Edgar Santana prepares for his fight at Mendez Boxing Gym. (Photo by Gabriel Stargardter)

Edgar “Chamaco” Santana, a/k/a The Pride of Spanish Harlem, walks into the Mendez Boxing gym in Manhattan’s Flatiron District and approachs a duct-taped punch bag. He’s compact and wiry, like a tourniquet wound tight. Dipping his left shoulder while he jabs with his right, he clamps his jaw in concentration.

The gym walls are lined with images of famous Latino fighters – Salvador Sanchez, Julio Cesar Chavez – intermingled with the giants who, like Ali and Tyson, require no first name. Its clientele is mainly comprised of white-collar boxers who come to work out. These days, Santana is one of a few remaining pros.*

In 2008, Santana was one of the country’s most promising light welterweights with 24 wins and 17 knockouts to his name. ESPN televised his fights and talk of world titles was not unrealistic. But by late 2009, he was behind bars, a convicted drug trafficker.

Since his release from Riker’s Island two years ago, Santana has fought twice, both bouts ending in knockouts. In the second, against Omri Lowther, Santana was crowned North American Boxing Association champion. With the next step a bout against Wilfredo Negron, his comeback is on.

Edgar Santana,born in Manatí, Puerto Rico, moved with his family to El Barrio in 1986, when he was seven.

“It was definitely rough, a lot of drugs on the street,” Santana recalls, his soft voice barely registering over the thud of fists hitting bags. “There were people lined up to get drugs. That was a shock.”

He found his calling at 15, when José “Chegüi” Torres, a Puerto Rican light heavyweight, came to speak to students at his high school.  Santana, already practicing martial arts, decided to switch to boxing.

By 20, he’d turned pro, but struggled without a manager or promoter, bouncing back and forth between Puerto Rico and East Harlem. He changed trainers frequently, until by 2005 he’d begun to attract enthusiastic headlines. He also opened a barbershop, Santana Cuts, on East 106th Street, populating it with a coterie of childhood friends.

“He was on the cusp of his career,” said Hector Sarria, a trainer at Mendez Boxing. “He was close to fighting a world championship fight.”

Everything changed on July 18, 2008, when Santana was arrested at his East 102nd Street home. He was just weeks from an ESPN-televised fight, but officers of the New York Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Strike Force, listening in for over a year on his conversations with two suspected drug traffickers, had little concern about that.

That morning, Santana emerged from his apartment in handcuffs wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with one of the many enigmatic slogans of local artist and friend James De La Vega, which now line his barbershop walls: “The pressure of survival in the big city will make you lose sight of your dream. Hang in there.”

Accused of brokering a deal to mail a kilo of cocaine from Puerto Rico to New York, Santana posted $150,000 bail. He eventually served four months on Riker’s Island, convicted of conspiracy to sell narcotics. He emerged a free man in January, 2010.

His arrest and imprisonment affected fans at Mendez Boxing. “It was kind of deflating for everyone,” says patron Mitch McMahon while Santana lays into an Everlast bag. “You live in the jungle and there’s a lot of alligators. The longer you live there, the more likely you are to get bitten.”

“Believe none of what you hear and half of what you know,” adds trainer Joey Gamache. “Boxing’s an unforgiving sport.”

Santana himself remains cagey about the episode – “Sometimes you’re at the wrong place at the wrong time,” he says – but is more willing to talk about prison’s impact on his physical state. He was well known on Riker’s, even respected, but struggled to keep in shape. It was, he says, more a waste of time than anything.

Once out, Santana decided to take a break from boxing and focus his attention on the barbershop. But soon he longed for the ring, and sought out Leon Taylor, a trainer he’d long admired, to orchestrate his comeback. He hopes to be challenging for a world title within a year.

“I have the ability to go many places,” Santana says.

At Santana’s barbershop on East 106th Street, sandwiched between an aromatic botanica and a Hispanic church, the unprepossessing red awning seems to herald a down-at-heel interior. But De La Vega’s Basquiat-meets-Haring scrawls give it a gritty sophistication. Santana points to his favorite inscription, daubed on the shop’s white wall: “Your mind has the amazing ability to organize chaos.”

As he sits by the window, slugging water from a gallon Poland Spring bottle, Santana moans about being unable to eat much over the holidays. But he’s about to travel with his manager, Brian Cohen, and his trainer, Taylor, to Dover Downs Casino in Delaware. When he weighs in, Santana needs to hit 143 pounds. He’s currently at 147, but doesn’t seem fazed by losing four pounds in two days. “What I have now is water weight,” he says. “Not fat.”

With his tight cheekbones and long lashes, Santana doesn’t look like your average cauliflower-nosed prizefighter. He dresses differently, too: his jeans tucked into ankle-high boots, the ensemble accessorized with an elegant fedora, complete with feather. He admires Picasso who, Santana says, made people think differently about art.

“I was always a little bit more open-minded about things,” he says, displaying his arm as an example. “You’ve never seen someone with a red sleeve.” A red-inked tattoo circles his bicep, a work in progress.

It’s a busy afternoon. Carlos Flores walks in with his mother and son. He’s wants his beard trimmed before he jets off to Jamaica the next morning. “I’m the subway hero,” he says, getting out his phone to display a video of his appearance on the Rachel Ray show.

Last year, Flores jumped onto the 6 train tracks at the 103rd Street station to save a man who’d fainted, a celebrated act that brought, among other rewards, this free family trip.

Antony Marquez, one of the shop’s barbers, arrives, and greets Edgar knuckle to knuckle. “Jefe,” he says in acknowledgement and respect. “No matter how famous he gets,” Marquez says of his boss, “he stays in the Barrio and that’s why he’s loved round here.”

Armando Alequin, waiting for a cut, bemoans the decline of boxing in Spanish Harlem. When he was growing up, the sport produced role models. Boxers, Alequin says, demand respect; they eat well, look after themselves and don’t use drugs. “You’re a badass but clean cut,” he says.

Santana looks nervous at that. “I hope I inspire people, most especially kids,” he says. “But I don’t know. Being a role model is tricky. There’s so many things that come with it, so much expected from you. I can do without that.”

The bright façade of Dover Downs Hotel & Casino emerges from an endless ribbon of strip malls and chain motels.

A function room serves as the boxing arena; a giant chandelier hangs above the ring. A few rows away, with a look of furious disappointment, Santana sits watching the action: Anthony “The Bull” Smith knocking out Douglas “Al Capone” Otieno in the sixth round; Epifanio “Diamante” Mendoza’s corner staff throwing in the towel against Amir “Hardcore” Mansour, also in the sixth.

Santana’s own fight was abruptly cancelled. The explanations vary: Santana’s manager, Brian Cohen, says opponent Wilfredo Negron had a car crash on the way to the airport. In the press box, veteran boxing journalist Rick Scharmberg has heard rumors that Negron wasn’t allowed time off from work. One of Santana’s corner staff, Emmanuel Brujan, provides a different narrative: “He was scared.”

Cohen, an affable bull of a man wearing a thick silver chain, takes the disappointment in stride. His client gets paid anyway – Santana’s promoter Dave Escalet suggests anywhere between $3,000 and $10,000. In the boxing world, Cohen says, such disruptions aren’t unusual. “I’ve seen fighters fake an anxiety attack before a fight,” he says. “I’ve seen it all.”

Santana seems strangely distracted. As his entourage makes its way to an after-party in the casino’s oyster bar, he drops behind, walking alone, carrying a bottle of iced tea. “I only came to get paid,” he says.

Cohen, however, leads Santana off to a table where three white-haired men are sitting. Santana shakes their hands; they talk a bit. Pleasantries exchanged, he and Cohen return to the table.

Ordering a second vodka, Cohen struggles to contain his excitement. He doesn’t want to “jinx” anything, but the discussions bode well for his client’s future. Santana, declining another drink, doesn’t seem to share Cohen’s enthusiasm. “People offer me a lot of things,” he says.

Santana hopes to defend his NABA title in February, again in Dover. But at 32, he knows he’s only got four or five more years left to fight, so Negron’s no-show represents a setback. The comeback is still on, he insists, but it’s been delayed.

A few weeks before he’s due back in Dover to defend his title, Santana walks into the Mendez gym wearing a black t-shirt featuring De La Vega’s latest aphorism: “Be Mindful, Even if Your Mind is Full.”

Taylor, his coach, greets him with a clasped hand and a shoulder barge that knocks his charge sideways. In mock retaliation, Santana clips him lightly with a weightless fist.

After a half hour’s shadow-boxing, Santana leaves the ring, sweating through his pants at the knee. He looks in good shape.

“Whatever I did before; now I’m doing twice as much,” he says. “It’s a good opportunity. This fight is very important to me.”

Santana and his team then head to another Mendez gym a few blocks away to work on conditioning.

“I definitely started 2012 with a whole different head on my shoulders,” Santana declares. “I want to show everybody I’m the real deal.”

