Some residents at 3333 Broadway using housing subsidies believe they’re not receiving the same treatment as tenants paying the market rate, but the landlord rejects the idea. Photo: Andrew Keshner

The 35-story brick building towers over the West Harlem skyline at the corner of 135th Street and Broadway; a seven-story banner urges, “Rent now.” On nice days, residents stand in the front courtyard and on the sidewalk, catching up and laughing as the 1 train occasionally rumbles by.

But since new management took over at 3333 Broadway more than two years ago, the building has become a battleground. Some residents and advocates charge that disrepair, rising rents and evictions are forcing lower income tenants to leave and they’ve gone to court to seek lease provisions ensuring low- and moderate-income housing. But the landlord of the 1,190-unit building disputes the complaints, saying the company has pumped millions of dollars into repairs after years of neglect and offers the same service to all tenants, regardless of income.

Alicia Barksdale, president of the tenants association, said residents with Section 8 vouchers—which pay the difference in rent for low-income participants, who pay 30 percent of their adjusted income—aren’t getting the same type of renovations. “It’s just a lot of people feeling slighted and discriminated against” she said, adding that disparities in treatment also exist between newcomers and longtime tenants.

Barksdale, who works as a community liaison for City Councilman Robert Jackson, recalled the example of a tenant who paid the market rate for the apartment where she’d been living for 35 years.  Her kitchen was recently measured for a formica countertop, even though market-rate tenants should have granite countertops, said Barksdale, who would not name the tenant.

But Douglas Eisenberg, president of Urban American Management insisted via email, “all residents in properties managed by Urban American are provided the same quality of service no matter the rent that the resident is paying.”

A reflection of New York City’s gentrification and its discontents, the clash highlights the fast-shrinking amount of subsidized, affordable housing units for low- and moderate-income residents. Regulated apartments accounted for 74 percent of city rentals in 1991; by last year, the proportion had fallen to 64 percent, according to a State Comptroller report in April.

The dispute also spotlights local concerns about displacement as the city’s planning department considers a rezoning from 126th to 155th Streets to blunt the overdevelopment and soaring property values that could result from an influx of Columbia University students and staff.

Urban America bought the building in April 2007 for $277 million, according to press accounts, though Eisenberg would not confirm that price.  He also declined to discuss vacancy rates or the number of residents paying market rates versus those using subsidies.

But since the sale, tenant objections have spilled over into court. The Legal Aid Society and a Manhattan law firm sued the landlord and the city agency that owns the land last October, charging that subsidized housing restrictions had been wrongfully removed. A State Supreme Court justice sided with the landlord in July, but the case will be appealed.

The seeds of today’s fight were sown by one sentence written 37 years ago. Because the building was constructed on land also housing a public school, I.S. 195 Roberto Clemente, the 1972 lease between the city and the developer said the property would be used “for persons and families of low or moderate income only.” The building participated in the Mitchell-Lama program until April 2005. After that, low- or moderate-income residents could apply for federal Section 8 assistance or a landlord assistance plan to stay in the building.

In June 2006, the New York City Educational Construction Fund, the city agency owning the land, met with the developer and removed the provisions for low- and moderate-income housing. Tenants and their lawyers argued they weren’t notified about that meeting and only learned of the change through a Freedom of Information Act request. The October 2008 lawsuit pressed for the re-inclusion of the language ensuring low and moderate-income housing. But attorneys for the landlords—and the presiding judge—said tenants had received proper notice.

State Supreme Court Justice James Yates acknowledged the lack of low- and moderate-income housing in his July 13 decision but said, “The Court cannot solve that problem by reading an obligation into the original Ground Lease which does not exist.” An appeal will follow, said Legal Aid Society Staff Attorney Ellen Davidson. No appeal has been filed yet, according to a review of New York State Unified Court System website this week.

Urban American opened approximately 400 eviction proceedings between January and October 2008, according to the judge’s decision. Urban American evicts when residents fail to pay rent or do something illegal, said Eisenberg, but uses “all possible means of amicably resolving a situation” before taking legal action.

Dave Powell, director of organizing and advocacy at Tenants and Neighbors, a statewide tenants advocacy group, said longtime tenants with vouchers were not getting the same services as market-rate tenants. “A lot of what Urban America is doing seems like discrimination,” he said.

