change was “limited.” Part of that limited success, however, is a clear indicator that supported housing may be a more viable option for current adult home residents.

One of the small victories to come after the workgroup was the introduction of 60 supported living units for a few adult home residents. Phil Shapiro was one of the fortunate 60 adult home residents who applied and received supported housing. He currently lives in an apartment in Midwood.

“There’s no regimentation,” said Shapiro. “When I take my medication I take it immediately before I retire. Whereas in the home, you would get it between 8:00 and 9:30 and it would make some people woozy for an hour or two.”

“You go shopping and you buy your own food,” added Shapiro. Compared to his former life at Kings Adult Care Center in Brooklyn, Shapiro said that he considers himself “lucky” to be out of an adult home because of the freedom he is offered to live a normal life. Said Shapiro, “I feel great. I’m on my own. I make my own decisions.”

View the original article here

The Stinky Blues

Tuesday January 4th, 2011

07:30:00 PM

WILLIAMSBURG Even if you’re already well-versed in your farmstead cheeses, you can always stand to pick up another tip, or indulge in your favorite style at?Martin Johnson’s Joy of Cheese tastings, paired with wines, spirits, or beer depending on the bar that’s hosting him. January is his month to celebrate blue cheese, and at his standing Brooklyn host, d.b.a., he’ll be pairing seven beers with?5-6 blues new to the New York City market plus 1-2 non blues to let your palatte recover.?Tickets are $25. (Eater’s Digest reminded us of this event; check em out!)

Published on 12.30.10.

View the original article here

Friday, December 24, 2010

The History of Bedford Avenue

By Becky Bratu and Lillian Rizzo

Bedford Numbers

To understand Brooklyn, you have to know its history, its neighborhoods, its people. And its Bedford Avenue.

The southern end of Brooklyn’s longest thoroughfare begins at a Sheepshead Bay pier and ends at Greenpoint’s 35-acre McCarren Park, which was once a public pool, then concert venue and now, once again, a pool-to-be. Bedford Avenue crosses through 10 neighborhoods and is 10.2 miles of houses, big and small, storefronts, churches, synagogues, schools, a college, playgrounds, restaurants and a housing development where Ebbets Field once stood.

The avenue traces its name to a 17th-century Dutch settlement near what is now Bedford-Stuyvesant. The Dutch were the first among colonial settlers in that area; they bought the woodlands from the Canarsie Indians and named the site Bedford. The area was used mostly for farming throughout the 18th century.

In 1869 Bed-Stuy was home to the Temple Israel, a synagogue located on Bedford and Lawrence avenues, according to the New York Historical Society. In 1905 the congregation had 600 members. When Jews began to leave the area, the building was demolished and the site has been used a municipal traffic court and then as a linoleum discount store. Temple Israel merged with another congregation, Beth Elohim, and reopened on Eastern Parkway near Flatbush Avenue.

By the turn of the 20th century, Brooklyn neighborhoods were getting their names from real estate developers and were made permanent once telephone companies named their exchanges after them. Neighborhoods along Bedford Avenue such as Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Bushwick and Bedford Stuyvesant were a part of this group. By the 1950s it was one of the few Brooklyn neighborhoods where blacks could buy houses. Heavyweight boxing champion Floyd Patterson, musician Eubie Blake, and baseball legend Jackie Robinson lived in Bed-Stuy, as have rappers Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z and Lil’ Kim.

Greenpoint, one of the few Brooklyn neighborhoods that kept its original name, was another Dutch purchase used for farming. After 1840, the neighborhood was a center for shipbuilding. The Polish community was already settled in Greenpoint by the late 1930s.

Long before Williamsburg was to become the social scene that is today, it was a rural settlement in the Dutch town of Boswijck (Bushwick). During the mid-1800s, the neighborhood was known as a playground of the rich, who visited beer gardens, clubs and fancy hotels. But Williamsburg began to change again after the Williamsburg Bridge was opened in 1903, and Eastern European immigrants began to leave the crowded Lower East Side to live in airy Brooklyn. Jewish immigrants fleeing the Nazis settled in Williamsburg in the late 1930s and early 1940s, and today the area hosts more than 20 separate Hasidic sects.