*The Uptowner originally reported that Santana was the only professional boxer training at Mendez gym; in fact, there are several others.

HIV antiretroviral medications fetch a hefty price on the black market, causing poorer Washington Heights residents to sell the drugs that could ward off the worst symptoms of AIDS. (Graphic by Sarah McNaughton.)

Many Washington Heights residents are choosing money over their own health. What once were the miracle drugs that changed an HIV-positive diagnosis from a death sentence into a treatable problem are now among the most desirable medications on the black market.

The trade resembles the usual illegal deals that take place across New York City, but the drugs flow upstream: people with desirable prescriptions sell their medications to buyers, who then either ship the drugs directly to family members abroad or sell it to pharmacists for resales overseas.

Street sales have been particularly noticeable near uptown subway stations for more than six years, according to Dr. Michael Mowatt-Wynn, the president of Precinct 33’s Community Council. Prescription painkillers are prevalent, but the most popular drugs aren’t addictive and don’t produce any kind of high: HIV antiretroviral medications.

Mowatt-Wynn remembers the first time he saw a deal take place.

“I was exiting the subway on the 1 train line, and I always noticed there were young gentlemen just wandering around, scoping out the passengers who were walking up the stairs,” he says. “Others would stop at the first level of the subway, stand with bags in their hands, pull out bottles of drugs, and the young gentlemen would inspect the bottles.”

Drug treatments for HIV dates to the 1990s, and although they remainl expensive, many health clinics and AIDS advocacy groups offer medications at no cost or at sharply reduced prices.

“HIV is no longer a death note,” Mowatt-Wynn says. “It’s a controllable disease someone can live with, like diabetes.”

But that doesn’t mean everyone has access to the medication. The waiting lists for treatment are lengthy. More than 107,000 New Yorkers are living with HIV, and thousands more are unaware they’ve been infected, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. New York City’s AIDS rate is almost three times the U.S. average, and the infection continues to spread.

And those who do have access to the medication don’t always make healthy choices. Pablo Colón* is the senior HIV counseling and treatment specialist at East Harlem’s Iris House, a service and advocacy program for women, families and communities affected by HIV/AIDS. Colón himself received an HIV diagnosis in 1990, and has witnessed the poorest recipients of HIV medication make the harrowing decision to forgo their physical health in the name of their families’ financial well-being.

“A lot of us are tired, a lot of us are poor,” Colón says. “There are a lot of us who are homeless, a lot of us who have children who are hungry. A lot of us live on the edge. The same reasons that you go out and sell your body is the same reason they sell their medication.”

Although the price depends on the strength of the black market, some HIV medications can fetch around $500 a bottle, Mowatt-Wynn says, an alluring sum to those who are infected but also desperately need money.

“I saw a mother with children in tow, no more than 5 or 6 years old,” Mowatt-Wynn says. “She was selling her HIV medicine, saying she needed to get food for her children. So she was basically selling herself. It’s a form of medical prostitution — that’s what we call it.”

In other countries, HIV medication is expensive and uncommon, making it a lucrative product for the black market. Buyers stand around the more popular uptown subway stations as if it’s a full-time job. From 9  to 5  Monday through Friday, they’re buying prescription medication from people who will use the proceeds to buy food, pay bills or fuel an addiction. Pharmacists then buy and repackage the drugs so they’ll sell for higher prices and ship them to countries with high demand, like the Dominican Republic and Mexico, Colon says.

He also knows people on the other side of the deal — the buyers — who purchase medication in order to send it directly to  infected family members abroad. But people overseas who use medication without a prescription are taking huge risks, he says.

“It’s not only dangerous to buy someone else’s prescription, but you don’t know the effects you’re going to have from those prescriptions,” he says. “Because you and I are on the same medication doesn’t mean we take the same dose.”

Colón remembers when an acquaintance purchased and sent medication to a pregnant HIV-positive family member in the Dominican Republic. She took the medication regularly, but her infected baby only lived a few days. Colón believes the medication actually harmed the woman and baby, and says only a personalized prescription is safe.

The people who stop taking their medication in order to sell it risk even more. Colón says people who do not follow the prescribed regimen can grow resistant to medication and develop serious infections.

As with most black market items, some scam their way into a sale. HIV-negative men and women can obtain medications from corrupt doctors or pharmacists simply to sell on the streets. Many people abuse the system, Colón says.

“It’s unfortunate for those people who really need the medication, who can’t get medication because there’s a waiting list longer than their arms,” he says.

Precinct 33 Commander Brian Mullen told Mowatt-Wynn and the rest of the council during a public safety meeting that the trend of everyday people selling their prescription medications represents one of the precinct’s longest ongoing investigations. The council and precinct have instituted new policies to try to reduce the drug trade, placing cameras on lampposts at the most popular subway stations and stationing patrol officers nearby. It’s a start, Mowatt-Wynn says, but many sales continue right in front of the cameras, and enforcement has been challenging given the precinct’s limited resources.

Colón hasn’t seen much of an improvement from where he’s sitting, either. “What’s out there is real, and it’s a mess,” he says. “And that’s the reason the numbers continue to rise.”

*Pablo Colón died a few days following this interview.

Emily Orton describes her family's routine as weaving in and out of learning together. (Photo by Lina Zeldovich)

Karina Orton, 14, sits on the living room couch leafing through her biology textbook while her sister, Sarah Jane, 10, munches on a sandwich at the table and Alison, 12, plays the piano in the next room.  Their brother Eli, 6, is building planes with his favorite Legos and their mother, Emily, reads to Lily, 4, who is drinking milk from a sippy cup.

The relaxed scene resembles a weekend morning, but it’s 11 a.m. on a Thursday.  For the Ortons, this is the norm.  They don’t rush off to school each morning or spend afternoons doing homework. Emily and Erik Orton have been homeschooling their children for more than four years.

“I was really nervous because it’s such a huge responsibility,” Emily, who’s 37,  says about that decision.  “I have my degree in education and I was still nervous because it felt like I would be replicating a classroom in our house.”

The Ortons turned to homeschooling because Karina asked for it, her mother says. Karina doesn’t remember the conversation, but recalls that her public school wasn’t very challenging. “I’m a really fast reader, so if I like a book, I can read it in a day,” she says.  “But in school they usually read it one chapter at a time.”

A decade ago homeschooling was a cutting edge alternative approach to education, but it has become almost mainstream, says Brian D. Ray, president of the National Home Education Research Institute, who has studied homeschooling for 25 years. His 2009 nationwide study, published last spring in Academic Leadership Journal, estimates the number of home-educated students in America at  1.7 million to 2.3 million.

Surveying 11,739 students from 50 states via online and paper questionnaires, including achievement test results, the study also used data from the 13 state education departments, five nationwide homeschooling organizations and other published research to develop that estimate.

More than 2500 New York City students are being homeschooled this year, according to the city’s Department of Education, a number that has fluctuated from 1880 students in 2002-03 to a peak of 3654 in 2006-07.

The number of homeschooled New York kids fluctuated from 1880 to 3654 in the past decade. (Chart by Lina Zeldovich. Data provided by the New York City Department of Education.)

New York State laws give homeschooling families substantial flexibility, making the administrative procedures surprisingly simple.  Parents must submit a letter of intent to the New York City Department of Education homeschooling office and write an individualized home instruction plan for the year, with a syllabus and textbook for each course.

They must submit quarterly reports to show that children are meeting the plan’s goals, record the number of hours studied and produce a year-end assessment. The law allows parents to choose someone to administer a year-end achievement year-end test — a certified teacher, a peer group review panel, even the parents themselves. The laws also allow homeschoolers to use their district school’s gym, library and other facilities.

Emily Orton says the process proved easier than her family thought, allowed them to spend more time together and simplifying their lives. “We were finally able to get enough sleep,” she says, adding that homeschooling allows Lily, who has Down syndrome, to learn from her siblings.

Erik also thinks that traditional schooling can interfere with learning. “Children are naturally curious and able to figure things out,” he says. “If you give them some freedom, they can learn deeper than when there’s a traditional classroom and a test at the end.”

While Ortons prefer to teach their children themselves, other families hire tutors.  It can be costly, from $85 to $95 an hour, depending on the course and materials, says tutor Jessie Mathisen.  She taught science in New York City public schools for two years before starting a business, Tutor New York City, that coaches members of two uptown homeschool groups.

She says the reasons local families chose to homeschool vary.  “Some parents really enjoy teaching their kids themselves – the closeness, protection against bad influences,” she says.

Nationally, the institute study shows a similar diversity: Some homeschooling parents feel their children accomplish more studying at home with individualized approaches, some cite religious reasons or safety concerns, and others believe it enhances family relationships.

Local families build in a lot of socializing, often with other homeschooled kids, Mathisen points out. The National Home Education Research Institute’s study confirms that “the large majority of home-educated students consistently interact with children of various ages and parents outside their immediate family.”