The New York City Buildings Department database shows 78 complaints at the property with six open cases. Complaints have risen under the new owners: five in 2006, eight in 2007, 19 last year, 12 more so far this year.  Urban America processes complaints and works with residents to make sure they are complete, Eisenberg said. Noting the investment in repairs, he added, “This is a process which will take time but we are certain that we are on the right and that at the end of the day all of the residents at the property will be happy to call 3333 home.”

By paying a steep price for the building in flush times, said Powell, the new owner overextended itself. “They set themselves up where they need certain amount of turnover, otherwise not going to make mortgage payment,” he said. Eisenberg fired back: “Sadly David Powell does not have a clue about that which he is commenting on and is simply trying to further his own political agenda.”

As residents and visitors streamed in and out of the building one late fall afternoon, opinion on the landlord was mixed. “It needs improvement. For what everyone’s paying, they’re not getting what they deserve,” said 20-year-old Gabriel Montanez, who grew up here. For example, he recalled how someone’s toilet had been broken, and the . workers who fixed it charged the tenant $100. But Juana Rivera, a resident for 12 or 13 years, said she had no problem with the new management, which, she found, fixed leaks quickly. By contrast, Rivera said, she once waited nine months for the installation of a refrigerator under the old management.

Ray Anthony, who’s lived here for nearly 30 years, estimated that 100 black and Latino families had moved out since the new management took over. “We are the low-income people,” he said, “White people got no problem paying the rent.” Many wealthier tenants would in the future be coming from Columbia, which intends to build a massive new campus in Harlem, or the New York-Presbyterian/Columbia University Medical Center, he added.

Anthony’s rent in 1998 was $470 per month. It’s now $3,700. He pays $2,000 and Section 8 assistance contributes another $1,700. He has a job with the Board of Education but is concerned about others who aren’t so lucky. “I worry about the people who don’t make any money,” he said.

Walter Edwards, who fought in the Vietnam War, at a Veterans Day ceremony in downtown Manhattan. Edwards was a onetime resident at a transitional housing center for veterans in Harlem before recently moving to Staten Island. Anival Barrett, recreational coordinator and chairman for the Veterans Action Group, is pictured to the immediate left. Photo: Andrew Keshner

Eddie Hickey had just found a studio in an East Harlem building this past summer that was perfect for him. He went downstairs to the building’s offices, only to learn that the building had a credit check requirement.  That scrapped any moving plans for the 64-year-old Vietnam veteran who has bad credit because of debts totaling between $2,000 and $2,500.

“It would be silly of me to give them $75 since I knew the result, so I just turned around and withdrew my application,” said Hickey, who now lives in transitional housing for homeless veterans on 119th Street in Central Harlem, just south of Marcus Garvey Park.

Hickey ran into the same problem when looking for apartments in Washington Heights. The landlord of those properties refused to deal with Hickey because it had kicked him out of an apartment it owned in Queens. Hickey has not been apartment hunting since.

“It’s a general standard for an employed person making $40,000, $50,000 a year,” Hickey said of credit checks with his raspy smokers’ voice, noting he only has to cover 30 percent of the rent with his Section 8 voucher. “It’s holding me to a standard that I don’t think I should be held to.”

Hickey’s difficulties in finding permanent housing are not uncommon among veterans — nor are they going away as a fresh round of veterans are returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Veterans account for one-third of the homeless individuals nationwide, according to Department of Veterans Administration data.

Of the 380,000 veterans living in New York City and Long Island, just over 5,500 are homeless, according to a 2008 report from Community Homelessness Assessment, Local Education and Networking Groups, a VA program working with community agencies to coordinate services for homeless veterans. U.S. Sen. Charles Schumer  (D-N.Y.) cited the report in a recent press release about the introduction of several veterans-related measures. There are more than 600 homeless veterans within the approximately 44,000 Manhattan veterans, according to Schumer’s release.

Meanwhile, soldiers coming back from current conflicts give a new urgency to the matter. The latest crop of homeless veterans are winding up that way after around 18 months, compared with many homeless Vietnam vets after trying to readjust to civilian life after five to 10 years, Pete Dougherty, director of homeless veterans programs at the Department of Veterans Affairs, said in a 2007 Boston Globe article. The Veterans Administration and community providers have called permanent housing one of the top two unmet needs for the past three years, according to a report on veterans housing. A spokesperson for the Veterans Administration declined to comment, and a spokesperson for the New York City Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs did not return calls.