In Crown Heights, Bedford Avenue intersects with Eastern Parkway, the first six-lane parkway in the world and host of the annual Labor Day West Indian parade. The Dutch first settled this area in the 1600s, and African American slaves farmed it. The neighborhood was once known as Crow Hill, and some suggest?the name was a reference to the original African settlement in the area. According to an 1873 Brooklyn Eagle story, the whites of the area called these settlers “crows.” The 20th century brought many changes to the neighborhood, including its name. Immigrants from the Caribbean began to settle here and by the mid-1940s the area had attracted a number of Lubavitch Hasidim whose world headquarters is at 770 Eastern Parkway.

Sheepshead Bay gets its name from a type of local fish. The area remained undiscovered by European colonists until the late 18th century. In the late 1800s, The Sheepshead Bay Race Track made this area a hot spot where wealthy New Yorkers ate steaks between races or gambled in local casinos. Supreme Court?Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg, singer Carole King graduated from the neighborhood’s James Madison High School.

* * *

A few bullet points about Bedford Avenue’s history:

Brooklyn College
The institution that became Brooklyn College was opened in 1910 in Manhattan as an extension of City College for Teachers. The Board of Higher Education authorized it to become a four-year institution called Brooklyn College in 1930, and in 1937 the present-day campus opened its doors on the site of the Flatbush?Golf Course. President Franklin D. Roosevelt laid the cornerstone in 1936. It was Roosevelt’s New Deal Federal Emergency Public Works Administration that put people to work in constructing the college. Beat poet Allen Ginsberg and violinist Itzhak Perlman taught here. In fall 2010, 16,912 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at the college.

Just diagonal to the college at 2939 Bedford Avenue is Midwood High School, opened in 1940. Midwood was also constructed and opened as a part of the WPA. Some of Midwood’s famous graduates include director Woody Allen and author Eric Segal.

Automobile Row
In 1929 a portion of Bedford Avenue, from Fulton Street to Eastern Parkway, was known as Brooklyn’s automobile row. The street was filled with car dealerships such as Buick, Ford, and Chrysler. Of all the buildings that housed these dealerships, only the gothic Studebaker building is still standing on the corner of Sterling Place. In 2000 it

received landmark status. Traffic along automobile row became so hectic that in 1929 the police installed a traffic tower at Grant Square, the same tactic used on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan to slow traffic.

Prohibition
From 1919 to 1933 it was illegal to sell, manufacture and transport in the United States, although that didn’t stop people from drinking. The Bedford Nest speakeasy was located at 1286 Bedford Avenue. It was the borough’s most popular speakeasy and was raided almost weekly. Brooklyn’s liquor came through rumrunners who operating along the south shore of the borough.

Ebbets Field

While Brooklyn was home to several baseball clubs by the mid-1800s, the Brooklyn Dodgers became the team of the borough in 1893 and stayed that way until they left for Los Angeles in October, 1957.

The home of the Brooklyn Dodgers was Ebbets Field, located on Bedford Avenue in Flatbush. Nicknamed “Dem Bums” the Dodgers won the National League championships in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953, but couldn’t make it past the New York Yankees in any of those World Series. In 1955 they finally won the World Series against the Yankees, bringing Brooklyn to a state of pandemonium.

Ebbets Field sat in one of the borough’s most diverse neighborhoods, and that diversity was mirrored on the field in 1947 when the Dodgers broke baseball’s color line with the arrival of the game’s first black player, Jackie Robison. The Dodgers’ owner, Walter O’Malley, was eager to leave cramped and aging Ebbets Field. But unable to convince the city – and its ultimate power, Robert Moses – to sell him the land cheaply for a new park in downtown Brooklyn, O’Malley took the club away, and broke Brooklyn’s heart.

Ebbets Field was demolished in 1960. And in 1962 the Ebbets Field apartment complex was built on the site.

View the original article here