On the downside, Mathisen thinks many homeschoolers never learn to stand up to bullies, “but for many parents it’s a small price to pay,” she says.  “Other parents can’t even bear to think about their kids bullied.”

The National Home Education Research Institute’s study also shows that homeschooling families are larger, better-educated and higher-earning than the norm:  68.1 percent families have more than three children, 81 percent have an at-home mother and over 60 percent have college-educated parents. The families’ annual incomes average $75,000 to $79,000, of which $400 to $599 is spent on educational materials per student.

Alison Orton wears headphones when playing piano under her parents’ loft bed so her music doesn’t interfere with her siblings’ studies. (Photo by Lina Zeldovich)

The Ortons live in a two-bedroom Washington Heights apartment where the kids’ bedroom has three bunk beds and the parents’ bedroom also serves as an office and piano studi0.

“I cover math, technology and music because I have a degree in music,” says Erik. While he doesn’t give his kids lessons, “they all play multiple instruments and write their own songs.”

Emily, who has a degree in bilingual education, covers almost everything else, except for Karina’s tutoring in biology, which Karina barters for in exchange for babysitting her tutor’s kids.  Karina also studies the Old Testament at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints that the Ortons belong to, a lesson she gets up for at 6:15 a.m.  “I usually go back to bed when I get home,” she admits.

To support the family, Erik does graphics work for an investment bank, working a 3-to-midnight shift. “That’s when Emily and I have a grown-up time, quiet time,” he says, describing their daily routine. “We go to bed around 2 and start our day late.”

That schedule, with Erik at home most of the day, made home schooling even more appealing.  The Ortons disliked the usual morning frenzy, Erik says, lamenting that he barely saw his children. “I’d walk them to school and I’d pass them on the way to work by the subway,” he says, “and that was it.”

Now Erik does work for his theater production company, O Productions, writing and producing plays during the day and essentially keeping a second job while being with his family.

Setting their own schedule gives the Ortons freedom to take day trips and travel.  “We spent a month in Cape Cod in September,” says Erik. “It was quiet and empty.”

The Orton kids are quick to recall favorite educational experiences: they visited a biodynamic farm and forged hooks at a blacksmith shop in Chestnut Ridge, N.Y., took art lessons at the Metropolitan Museum and ski lessons in Utah and learned to sail in New York harbor.

“Sailing is fun,” says Alison. She uses a yacht-shaped Christmas ornament to explain how the sails work.  “I know how to steer. I can raise the jib, but you need more than one person to raise the main sail.”

Except for Eli, who has already decided to become a ninja, the children aren’t sure what they want to do when they grow up.

“It’s such a hard question for me,” Karina says. “I love making things with my hands.”

Alison chimes in. “We’d love to grow our own food, but we don’t know how to do that very well.”

According to the National Home Education Research Institute’s study, homeschooled students test well, with scores 15 to 30 percentile points above public school students’ average of the 50th percentile.

Homeschoolers succeed at college at the same or slightly higher rate than public school kids and fare about as well in adulthood.  However, they  partake more in community services, vote and attend public meetings more frequently than their peers, and internalize their parents’ values and beliefs at a higher rate.

“Our home school isn’t something that happens between certain hours on certain days,” Emily says. “It’s our approach to life.”

Crystal Rand and Mae Hmo, minority students at Park East, a predominantly Hispanic high school in East Harlem. (Photo by Paolo Lorenzana)

In the cafeteria of Harlem Renaissance High School on East 128th Street, students at four tables chatter over snacks before their morning classes. But 16-year-old Brooke Dominguez, a junior, eats with her mother and baby sister. In a room where most students are African-Americans, Dominguez also has the lightest skin: a faint trace of mocha, like the froth on a café au lait.

Reflecting the primarily black population of Harlem, more than 50 percent of Harlem Renaissance’s 231 students are African-American; nearly all the rest are Hispanic. Just one percent identify as “other” and their experiences as a tiny minority in uptown schools go largely overlooked.

Dominguez is one of two students in the school who identify themselves as being of mixed race.

Tiffany Brand, Dominguez’s mother and the secretary of the school parents’ association, is Caucasian — rosy-cheeked with dove grey eyes and hair the color of a wheat field. She left her native Nebraska on a whim, following a college roommate to New York City, where she met Brooke’s father, who is African-American and Hispanic.

The family lived on the Upper West Side, then moved to the Bronx. It wasn’t until Dominguez entered the sixth grade, at Frederick Douglass Academy II on West 114th Street, that she felt alienated because of her race.

“I was the one with the lightest skin in the school,” says Dominguez. “There was a welcome assembly where the principal talked about the student population — how many blacks and Hispanics there were. Then they were talking about those who were something else. They used me as an example.”

“I was shocked,” Brand says about her daughter’s being singled out on her first day of middle school. “Why would you talk about that at an assembly? The principal was rambling, talking about the school’s ethnic roots and it’s like he was telling all other races, ‘You get out.’”

Dominguez soon became withdrawn at school. “They would try to pick on me,” she says. “I was quiet and more go with the flow. Those kids were crazy. I didn’t like anyone in that school.” Classmates invited her to “go to the staircase” and cut class, she recalls; some sixth graders also smoked and drank alcohol. Dominguez responded by spending most of her time with neighborhood friends and focusing on her schoolwork.

Not only did she become ostracized for her diligence, but also for her color. “When we took a class picture, they’d point out I was the lightest one,” Dominguez says. “She don’t belong here,” a classmate pointed out with amusement.

“I never worried about putting her in a predominantly black school because I was never prejudiced,” her mother says. “If Frederick Douglass saw what was happening, he’d be rolling in his grave. I took her out of that school.”

“I imagine that white students, like any small minority in a large majority, will feel many of the same things,” says Bill Crain, a developmental psychologist at City College of New York in Hamilton Heights. ”Emotionally, there would be some problems. They’ll feel isolation and feel different.”

Brooke Dominguez, whose mother is white and father is African-American, experienced discrimination at her predominantly black middle school

During forums at City College, where Crain, who is white, teaches classes that are mostly African-Americans, preference for the majority has been raised as an issue. “I’ve had white students complain that I wasn’t calling on them enough in class,” says Crain. “‘You’re just trying to favor the black kids,’” students would tell him.

“Those issues come up — favoritism,” Crain says. “All this occurs in the broader context in which whites have the power…I guess any minority feels more sensitive to discrimination.”

Minority students in high school may feel even more strain from racial tension. “In the teenage years, you’re worried about your identity,” Crain says. “I think it would be more acute and anxiety-producing for the teenager. There’s cliques — what clique are you going to get into if you’re a white kid?”

Despite the struggles, there can be benefits to being the ethnic odd one out in school. “They may feel different and odd for a while, but if they hang in there, they come out a mature, more advanced individual who has a broader perspective,” says Crain, who invokes a sociological study done decades ago by Robert Park. “His thesis was that those people who grow up in two different cultures become more intellectually and culturally sophisticated,” Crain said. “I would think that there could be some really positive effects to having two cultures.”

Perhaps reflecting the changing demographics of upper Manhattan, some schools are seeing a bit more ethnic and racial diversity. At Park East High School on East 105th Street, more than 60 percent of the 258 students are Hispanic and 30 percent are African-American. However,“this year, there are more nationalities,” says Xiomara Rodriguez, the parent coordinator. “There are two students that are Arabic and two Indians. We have four white students. Last year, there were just two.”

The unease a minority student experiences in a classroom where the faces — and culture — are unfamiliar can be temporary, Rodriguez says. “There are a few students that are assigned here by the district,” she says. “They come to the school with the mentality of transferring, but sometimes, they get used to the school and they change their minds and stay.”

Freshman Crystal Rand, for instance, was reluctant to enroll at Park East High after she completed middle school at a Catholic school in the Bronx. “I thought it wasn’t going to be the right school for me. I just felt scared,” says Rand, whose pale face and chestnut hair distinguish her in a hallway of darker students. “The school was kind of small for me. I wanted to be in a school that was big, where no one knew me.”

But the school’s size proved an advantage to Rand, especially with new ethnicities mottling the palette in recent years. “My old school was more Spanish but here, there’s a little more diversity,” says Rand, who considers two Asians and a Hispanic student her closest friends. “I remember when I first came to Harlem in summer camp, I was probably 10 years old at the time. It was kind of hard because people were still kind of racist. But here, everybody knows you for who you are — race and everything.”

David Deng, a Chinese-American student at Park East High (Photo by Paolo Lorenzana)

David Deng, 17, a senior who is Chinese, says: “Everyone saw me and, ‘Oh, it’s the Asian kid.’” He selected Park East High, after graduating from a middle school in Grammercy Park, because of its A grade from the Department of Education.