Just a quick look around the block from the 174-unit SRO, standing for “single room occupancy,” offers a snapshot on the barriers veterans face in finding housing uptown. Across the street stands an approximately 20-story residential building of exposed brick and brushed metal that’s nearing completion. A banner boasts “160 superbly designed” apartments and amenities, like a lap pool and valet parking. A sales representative for Fifth on Park, one of the two companies managing the building, said the building was not accepting Section 8 vouchers, noting that a one-bedroom rental would be more than $2,000 while a three-bedroom would cost $4,000. The representative would not identify himself, saying he didn’t want his name tied to a story on the lack of veterans housing.

Just around the corner on Fifth Avenue, a smaller-scale building is under construction. A sign in the window announces an October lottery for 43 affordable rental housing units in the site. Residents living within the borders of Community Boards 10 and 11 are given a preference for half of the units, but a city spokesman said that without knowing the address of the center, he could not determine if the veterans at the center were eligible. Management is still reviewing the almost 2,500 applications and renters are expected to start moving in this month, he said.

The "SRO," or "single room occupancy," for veterans on 119th Street. Photo: Andrew Keshner

But some at the veterans residence do move on. Walter Edwards, 63, is in the process of moving out to live with his 84-year-old mother in her Staten Island split-level home. He’s lived in the SRO for five years and has been clean for the past 15 months after a more than 30-year drug addiction. He became addicted to painkillers in the late ’70s and the habit escalated to cocaine and heroin. When he retired he could no longer pay rent for his Brooklyn apartment and buy drugs, and ended up losing everything.

On Veterans Day, Edwards and  several other veterans from the residence visited  the Vietnam War memorial on Water Street in downtown Manhattan. The day’s event was a far cry from the official parade in midtown, with its uniformed color guards marching in lockstep and its snare drum rimshots and bass drum thuds from New Jersey and Virginia high school marching bands echoing up Fifth Avenue. Instead, the assembled veterans spoke with a microphone attached to a karaoke machine. After the ceremonies, including the National Anthem and “Taps,” the machine crooned velvety ’60s and ’70s soul classics like Barry White’s “Can’t Get Enough of Your Love, Babe.”

Edwards, who served as an airman from 1964 to 1968, wore a black leather jacket that day with a large POW-MIA patch covering the back; it’s the only day of the year when he wears the jacket. Edwards helped lay the metal foundation for the same monument back in the early ’80s. Being there on Veterans Day, on the verge of leaving the SRO, was a powerful experience, he said.  Some veterans settle for a life in the SRO, he said, comfortable with their drugs. Not him. “It feels great. Now I’m straight, I can’t wait,” Edwards said of moving out. Looking to stay busy, he’s now training to work as a security guard through the American Association of Retired Persons and is preparing for an upcoming job interview.

Edwards and Hickey both attend a weekly meeting in the residence’s main lounge for Veterans Action Group, a support group aiming to get homeless veterans back on their feet. Anival Barrett, chairman of the group and recreational coordinator at the center, leads the meetings. “If you’re under the thought this is a place to come and die, it’s not,” he said during one recent meeting. Meetings are part  pep talk,  part information session as Barrett keeps members up on benefits open to them or upcoming events with his booming and dynamic delivery.

Surrounded by badges, pictures and gym equipment in his office upstairs, Barrett — who served in the military from 1962 to 1973 and fought in Vietnam from 1965 to 1966 — explains that many homeless veterans are badly hobbled by bad discharges or lack of information regarding the benefits open to them. A dishonorable discharge shuts down access to certain housing loans, vendors licenses, small business loans, medical benefits and vocational training, he said, adding: “A bad discharge is a form of stigmata. It shouldn’t but it does affect a lot of the hiring.”

Residents at the 119th Street center, run by a social services organization called Black Veterans for Social Justice Inc., have already worked their way through the shelter system, starting out at Bellevue Hospital and passing through places like Borden Avenue Veterans Residence in Queens. The uptown housing — a single room with a shared bathroom, kitchen and lounge with three other residents — is intended as a last step toward permanent housing. But some get comfortable, said Barrett, having their rooms decked out with computers and flat-screen televisions. “I always tell them, ‘Try to live as spartan as you can because you don’t want to set up like you’re here for life,’ ” he said. “Don’t get too damn comfortable. Nobody’s going to kick you out, but you deserve more than that damn room.”

Looking back, Hickey has both fond and gruesome memories as a former private first class. “I wouldn’t trade it for anything,” he said. “But I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone else,” he said. Back in civilian life, Hickey once planned on becoming a teacher but got into bartending and singing Frank Sinatra tunes while waiting to take his teaching exam and made a career of it. He overcame a drug problem in the ’80s but still copes with post-traumatic stress disorder and sleep problems. He’s now in the process of appealing to the Veterans Administration for larger benefits while selling pants at Macy’s.

Just before explaining his housing search, Hickey attended a memorial service for Zackary Foster Marchmon, a 47-year-old former lance corporal with the Marines who had been living at the center since 2005. Marchmon died in November. “A lot of people go out of here feet first,” said Hickey, adding that he’s seen three or four such memorials in the past six months. He’s resolved not to stay long enough to see many more and it’s only a matter of time before he finds an apartment, he says. Hickey plans to resume his search soon, saying: “I want an apartment. I want out.”

Scoutmaster Salih Abdur-Rahman talks to scouts at a recent meeting. Tyrill Hart (left), Cub Scout leader for the troop, looks on. (Photo by Andrew Keshner)

A Harlem Boy Scout troop that has been meeting at an Islamic mosque since 1978 is planning to reach outside its walls to bring in new recruits.

Convening weekly at the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood, the ranks of Boy Scout Troop 357 are filled with children who have some tie to the religious center, either as members or as relatives of people associated with the mosque. The troop’s scoutmasters and committee leaders all grew up in the mosque. But the group’s makeup could soon change as leaders plan their first concerted outreach to bring in members of all faiths. “We believe we can benefit everybody and not just Muslims,” said Scoutmaster Salih Abdur-Rahman, a member of the unit when he was growing up.

Troop 357, meeting at the mosque on 113th Street and St. Nicholas Avenue, has about 20 members, with some people coming from the Bronx, Brooklyn and New Jersey. The troop is trying to roughly double its ranks with efforts that will start in the next several weeks. This will include going door to door with flyers, speaking at local public schools and encouraging current members to bring friends, said Abdur-Rahman. The outreach highlights a local demographic shift as fewer large families live in the neighborhood, compared to years ago, say troop leaders. So apart from trying to strengthen ties with local non-Muslims, the outreach is also an effort to hold onto a local program that emphasizes lessons of discipline, responsibility and respect.

Boy Scout participation is up citywide. About 590 units serve 52,000 children in the five boroughs. Recruitment of new members has been up by 30 percent compared to last year, said Ron Timmons, director of field services for Greater New York Council, Boy Scouts of America. Explaining the increase, he believed that the recession was prompting more families to look for cost-effective activities that taught important ideals — values like the Boy Scout’s 12 characteristics of being trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean and reverent. Timmons also credited a strong recruiting effort at public and private schools, along with a 16-month advertising campaign.

Troop 357 leaders hope they can find that same enthusiasm in Harlem as they begin the outreach but Abdur-Rahman said there could be some challenges in persuading children to choose Boy Scouts over, say, basketball camp. The recruiting effort will focus on younger children instead of teenagers, who are less likely to stick with the program, but that would also mean more parent involvement, which can be difficult to get sometimes. And, Abdur-Rahman acknowledged, there could still be lingering discomfort over the troop’s ties to the mosque or hesitancy over cultural differences, like having to take off shoes before entering the mosque’s prayer room. Still, he believed there were enough local open-minded people and he was optimistic about the chances of bringing in more people.

This is a big step out for a troop that’s been long-identified as a Muslim troop. Troop 357 was founded in 1978 and once produced an Eagle Scout and a successful rowing team, according to the mosque’s website. It remained active until the early 1990s before falling dormant for several years, said Abdur-Rahman. After a brief stretch of activity in the mid-90s, the troop again lapsed to inactivity before being revived by former members four or five years ago. Tyrill Hart, Cub Scout leader, said this reflected lessons learned early on from mosque leaders. “That was instilled in us from childhood: Give back what we’ve learned, plus take it to another level,” he said.

Troop 357 members do push-ups at the start of their weekly meeting. (Photo by Andrew Keshner)

Abdur-Rahman, a 30-year-old emergency medical technician and former marine, said current scouts would one day feel the same way as the current leaders. “When they get older, something’s going to bring them back,” he said.