“My first friend here, who’s Dominican, came up to me on the second day and we’re best friends now,” he says. “Freshman year, I was the only Asian here. It went from being Puerto Rican, Dominican and black to more whites and Asians, like a normal high school in New York City.”

Smiling widely, Rand adds, “Since I’ve been here, I’ve gotten into hip-hop and all that. It’s influenced the way I speak. I speak with a bit more slang than I used to.”

Deng agrees. “I now know cultures of Dominicans and Puerto Ricans — what they do, eat, and all that fun stuff like rap and bachata, the Spanish dance music they’re always talking about.” As a result of his experience, entering one of the predominantly white colleges he applied to is less daunting. “I’ll get used to it,” he says. “Asians are still a minority but because of this school, I can make friends with every different race — people I wouldn’t even talk to when I was in middle school.”

Such people might include Shane De la Cruz, a dark-skinned Dominican senior, who wasn’t exposed to ethnicities other than black or Hispanic when he began high school at Park East. But by his senior year, his group of mostly Dominican friends now includes Deng. Other Asian students tend to cling toone another, De la Cruz said, ” but he isn’t how the other Asians are. He was talking, joking around. I’m the type of guy who’s always playing around so I started talking to him. I wouldn’t say we’re good friends but we’re friends.”

At Frederick Douglass Academy II, cultures are also converging. Two years ago, Owei Owusu-Afriyie replaced the principal in charge when Brooke Dominguez was the resident “white girl” amid an African-American majority.

“You know, there’s a reality for students and then there’s the adult perception of the students’ reality,” Afriyie says, told of the former student’s experience. “I may not perceive it, but that doesn’t mean that that’s not a tension that a child feels.”

But with a recent influx of West Africans and the emergence of new minorities among the school’s 419 students, Afriyie has given ethnic integration more emphasis. He introduced a buddy system for new students from different cultures and launched Summer Bridge, a three-week program to foster unity among incoming students.

“They build what we call a scholar identity,” he says. “It doesn’t mean you’re denying where you’re coming from, but you’re participating with others in the creation of another type of experience — what it means to be an FDA II scholar.

“A lot of times, the students’ interactions with cultures is via TV, not face to face,” he points out. “The whole idea of coming to school is to learn about other people and interact with people of different cultures. That’s one thing we’ve been working on — having more celebrations of diversity in this school.”

Afriyie speculates that technology has made students more sophisticated about classmates outside their own ethnicities. “It’s the Facebook culture,” he says. “Social media closes the gap of what children are liking in other countries and what children are liking here. They have a common entry point that’s helping bridge culture.”

As gentrification increases uptown, the integration of minorities into predominantly black or Hispanic schools is likely to increase cultural interplay.

“There are more white people coming in,” says Yvette McKenzie, the parent coordinator at Frederick Douglass Academy in West Harlem. “This location is predominantly black until recently. People have come to our school because it’s a safe place. We don’t have metal detectors or bars on the windows. We also have AP classes in the ninth grade so, of course, parents like their kids to come here.”

Afriyie agrees. “The neighborhood’s changing,” he says. “You’re having a lot of different things that are going to change the ethnic makeup of the school. I think that’s only going to be a good thing.”

Getting Out and Staying Out founder Mark Goldsmith works late into the night in his East Harlem office, planning a seminar for young ex-offenders. (Photo by Sarah McNaughton.)

On a rainy Wednesday night, six young ex-convicts sit in the basement of an East Harlem storefront, eating slices of pepperoni and sausage pizza. Except for the sounds of chewing, the room is silent, the young men shifting in their chairs and avoiding eye contact until Mark Goldsmith walks in, takes a seat beneath a poster of Muhammed Ali and begins his seminar: “How to be Successful in School and Work.”

Goldsmith, known here as Mr. G., introduces a hypothetical situation: “There’s a hot party in Brooklyn tonight, best-looking women in town, you’re on the guest list. I’ll pick you up outside Yankee stadium at 10:30,” Goldsmith says. The guys who have heard this one before smile; the ones who haven’t look at the floor.

“Now, you know what I have in my car. I don’t go anywhere without a weapon. Never. I don’t go anywhere without some drugs that I can sell,” he says. The guys chuckle. “But this is the hottest party of the year and you’re on the guest list. So are you coming with me or what?”

“Hell yeah,” says the youngest man.

Goldsmith groans. “You don’t want to miss the party, but you ain’t going in my car,” he says. “What happens if we go one block and I got a blinking light and the cop pulls us over? Guess what, we’re going to Rikers.”

Goldsmith later says he’s sick of hearing people complain about being unlucky or tricked into bad situations. “The idea that they’re in the wrong place at the wrong time is getting tiresome,” he says. “It’s bullshit.”

A retired cosmetics executive, Goldsmith, who is 75,  spends most of his time with ex-convicts. After 35 years in business, he switched to working with and for people with whom he ostensibly has little in common: poor young men with damaged families, criminal records and no plans for the future.

Six years ago he founded Getting Out and Staying Out, a non-profit program working to keep New York City’s young men out of prison for good. Recidivism rates — the proportion of people who return to prison within three years of their release – hovers above 60 percent nationally, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. In New York City, reports the state Division of Criminal Justice Services, the rate is about half that.  Recidivism for men enrolled in what’s informally called GOSO, Goldsmith says, stays in the range of 15 to 17 percent.

Sitting in his East Harlem office across the street from a dollar store, Goldsmith still looks dressed for Wall Street: pressed navy slacks and jacket, crisp collared shirt, red silk tie. He’s a community advocate trapped in a marketing executive’s wardrobe. When he’s in his element—speaking to ex-cons from Rikers Island about succeeding in school and work—he curses like a D-list celebrity. He’s not shy about saying he believes drugs should be legalized. “I deal with reality,” he often says.

His involvement began in 2002 when Goldsmith, already retired, agreed to participate in a Principal for a Day program organized by the non-profit group Public Education Needs Civic Involvement in Learning, or PENCIL.

Always looking for a challenge, Goldsmith asked to be assigned to a struggling school. “I was a bit of a wise guy,” he admits. “I thought I was going to get East New York or South Bronx, but I ended up getting Rikers Island. So off to Rikers Island I went,” he goes on, “and I had a terrific day.”

Goldsmith requested a return to Rikers the next year, then founded GOSO in 2004, using a Starbucks at 39^th and Madison as his office for almost two years before moving to this storefront on 116th Street in East Harlem.

His wife, Arlene, founded and directs New Alternatives for Children, which supports medically fragile children and their families, so Goldsmith knew what a non-profit needed. Development was slow and he wasn’t used to limited funding, but he was determined to make GOSO a success because he saw a little of himself in the Rikers inmates.

“When I was 18, 19 and 20, I didn’t have a clue,” he recalls. “All my friends were finishing four-year schools and going off to professional schools” while he dropped out of Penn State and joined the Navy for two years, then arrived in New York harbor and decided he’d found home. “I know what it’s like to be looked at as a truant or a troublemaker versus someone who is performing,” he says.

He finished his undergraduate work at New York University and earned an MBA from Baruch College before landing a job with Pfizer, the pharmaceutical firm.

He and Arlene, married for 50 years now, had twins—a boy and a girl—in 1967. She says Goldsmith was a great father,  something that informs the way he runs GOSO now. “I think he’s translated that fatherhood experience into helping these young guys who’ve never had a father figure,” she says.

Goldsmith says many of the Rikers guys do look at him like a father, or grandfather. “When they leave this office at night, they’ll say, ‘Home safe, Mr. G,’ and they mean it,” he says. “They hope I don’t get shot, because where they’re going they could get shot.”

GOSO begins its work while inmates are still in Rikers or an upstate prison. Mentors visit or correspond with them frequently, encouraging them to focus on school and on developing a plan for when they’re released. Participants who excel at academics receive full scholarships to Ohio University’s College Program for the Incarcerated; for inmates who don’t receive a degree before they leave prison, the first goal is to obtain a GED, then find a job.

But while education and employment are important parts of the program, as in many others across the country, GOSO also helps participants with such basic life skills as building healthy relationships and managing stress. On the first day participants walk into the office, sometimes just hours after leaving Rikers, they sit down with a mentor and create a new resume, find housing and make appointments for psychological and health services.

GOSO works with men ages 16 to 24.  They’re required to complete a full curriculum of seminars, including Goldsmith’s success seminar and others focusing on financial planning, interviewing skills, legal rights, self marketing and fatherhood. The successful businesspeople Goldsmith has recruited for the board of directors also serve as mentors and help participants find work.

Even after six years—during which the program moved to a real office, hired six employees, helped more than 3,000 inmates and raised an annual budget of about $1 million from grants, donations and prizes—Goldsmith still organizes nearly every aspect of GOSO. He even makes the “success bags” each participant receives on his first day: alarm clock, notebooks, pencils, condoms and a monthly Metro card.

Sara Hobel, executive director of the Horticultural Society of New York, hired four GOSO participants last year to join the society’s “Green Team” of 40, which builds and maintains gardens and plantings for non-profit organizations across the five boroughs.

“It was great,” she says of the experience. “In fact, two of the guys were some of our absolute best workers.” She’s looking forward to hiring more GOSO grads when the society’s projects pick up again in the spring.

The Horticultural Society has worked with Rikers inmates before on the island’s large garden, but Hobel says GOSO offers something unique. “The one thing about repeat offenders, and young offenders in particular, is that there is no one answer. There are so many layers when you look at why are you there, and how did you get to this place, and how are we going to get you out,” she says.  Unlike “a lot of cookie-cutter, well-intentioned programs out there,” GOSO tries to customize its assistance to each incarcerated or released man.

The guys eating pizza in the basement are lucky and they know it. GOSO is an exclusive program that only enrolls several hundred inmates each year as compared to the usual thousands at other reentry programs. But GOSO is important, says JoAnne Page, president and CEO of the Fortune Society, one of the nation’s more prominent reentry programs, serving around 3,000 prisoners annually.

“While our programs have helped tens of thousands of men and women stay out of prison and find a new, crime-free path, there is still a pressing and growing need for more services,” Page says. “Getting Out and Staying Out is part of the non-profit community helping to fill this need.”

At Rikers, Goldsmith says, “a big question always comes up: Why am I doing this? They’re very suspect. Why aren’t I out driving a Rolls-Royce and playing golf?” he says. “They’re very concerned about why I am spending my time with them. Deep down they consider themselves worthless and stupid, which I know they are neither.”

But it’s still a tough road. In the GOSO basement, the guys are discussing their talents and where their strengths could take them professionally, listing interests in writing, math, athletics and computers. One participant who has been with GOSO for several years is training to become a paramedic; another is interested in songwriting.

When Goldsmith asks the group to think of three people in their lives who are supportive, most of them can hardly come up with one or two. Several look at Goldsmith shyly and say, “You.”

This isn’t a surprise. The family is often the main problem, Goldsmith says, and most of these young men have had multiple relatives serving prison terms.

“Going to jail is something they are aware of the day they become aware of society. Some of them fully expect from the get-go to end up there,” he says, frowning. “There’s a combination of ending up there and not living a long life, which means they aren’t future-oriented.”

One of the older and quieter guys at the seminar says this is only his second time at the office, but that he’s been a part of the program for his five years on Rikers. This was his first seminar, and he loved it.

“He’s cool as shit,” he says of Goldsmith. “I didn’t know he cursed that much. Makes him more down to earth.”

After the seminar, the men say goodbye and Goldsmith rushes to pack up and leave in time to get to a dinner party. As he flutters around the room, one man returns to tell Goldsmith he thinks he lost his Metro card.

“How much is it to get on the subway these days? I don’t even know,” Goldsmith says.

“Four-fifty for both ways,” the man replies.

“Four-fifty?” Goldsmith‘s eyes widen. He reaches into his wallet and pulls out a five.

“Thanks, Mr. G.,” the young man says, pocketing the bill as he walks out into the rain. “Home safe.”

During a National Dance Institute class at PS 189, Arthur Fredric demonstrates a new move to students.

Darwyn, 10, just wants to dance. “I like the rhythm and how we move our bodies,” he says after clapping, jumping and shuffling his way through a National Dance Institute class at P.S. 189 in Washington Heights.

The small auditorium where three institute instructors teach Darwyn and his classmates once a week fills with the sounds of drum beats, snaps and squeaking sneakers as the group runs through exercises, warmups and dance routines.

For 35 years such auditoriums were the closest connection to a home base for the National Dance Institute, which provides arts education to students primarily through a free in-school dance program.

Since 1976, the institute has reached more than 2 million students and expanded to 11 associate programs across the country, as well as many others around the world. Jacques d’Amboise, a former principal dancer and choreographer for the New York City Ballet, started the institute in an effort to offer free dance education to children who didn’t get much exposure to the arts.

While the in-school classes continue, the National Dance Institute for the first time has its own permanent headquarters. The 18,000-square-foot center — between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass boulevards on 147th Street — has two art galleries, staff offices, a terrace and four studios, one of which converts to a performance space seating about 175 people.

The institute’s new home doesn’t represent much of a departure from those school auditoriums; the building itself was once P.S. 90, abandoned since the 1970s but now once more filled with excited chatter of eager students.

Originally built in the early 1900s and completely gutted, according to artistic director Ellen Weinstein, the center features gleaming white walls bedecked with bright artwork given or lent by local artists, as well as wood floors specially suited for dancers.

“When the children come in for dance classes, they’re going to sit in the halls and be surrounded by great art,” d’Amboise says. The center helps the institute expand its reach to cover a broader arts spectrum.

“It’s been a dream for most of our 35 years,” Weinstein says. “Especially in the last 10. It had become increasingly difficult to function.”

The institute had rented or borrowed space, something that became more difficult as it grew. D’Amboise remembers struggling to find places to rehearse and perform. “The programs take place in schools during school hours,” d’Amboise says. “To do more advanced programs we needed a place.”

Weinstein echoes: “We were like gypsies. We were running out of available space, and we weren’t able to do things in a planned way because we weren’t in control of our space.”

Administrators believe the center also ensures its future. “We’re here; this is our home,” Weinstein says. “For us and for our funders, we’re not going anywhere. It’s not going to dissolve.”

Their concern was perhaps intensified  by the reality that d’Amboise — an active teacher at 77 years old — has passed traditional retirement age.  He represents the heart of the National Dance Institute, but administrators wanted to ensure that the institute would endure long after he leaves.

After years of searching for a proper location, P.S. 90 came to executives’ attention. The institute spent $11.5 million to pay for the building and its renovation. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations provided a lead gift of $5 million, supplemented by board members and other donors. “I think the stars aligned,” says Kathy Landau, the institute’s executive director.

The institute purchased the building in November 2010. Renovation, begun in December, was completed under budget and ahead of schedule, and the institute moved into the center in August 2011 and opened officially in October.

“Now we’re down to the choices part,” Landau says. “Do we buy the curtains and the tracks? What are the most important things now?”

The organization’s leaders now must grapple with determining how to preserve the original mission of the National Dance Institute after such a fundamental change.  “Rather than letting the building change the mission and purpose of the programming, it was created to support the mission,” Landau says.

In-school classes remain free and the spotlight of the institute’s programming. After-school and weekend classes, as well as special events, take place at the center. The institute has added three new partner schools in Harlem, Weinstein says, “allowing us to double and triple the number of children we’re reaching.”

To make its programming available to students who don’t attend one of the 31 partner schools and to allow for more advanced instruction, the institute also offers after-school classes at the center for a fee, a departure from its traditional policy of free instruction.

Darwyn just wants to dance. He and his fourth-grade peers, whose last names the institute withheld as a condition of the interviews, are unaware of any changes; for them, the classes are simply the road to the final performance they watched last year and enthusiastically await this year.

“I’m excited because my parents are going to see me dance,” says Jordany, 9, who moments earlier was eagerly jumping up and down, striking poses onstage.

The institute reaches about 5,000 elementary school students each week — up from around 4,000 before the center was built. In some cases, institute classes are the only arts or physical education students will receive. Darwyn and Jordany’s class of about 25 is led by master teacher Arthur Fredric, co-teacher and institute alumnus Dufftin Garcia and musician Tim Harrison. This three-teacher formula is standard.

Institute teachers are encouraged to change the configuration of the room periodically, shifting where they stand and which way students face so that no front line develops. This tactic gives all students a chance to be in the lead and allows the instructors to easily spot any struggling dancers.

“Another teacher might just say, ‘Let’s keep going and going,’ but here they’re really following along,” Fredric says. “We’re really taking our time with the kids.”

A move is repeated as many times as necessary until every student feels comfortable. Although many of the students would likely look out of place in a professional dance class, here their various heights and body types are irrelevant; all are eventually able to execute the moves with ease and style.

Fredric occasionally selects students to serve as “assistant directors” who decide whether a sequence is up to par, rendering the students active participants in determining the class’s success. When Nicolette, 9, adds a clap above her head to one of the moves, Fredric likes the change so much that he has her teach it to the rest of the class. She shyly complies — but smiles at each subsequent reference to “The Nicolette.”

“The movement is accessible to all,” Weinstein says. “We’re doing things they can all achieve — and they do.” Harrison wanders the room with a drum, adjusting his beat to fit each sequence, sometimes moving to the piano. Fredric and Garcia remind the students that they’ll eventually be executing these moves in front of an audience; in response, they all shriek.

Weinstein describes the end-of-year performances at each school as a rite of passage. The event creates a ripple effect, Fredric says. “You change the whole community,” he says. “The kids come to see the show in kindergarten and then there’s anticipation for it. They want to do it themselves.”