That pull was apparent at a recent meeting on a quiet Sunday morning. Scouts and troop leaders met at the mosque’s front steps, making some small talk and tossing a baseball before going upstairs. The scouts started with push-ups, sit-ups, leg-lifts and march instructions before getting to the planning. Plans for camping and paintball excursions were brewing while best rope-tying methods were discussed.

The meeting ended with cake and ice cream for a member moving out of the neighborhood. Hasan Rasheed, 16, joined three or four years ago. He says the camping skills he learned, such as packing a lot of clean socks, prevented him from catching pneumonia during a summer trip to Colombia with another organization over the summer. But Rasheed valued the troop, apart from the lesson on the importance of dry clothing. “It’s just a community. Overall, a real close community. I find it pulls everybody together,” he said. Likewise, Jabbar Anderson, a 14-year-old scout who’s been with the troop for around five years, said, “It’s not that big, so we’re like tight-knit and close together.”

Abdur-Rahman’s younger brother, Umar, 16, travels from Teaneck, N.J., to attend meetings. Now a scout like his big brother, Umar plans to also get involved as a troop leader one day. “He always used to say Boy Scouts was fun and real family,” Umar said between forkfuls of cake. “I wanted to have that.”

A proposed nine-story, 130-unit residential building shows West Harlem residents what their low-rise neighborhood could look like without new land use rules.

Still reeling from Columbia University’s approved expansion into West Harlem, local residents are awaiting specifics on a city rezoning proposal seeking to preserve neighborhood character in about 30 blocks of Harlem while creating more affordable housing.

The area stretches from 126th Street to 155th Street, between Riverside Drive and the district’s eastern borders of St. Nicholas, Bradhurst and Edgecombe Avenues. Without rezoning, residents fear they could face overdevelopment and even pricier rents.

The Department of City Planning and Community Board 9 are weighing issues like how to protect residential brownstone areas and enliven commercial arteries such as 145th Street and Broadway. When they’ve reached agreement, a formal land review could begin early next year, say city planners. But there’s no firm deadline, Edwin Marshall, the planning’s department’s team leader for upper Manhattan, said at a September meeting. “What’s most important is to get consensus and agreement,” he said. The city is scheduled to present its latest rezoning draft at the committee’s meeting on Tuesday.

The neighborhood hasn’t been rezoned since 1961, but Columbia University’s disputed expansion into the Manhattanville neighborhood, approved by the City Council in December 2007, highlighted the need for changes. Public officials and residents say the current code allows large-scale construction that could dwarf neighborhood buildings and bring an influx of affluent tenants and homeowners who could price locals out of the market.

To avoid that, the plan stiffens zoning throughout residential neighborhoods and offers incentives for more affordable housing along commercial corridors like Broadway, Amsterdam and 145th Street. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer first proposed the rezoning in April 2007, and the city’s planning department joined the effort that September. Stringer’s office, which declined to comment, also recommended that the planning commission reject the current application for the new nine-story building, proposed for the block between West 129th and 130th Streets, Amsterdam and Convent Avenues.

The commission will vote on the application by November 9 with City Council review starting soon after, according to a planning spokesperson. Lawyers representing the developers did not return phone calls.

Community Board 9 called rezoning an “unparalleled boon” but urged more fine-tuning, such as block-by-block rules on height and bulk. To generate more business on major arteries like Broadway and Amsterdam, the board has recommended allowing commercial activity on some second floors and suggested bonuses for markets selling fresh produce, bakeries or restaurants.

“We’re still not finished yet. We still have much more to do,” said Yvonne Stennett, co-chair of the Land Use and Zoning Committee said during its September meeting.

Community Board Chair Patricia Jones did not respond to requests for comment.

Planning consultant Mercedes Narciso, who now teaches at Pratt Institute, worked with the board as it created its long-term vision for the neighborhood, known as a 197-a Plan. To avoid the area’s being overshadowed by outsized dorms, hospitals or schools that threaten the neighborhood’s character, the rezoning aimed to preserve its historic fabric and include recommendations for affordable housing, according to Narciso. With Columbia and City College as neighbors, residents are “concerned that educational institutions will change drastically the character of the neighborhood,” she said. Rezoning “will put some control on the scale of the neighborhood,” she added.