Some become so enthusiastic that they move on to advanced institute programs, like the SWAT Team — “scholarships for the willing, achieving and talented.” SWAT Dancers chosen from the in-school classes receive free training outside school hours and perform at the Event of the Year, which also features dancers from the advanced Celebration Team.

Most of these students won’t pursue arts careers, but to institute administrators, that might be the point. “You take mathematics in school and it doesn’t mean you have to be a physicist, but everyone should take it because it’s beautiful and great,” d’Amboise says. “Everybody should take dancing and music but it doesn’t mean you have to do it as a career. You should take it because it’s part of being a human being.”

Last year’s Event of the Year focused on the intersection of science and the arts; one routine explored the properties of DNA. “Now every kid in that class can tell you how DNA replicates,” Weinstein says. “It’s more than just reading it in a book.”

To her, the idea is simply to promote student achievement. “I’m equally proud of the people who go on to college and become doctors and lawyers,” she says. “The goal is not to train professional dancers; this isn’t a conservatory. We just want to make sure every child has a success.”

Some students have gone on to careers in the arts, however. One dancer has performed with Beyonce and another with Madonna. A student recently appeared on the television show “Glee.” Garcia was a National Dance Institute student who started a boy’s ballet class and eventually got a call from d’Amboise to teach with the institute. “We give students tools,” Weinstein says. “It’s about rigor, discipline, joy.”

The institute’s particular brand of education seems to have an effect on the fourth graders at P.S. 189. At one point Fredric assures them, “You guys are good.” One of the boys yells back in response, “Good, not great!”

This desire to never settle has helped the institute reach this milestone. “We built the physical space,” Landau says. “Now what we’re building is a legacy.”

For more information on the National Dance Institute’s move click here.

Taeko Frost prepares to test a man for Hepatitis C (Photo by Yumna Mohamed)

A middle-aged man hesitantly enters the CORNER Project syringe exchange program’s office on 176th Street and Wadsworth Avenue in Washington Heights.

“How are you doing today?,” asks Taeko Frost, program director at the CORNER Project, who is in charge of hepatitis C testing. “You OK?” She will be testing him for hepatitis C, a chronic disease affecting the liver.

A lot of information is crammed into these close quarters. The walls are plastered with posters and flyers about hepatitis C: testing, treatment and prevention.

The man, who asked for anonymity, takes a seat and rolls up his sleeve. Taeko explains the risks of sharing needles and cotton when using injected drugs with others and emphasizes the importance of a healthy diet and safe sex, regardless of this blood test’s results.

She gently taps his large, muscular arm for a vein, laughing as he jokes about having none left. She fastens a blue elastic band around his arm; he winces as she inserts the needle.

With a government estimate of 4 million Americans infected, viral hepatitis C infections are three to five times more common than HIV, according to a 2010 study by the National Institute of Medicine. The study adds that in the next 10 years, about 150,000 people in the United States will die from liver cancer and end-stage liver disease associated with chronic hepatitis B and hepatitis C.  

And more people are infected with Hepatitis C in New York City than anywhere else in the country, says Dawn Kalmar, spokesperson for Vertex Pharmaceuticals, which makes the Hepatitis C medication INCIVEK. She cites the Hepatitis C Index by the National Minority Quality Forum, an organization that studies health care issues among ethnic communities in the United States, which says 150,000 New Yorkers are infected.

Yet many health workers argue that the disease hasn’t gotten the attention necessary to make people more aware of preventing infection. And since it is symptomless, those  infected can spread the virus without realizing it.

Uptown, health professionals also worry that the disease is rising. “Drug use is increasing in Harlem with the increase in poverty,” says Jeffrey Day, a mental health nurse practitioner at Citicare, a Harlem family health clinic.  “More people are turning to drugs – as both dealers and users – when they give up hope of finding jobs and houses, and they are unaware of how easily they can contract and transmit Hepatitis C.”

Many of the people Frost’s organization helps are homeless and disconnected from health care. The Corner Project guides them through the first three steps of Hepatitis C testing: pre-test counseling and a full blood draw sent to a lab, with results in 48 hours.

If patients test negative, they’re told how to prevent infection by using sterile needles, not sharing cotton or cookers or straws (the disease can also be contracted nasally), avoiding unlicensed tattoo and piercing parlors and practicing safe sex. If patients test positive, they are referred to treatment programs.

But routine physical exams don’t usually test for hepatitis C, Kalmar says.

Vertex recently underwrote a guerilla marketing campaign called the “Find HepC” campaign, which consisted of posters, fliers and volunteers talking to people on the streets across the city; its enigmatic blue and yellow slogans featured a large yellow “C” and the words “4 million have it, 3 million don’t know.”

African-Americans and baby boomers are disproportionately impacted. “One in seven African-Americans over 55 are infected,” according to the National Minority Quality Forum’s report.  And
Americans born between 1945 and 1965 are at risk of infection because they grew up in an era of less emphasis on safe sex and the importance of clean needles when injecting drugs or  getting tattoos.

“Approximately 15 percent of people clear hepatitis C on their own during the first few months of infection without treatment,” said Nihar Johnson, project specialist at the city health department’s Office of Viral Hepatitis. “They ‘cure’ themselves.”

After six months of active infection, a person is considered chronically infected, according to Johnson, who added that people can be treated during the chronic phase.  If the viral load drops to undetectable levels and remains undetectable for six months after medical treatments has stopped, that’s called a ‘cure.’

“Certain types of Hepatitis C are easier to ‘cure’ than others,” Johnson said.  People with HIV, African-Americans, Latinos and those with certain other health problems are less easily cured, she added, but with new medications, the cure rate has risen for everyone.

“However, there are many factors involved in treatment success and every case is different,” Johnson said.

Kalmar added that INCIVEK, approved by the FDA in May, could increase cure rates among black Americans.

Despite the Big Yellow C, there aren’t enough awareness campaigns uptown, to reach the people most at risk of contracting and spreading the disease, Frost says.

“The Department of Health just put out a new TV ad to spread awareness, but our participants are not necessarily watching TV,” she said. “It’s not applicable to our population.”

Frost says the health department needs more staff working with community groups to reach people on the streets, actively seeking out drug users and encouraging them to visit testing centers.

“These people feel isolated and stigmatized,” Frost says. “Even if they think they’re at risk, they might not know where to go.”

The invasive nature of testing and treatment for Hepatitis C, involving medications that may have difficult side effects, also deters people, Frost says.

“We are a small program, and do our best to do outreach in Inwood and Hamilton Heights, as do other small drug treatment programs,” she said. “But it’s about being creative, thinking about who is actually at risk and the best way of reaching them.”

Charlie,  who’s 65, is a frequent visitor to the CORNER Project. Tall even when sitting down, he taps his black cane and recounts the dietary concerns his hepatitis C infection raises. Because of the disease’s harsh effects on the liver, patients have to avoid oily and sugary foods, as well as alcohol.

“See, I’m black and I like my fried chicken,” Charlie chuckles. “But because of the oils, it hurts when I eat it.  So I have to have everything broiled and baked, even though fried chicken tastes damn good.” Since his 2001 diagnosis, Charlie, who asked that his last name not be used, has had to make a lot of changes.

”The counselor taught me a lot about eating healthy,” says Charlie. “He told me that once a month he’d splurge on fried chicken, but mostly he advised us to stay away from it.”

For Charlie, the worst thing about living with the disease has been the medication. The treatment affects his mental state, prompting doctors to prescribe an array of additional drugs to deal with its side effects.

“Six pills a day, two shots a week, and then the sleep medication, eating medication and anxiety medication,” Charlie says with a resigned smile.  “I’m walking around with so much medication. I started a pill factory at one time.”

He has discontinued medication, but says, “I’m looking for new meds, something I’d be really interested in if it’s going to cure me.”

While Frost believes that New York has been a leader in HIV prevention and testing, as well as providing special services for those with HIV, the city has not responded as urgently to Hepatitis C.

“I think most people in New York can tell you what HIV is because there is so much education around it and a great emphasis on testing and services,” she says, pointing to the fact that the people most at risk for hepatitis C are drug users, not always considered a priority for health services.

One improvement would be to introduce rapid testing for Hepatitis C, she says, something that appears more likely since last month when OraQuick became the first rapid test to win FDA approval.

“We have a long way to go but I think rapid testing is very important because we’ll be able to use it on the site where people are,” says Frost. It’s less invasive than a blood test and won’t require refrigeration or laboratories. But will take time for free rapid testing to become broadly available.

For now, Charlie is happy to watch what he eats and avoid alcohol. He eventually hopes to give up his other damaging habits too.

“The more I think about me and my liver, the more I think about how much life I have left,” he muses.

“I’ve been doing drugs for over 30 years and I’m not getting anything from it anymore. So I think it’s best to go back away from it all, and go ahead and live my life the best way I can.”