Neighborhood real estate agents support rezoning, some saying it could help guard against more displacement. Marcus Soler, who owns Soler Realty NYC on Hamilton Place, said residents were already being priced out as the area developed. “If the rents keep going up, I won’t be able to keep my business here,” he said.

Community Board members— giving their own opinion and not speaking on behalf of the board—said they still saw many unanswered questions in the proposal. Walter South, co-chair of the board’s landmark and preservation committee, believed the proposal should have included an area surrounding Tiemann Place, below 125th Street, where a stretch of stores below an elevated subway stop provides commercial activity that might be lost without zoning it to encourage businesses. “The zoning presented by the city is not nuanced enough,” said South.

Meanwhile, board member Tamara Gayer pointed out that rezoning affects a wide range of people, from those already almost priced out of the area to more affluent brownstoners looking to protect property values. She thinks residents will pay attention as the process unfolds.

“We’ll see what they come back with. It’s a dialogue,” she said.

Jason Kendall explains the progress of NASA's October 9 mission to the moon.

With the early morning sky still dark, the mood was unnervingly chipper inside the Indian Road Café and Market at 6:30 a.m. on a recent Friday, where some 15 people sipped coffee and chatted as if it were a carefree weekend afternoon.

Members of the Inwood Astronomy Project had roused themselves on October 9 to do what stargazers from Mumbai to Hawaii were doing: watching a live telecast of a spacecraft slamming into the moon, in search of water. An additional 30 people arrived for the 7:31 a.m. impact, squeezing into corners with their croissants and jockeying for a clear view of the television screen. Richard Herrera, a club member and graphics designer who had stayed up all night, called it “a geeky kind of excitement.”

“It’s cool to bring others in who would not be so into it,” he said.

What actually appeared on screen proved to be an anticlimactic sequence of pictures of the lunar surface, followed by control room images of NASA engineers applauding. The mission went according to plan, NASA said, even though the anticipated dust plume upon impact did not occur.

But in Inwood, almost 250,000 miles from the moon, the large turnout meant the group had come one step closer to accomplishing its own mission. For the past year and a half, the group has held weekly stargazing sessions and special events at Inwood Hill Park — helping uptown residents find a common bond by looking at the sky. This month’s events, dubbed “The Galilean Nights Festival,” will include a play reading and concert.

Inwood residents watch the mission unfold at the Indian Road Cafe and Market.

Weather permitting, Wednesday evening outings on the park’s baseball fields can draw 20 to 50 people. Saturday evenings at the top of the park’s western ridge have attracted up to 60. The mood is upbeat as members and passersby study the sky with the few telescopes members bring. “You goof around,” said Connie Vasquez, 49, an attorney who joined 10 months ago. “You make friends fast.”

Lori Sommer, a 39-year-old stand-up, is a regular. “I look forward to a clear Wednesday and Saturday night and if not, I’m upset,” Sommer said.

Leading this band of amateur astronomers is Jason Kendall, a 41-year-old whirlwind who lugs 80 pounds of gear (plus potato chips) just under a mile to the park and back to his Isham Street home. Kendall, a computer administrator at a financial services company, is committed to astronomy; in the days after the mission Kendall – also a NASA-designated community liaison – spoke about space at the local library, SUNY Buffalo and the American Museum of Natural History, where he volunteers.

Local vendors like Starbucks, C-Town and Grandpa’s Brick Oven Pizza sometimes supply food, but by and large Kendall and his wife, Donna Stearns, cover the costs of the group. They’ve spent about $10,000 on equipment, trips and supplies; the young organization receives no public money. Kendall also serves as chief ringleader, teacher and comedian. For instance, with the projectile spacecraft aimed at the moon’s unlighted south pole, he said, “They are literally going to where the sun don’t shine” – prompting guffaws around the café.

Kendall received one master’s degree in astronomy from New Mexico State University and another in theater from the University of Texas at Austin. He laughs often but is quick to point out the organization’s greater significance.

Kendall first fell in love with astronomy as an elementary school student in Springfield, Ill. The area had little light pollution and he remembered riding his bike under a moonless sky, lit by the stars. Kendall’s father, dean of the graduate school at what’s now the University of Illinois at Springfield and helped bring the astronomer Bart Bok, known for his study of the Milky Way, to campus. The fourth-grade Kendall interviewed him for a class project and was taken by the man’s admonitions to visit him at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. “From then on, it was kind of it,” Kendall said, who made it to the observatory in 1988.