The fashion show at the Alhambra's 2011 Bridal Expo showcased wedding dresses by local designers. (Photo by Roland Hyde)

From traditional white dresses to gold, green and everything in between, the fashion show at Alhambra Ballroom’s Bridal Expo had something for everyone. Audience members gasped simultaneously at a halter-style African print wedding dress. The patchwork fabric, similar to a quilt, fused black, gold and a rich blue.

“We don’t always have to wear white, ladies; custom Afro-centric designs are in,” wedding coordinator DiAnne Henderson told the brides-to-be, their families and friends. This year’s expo, at the Alhambra on Adam Clayton Powell Boulevard and 125th Street, drew 25 vendors and about 100 guests.

DJ Mario came equipped with a turntable, music and a fitness trainer. As he blared First Choice’s “Love Thang” from the speakers, the trainer led women in the Wobble, then the Cha Cha slide — both popular line dances at African-American weddings.

“Dancing is a great way to lose a couple of pounds before the big day, ladies,” Henderson said as she encouraged everyone to join in. “We are Harlemites, we are in Harlem. This is how we get down!”

The U.S. wedding industry generates about $40 billion a year. According to the 2011 American Wedding Survey, the average wedding in the United States costs about $26,500. A 2011 survey by the bridal website The Knot found that in Manhattan, the average cost jumps to $70,730.

Uptown entrepreneurs are working to grow a Harlem wedding industry. In 2006, Amber Saunders-Nobles started A’Marie Weddings, a wedding planning service. She’s seen her clientele incorporate people of different races and financial backgrounds. “The biggest wedding I’ve done in Harlem was around $60,000,” she said. “We did the reception on a cruise around city.”

Henderson believes Harlem has the potential to thrive in the city’s wedding industry. “Harlem is often overlooked as a destination to have a city wedding,” she said. She helped launch the Bridal Expo and Fashion Show four years ago to spotlight local vendors and help uptown brides make their wedding dreams come true.

“Everyone can’t have a $40,000 or $50,000 wedding so we try to work with the person’s pockets,” said Henderson, who says her average wedding costs around $12,000. “I have the chance to speak with people and encourage them.”

For 17 years, she has worked exclusively with the family who owns the Alhambra Ballroom, where she says she’s done more than 200 weddings. “For someone else that may not be a lot,” she said, “but for me that is part-time work.” By day she’s a director at Harlem’s St. Nicholas Senior Center;  on weekends she runs her event planning service, My Eye Is on You, at the Alhambra.

“There aren’t enough wedding expos,” Henderson said. “Afro-American designers that are known in the Harlem area do not have enough exposure. I think that we as Afro-Americans in Harlem should try to be more involved in helping one another.”

It has been a challenging effort. In 2006, Nidelka Mayers was the first person to put the Harlem weddings on the map, she says, when she created the Harlem Weddings bridal show and guide, showcasing local wedding-related businesses. The Harlem Weddings Bridal Show ran for three years but was canceled in 2010.

In 2008, Saunders-Nobles held a bridal show at the Apollo Theater, where she advised Harlem brides how to save during the recession (and provided literature on breast cancer).

“It cost thousands of dollars,” said Saunders-Nobles, who paid most expo costs out of her own pocket.  It lasted one year, but she plans to resuscitate it next year.  “We constantly have new vendors who want to do it again,” she said.

“Getting sponsors for these events is not easy,” agreed Henderson, who recruited five sponsors for the Bridal Expo this year. She said she sold about 50 tickets at $10 each and is not sure yet if the event turned a profit.

“Cassandra, for example, trusted me enough to bring her things,” Henderson said. “She gave me her free time and no one got paid.”

Afro-centric inspired wedding gown by Cassandra Bromfield. (Photo by Roland Hyde)

Cassandra Bromfield, a Brooklyn wedding and evening gown designer, wants to tap into the Harlem wedding market. “The bridal show is a good option for people to find me,” said Bromfield, who specializes in Afro-centric wedding gowns and fielded many questions about her patchwork gown.

Harriette Cole, author of “Jumping the Broom: The African-American Wedding Planner,” believes that with the right marketing and promotion, Harlem can become a wedding destination.

“I imagine that Harlem can become even more of a player in the world of weddings, thanks to more restaurants being developed and additional event spaces that have opened,” said Cole, who has lived in the neighborhood since 1988 and seen it “blossom into a thriving diverse community.”

Saunders-Nobles talks in terms of hidden gems and jewels in Harlem, for those who know where they are.

“The good thing about being a wedding planner is you have the creative eye to look into a space and say ‘This might work for this purpose, but it could also work for a wedding,’” she said. “When you think of the all the events that come with a wedding — the bridal shower, the brunch — there are so many restaurants that are hip places opening up.”

Harlem already offers multiple venues and options for weddings of all sizes and budgets.

Sylvia’s, the famous Lenox Avenue soul food restaurant, specializes in catering, with free space for wedding parties under 45 guests and or $500 an hour for more than 50. Special event coordinator Jacqueline Gaines estimates the restaurant hosts about 30 weddings a year.

Riverside Church, on the border between Harlem and Morningside Heights, holds anywhere from 65 to 75 weddings year. The main sanctuary rents for $3,500 and the most popular space, The Assembly Hall, for $3,200. But wedding coordinator Angela Gregory says few Harlem couples marry there. “I would love to see more local couples,” she said.

The Alhambra Ballroom, which opened in 2003, specializes in wedding receptions. Its wedding package includes a Rolls Royce limousine, a cake and five hours’ ballroom use for 125 guests for $12,350.

“That is one of the most reasonable venues in Manhattan,” said Sanders-Nobles. She married this past May at Bethel Gospel Assembly on East 120th Street and held a reception for 175 family members and friends at the Alhambra.

Other popular spaces include Melba’s Restaurant at Eighth and Manhattan avenues, the Dwyer Cultural Center on 123rd Street between St. Nicholas Avenue and Frederick Douglass Boulevard and, in West Harlem, the Harlem School of the Arts. “A lot of people don’t know about this space and they have wonderful things to offer,” said Saunders-Nobles, including a theater and a courtyard garden.

“I would love to have my wedding in Harlem,” said Franshara Hunter, a bride-to-be who lives in the Bronx. She traveled down to Harlem for the expo and said, ”I see some really nice stuff here.”

Even with a successful bridal show, business has been slow in Harlem. Photographer Chad Pennington of Sobitart Photography says he’s shot just two Harlem weddings this year; most of his work is downtown. But when he gets to shoot in “Harlem USA,” as he calls it, he has a blast. “In Harlem you always get something different,” he said.

Karen Eatmon Harrigan, who goes by the name DJ Passion, began her career in Harlem. She deejays for $550 an event but charges $100 more for weddings.

“Weddings usually have a little more involvement working with the bride. I do consultation with them and go over the music,” she said.  She has taken part in the wedding expos since they began, yet only works twice a year in Harlem.

Princess Jenkins, who owns The Brownstone boutique on East 125th Street, said she will continue to participate in the expo. “Anyone who comes to us is looking for something nontraditional. We do about five weddings a year and many mothers of the bride,” Jenkins said. “I continue to participate in the expo because we are very interested to show our brand.”

“If you do want to get married in Harlem the businesses and professionals are here,” said Saunders-Nobles, who says she understand why vendors may find it difficult to reach clients. “You have to be resourceful because there isn’t a Great Bridal Expo like in Times Square with 40,000 brides. That is great, but there is never something permanent in Harlem.”

Despite the odds, Henderson says she’s planning another Alhambra expo for April. She wants to continue to showcase local vendors and teach brides. “All of my work comes from the heart,” she said.

“That is why I love Harlem weddings,” said Saunder-Nobles, “because we have a passion not just  for our business, but for our people.”

"The Spirit of East Harlem" by Hank Prussing is painted on a residential building at East 104th Street and Lexington Avenue. Click on the above image to see an interactive graphic of the mural then and now. (Photo by Elizabeth Harball)

It was the summer of 1974. New York artist Manny Vega, today known for his public mosaics and murals, was 18. He had recently graduated from high school and was trying to decide whether to go to college. Vega knew he had an artistic voice, but he didn’t yet know what to do with it. Then, while kicking around East Harlem, something on East 104th Street and Lexington Avenue caught his attention:

“I would walk by on 104th Street and this guy was on a pull-up scaffold by himself,” Vega says. “A tiny, wooden, crickity-crackety scaffold.” Armed with oil paints and a brush, the man was meticulously creating a mural on the side of a four-story residential building.

Vega walked by the mural every day or so to see it progress. Slowly, recognizable faces started to emerge from the wall –  people who lived in the neighborhood,  even people who lived in the building.

“But it was unusual because he was this Caucasian, lanky white guy painting this Puerto Rican, black barrio thing, with a lot of soul, a lot of ‘esencia’ — with a lot of essence — as though he had been living in the neighborhood all along.”

Vega, fascinated, decided to ask if he could join the project.