Now Kendall operates his own makeshift outdoor observatory and treasures the way it brings together groups that wouldn’t interact otherwise. Dominican-born passersby, for instance, are some of the most knowledgeable local stargazers because their homeland has less light pollution, he said.

He was once watching the stars alone when three burly, tattooed men approached and asked what he was doing. Soon after, a young well-to-do woman walking an Afghan hound stopped and asked the same question. A homeless man came from the woods to see what was happening. The motley crew, looking through Kendall’s telescope, got along well. “It was an impossibility under any other circumstance,” he recalled.

The group aims to spark an interest in science because astronomy, Kendall said, is “a gateway science.” He listens for the right type of “wow,” he said. One version sounds short, flat and dull but the other is drawn-out and breathy. “When you hear that second one, that’s when you know there’s a memory,” Kendall said. He estimated that he had heard that version at least a few hundred times since he first started schlepping his telescope to Inwood Hill Park.

Vance made the office opening part of his campaign; now he’s all but assured the seat after winning the Democratic nomination and facing no Republican challenger in November’s general election.

The pledge for a Washington Heights office fits into Vance’s call for a community-based justice model, say representatives for the incoming DA; the approach aims to build trust with local residents and leaders by stationing assistant district attorneys and staff in neighborhoods.

“We’re going to have our lawyers here, visible, working with you and supporting you,” Vance said at a recent community meeting in Harlem in the wake of a gang-related brawl. “I think the solution is, long term, neighbors help neighbors. Strangers don’t help each other. The DA has to be a better neighbor,” he said.

Outgoing District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, who has held the post for 35 years, handles cases from two offices, downtown and on 125th Street. But the distance could make victims or witnesses in northern Manhattan think twice before making the trip to cooperate with the DA. “There’s an actual physical obstacle in addition to the mental obstacle of reporting a crime,” said Erin Duggan, spokeswoman for Vance’s office.

Specifics on the new Washington Heights office — the location, opening date and number of staff — have not yet been determined but will be in coming months, said Duggan. But the broad outlines for an expanded uptown presence are already in place.

Part of the mission for an office in Washington Heights, with its large foreign-born population, would be emphasizing that witnesses and victims won’t be asked about their immigration status when reporting a crime. This is already longstanding policy, but many people either don’t believe or are unaware of the rule, said Duggan.

Vance also intends to combat domestic violence uptown by creating a center, likely located in Harlem, that stations police officers, social workers and medical staff under one roof.

Domestic violence victims sometimes get treatment but hesitate to report an incident to social services or the police, Duggan explained. Putting all three services in one place reduces the time during which victims can get cold feet.

The New York Police Department reported more than 230,000 domestic violence incidents citywide last year, according to the Mayor’s Office to Combat Domestic Violence. The majority of Manhattan incidents occurred north of 96th Street, said Duggan. Domestic incident reports, include both verbal altercations and physical assaults, have risen in Washington Heights so far this year.

The 33rd Precinct had 1,294 domestic incident reports from January to July; in the same period last year it had 1,260. Meanwhile, the 34th Precinct had 1,444 domestic incident reports from January to July, with 1,229 in the same period last year.

Angela Fernandez, executive director of the Northern Manhattan Coalition for Immigrant Rights, supported the idea of a Washington Heights office, calling it “a great asset for our community.”

“It would go a long to helping the community have a strong relationship with law enforcement in a way that would help all individuals in the community,” she said. But results will depend on how well DA officials can build trust with illegal immigrants, Fernandez said, by expanding community outreach and stressing the rules against inquiries about immigration status when a resident reports a crime. Because illegal immigrants are often unwilling to draw attention to themselves, said Fernandez, she’s seen situations where they have refused to report crimes.

Deputy Inspector Joseph Dowling, commanding officer of the 33rd Precinct, said his staff had a “tremendous” working relationship with the current District Attorney and was ready to cooperate with Vance. “Whatever programs he implements, we’re going to make work,” Dowling said of Vance.

Meanwhile, experts on progressive policing agreed with the push for more community involvement. Speaking generally, not specifically about Vance’s plan, Melanca Clark, who directs the Community Oriented Defender Network at New York University, noted that prosecutors “wield a lot of power. For them to get community reaction on what they’re doing, that’s a good thing.”