“One day, I screamed up at him. I said, ‘Hey, white boy! Give me a job!’ He came down from the scaffold and he asked me, ‘What, do you paint?’

“I said, ‘I can learn…’”

The artist’s name was Hank Prussing. Vega became his apprentice and helped Prussing complete one of New York City’s most iconic murals: “The Spirit of East Harlem.”

Looming above a rapidly changing neighborhood, “The Spirit of East Harlem” represents a rougher yet more romantic time in East Harlem’s history. People who look up at it can imagine what it was like to wander East Harlem in the 1970s.

It portrays neighborhood residents of that time, including toy store owner Morris Wittenberg and George Espada, who sang in an “electric Latin soul” band called Flash and the Dynamics, presented in vivid tableaus between the building’s windows.

An East Harlem street in 1973. (Photo by Hank Prussing)

The work has survived the elements, a fire and vandals. Each time it was threatened, people joined forces to preserve it. Because of its importance to residents, Hope Community Inc., which owns the building, says it is committed to maintaining the work.

“The mural became like a cultural hallmark, not only to East Harlem, but specifically to that one block,” says Vega.

“It’s a time capsule,” he says. “It invokes a dialogue with people where they come together, collecting thoughts and sharing anecdotes about the past. That’s a very precious thing.”

The mural’s story begins in the 1970s when East Harlem, known as “El Barrio,” was largely populated by Puerto Rican immigrants. Between 1945 and 1965, nearly one million Puerto Ricans moved to the United States seeking employment. Two-thirds of them settled in New York, establishing a large community in East Harlem. The neighborhood struggled with poverty and a widespread drug scene.

But it also nurtured a Latino cultural renaissance. Two arts organizations were born: El Museo del Barrio, founded in 1969, and Taller Boricua, founded in 1970.

“It was a romantic time,” says Vega. “We had more of an art scene. We had grassroots arts organizations that were sponsoring projects and places for people to go to explore their creativity.”

The neighborhood around Lexington Avenue and East 104th Street was alive with activity. Angel Ortiz Jr., who visited his grandmother there on   weekends, remembers summer block parties with food, music and dancing. George Espada and his band performed in a nearby schoolyard.

“When you were a part of that neighborhood you got to know everybody,” says Ortiz. “It was truly an incredible sense of community and family.”

Jorge Vargas, owner of a nearby botanica, recalls: “There was a lot of things going on. It was beautiful.”

A sketch Prussing used as reference to paint the mural. (Image courtesy Hank Prussing)

In 1972, Hank Prussing, a young artist from Maryland, was in East Harlem surveying the neighborhood’s public art for an architecture course at Pratt Institute. He was interested in street art and East Harlem was already known for its murals.

The Rev. George Calvert, pastor of the Church of the Living Hope on East 104th Street, suggested that Prussing add his own mural in the neighborhood. Prussing, who’d never created an outdoor mural, initially felt taken aback.

“I don’t know, let me think about it,” he remembers replying.

A family friend, Calvert had recently helped establish Hope Community Inc.,  an affordable housing organization. Calvert had grown up in wealthy Scarsdale, N.Y., but despite “that stigma of being an outsider and a white privileged guy, he had a very strong sense of a mission and he did all kinds of things for that community,” Prussing says.

When Prussing agreed to paint the mural, Calvert arranged for local stores to donate paint and a scaffold. The artist planned the project during the summer of 1973, taking hundreds of photographs of East Harlem residents and becoming captivated by its people and culture.

“There were people there that lived on the block and never left the block and that was their whole life,” he remembers. “They didn’t speak English, some of them, because they didn’t have to. They had their family and friends around them.”

Prussing stood out. “They called me gringo or they called me turkey sometimes,” he says, describing the neighborhood as “the quintessential different kind of environment than the one I grew up in.”

He relied on his photographs for inspiration. Each told a different story: Carmelita, who owned a nearby bodega, smiled as she wiped her hands with a dishcloth. A little girl in braids learned to ride a bicycle. Old men sat around a table playing dominoes. A musician plucked a cuatro.  Teenaged boys lunged for a basketball.

“The more I looked at them the more I was fascinated by the neighborhood and the spirit of the community that’s there,” Prussing says. “I said, ‘Why don’t I just work with the photographs – they say everything.’”

The mural was painted in three sections, the left third in the summer of 1973 and the middle third that winter during Prussing’s school break. He brushed on layer after layer of oil paints and solvent so the pigment would become imbedded in the brick. Slowly, an artistic vision of the neighborhood emerged.

Not everyone was pleased with his rendering. The bodega owner, Carmelita, was unhappy with her portrait. She was “very private and didn’t appreciate all the feedback she was getting from everybody,” Vega says. Taking matters into her own hands, she paid several neighborhood kids to paint over her face.

Of course, Prussing repainted her portrait, but he notes, “it never looked the same.”

Then, something unexpected happened: a fire broke out in the building. When firefighters arrived on the scene, one mural portrait caused some confusion:

“One of the people I had painted up there actually was a fireman, looking out a window,” says Prussing. Firefighters, startled, “thought someone was in the building already putting the fire out.” (That figure, painted on a boarded-up window, was removed later during a renovation.)

Though the fire didn’t significantly damage the mural, the building’s roof was ruined and there was some question about the building’s structural soundness. Looking up at the unfinished mural, people could see the sky through the topmost windows. Prussing didn’t know if he could finish the project.

George Espada believes that “The Spirit of East Harlem” saved the building. Calvert recognized that the mural had become a community symbol. In a 1974 article published by Pratt Institute, he is quoted saying:

“The effect is magnificent … full of variety and life. People gather across the street to gaze up at it, intrigued and strengthened. It celebrates us as people engaged here in common tasks, united by our humanity. Friends and neighbors seem to emerge from the wall, familiar, yet newly significant and we all walk taller.”

"The Spirit of East Harlem" before Manny Vega's 1998 restoration. (Photo by Hank Prussing)

Hope Community Inc. purchased and renovated the building for low-income housing. Calvert secured a grant from the New York State Council for the Arts and asked Prussing to complete the mural.

By that time, the neighborhood had embraced the artist’s presence.

“They totally adopted Hank,” says Vega. “Hank wasn’t white any more. They fed him. If he had to go to use the bathroom, he would just go through the windows. And because people thought that he was making them famous, almost, they had an endearing relationship with him.”

Prussing concurs, “I felt like I was sort of part of the family after a while.”

He finished “The Spirit of East Harlem” in 1978. “It was a big hit, I guess,” Prussing says. “All of the community residents were proud. The ones that were up there were proud they were there.”

Thirty-four years later, “The Spirit of East Harlem,” has undergone several transformations, but many who were a part of it still feel connected to the work.

Hank Prussing went on to paint about 35 more murals in New York City. Many have either faded or been destroyed  – one was lost in 2001 in the World Trade Center. Today, he’s an architect living in East Hartland, Conn., with his wife. His work keeps him busy, but he still finds time for art now and then. Prussing recently painted a mural for his daughter’s school library. “I would love to retire and go back to painting,” he says. “I always did architecture as a whim.”

Artist Hank Prussing in 2011. (Photo by Elizabeth Harball)

Prussing, now 63, accepts the way the mural has changed over the years. “I started something,” he says. “If they want to keep it up and continue to change it, that’s great. It’s not my mural anymore.”

With his support, Manny Vega restored the mural in 1998, adding his own embellishments and color palette. Once again, neighborhood residents watched and supported Vega as he brought the mural to life, bringing him coffee and doughnuts as he worked.

Hope Community Inc. financed the $35,000 restoration. George Calvert died in 2005 at age 76, but the organization continues to provide affordable housing, commercial space and social services to low-income East Harlem residents. In 1999, Prussing transferred the mural’s copyright to Hope Community. “It’s a part of our history,” says Executive Director Walter Roberts.

Many depicted in the mural have died, but a few remain and remember. Angel Ortiz Jr., now 56,works for General Electric. He can still be seen in the mural with a set of nunchucks tucked behind his belt. Ortiz never lost his love for martial arts; he earned his black belt in Taekwondo in 2002.

George Espada, 69, still lives in East Harlem. He has led a colorful life; performing with the Dynamics at Lincoln Center, pursuing a brief career in semiprofessional wrestling, then serving as Republican district leader in East Harlem for several years. Espada now works for AARP and still sings with a band. “I’ve done it all, except drugs,” he says.

When he looks at the mural, he sees many people he remembers with fondness  – Carmelita, Morris Wittenberg and two of the old men playing dominoes, whom he identifies as Joe and Mascota. Short gray hair has replaced Espada’s ’70s Afro, but he still seems to know everyone in the neighborhood; people smile and shake his hand as he passes. When he walks past Lexington and 104th Street, he often stops to look up at “The Spirit of East Harlem.”

“I’m still very proud of the fact that every time I go by there, there I am!” he says, laughing.

Take a closer look at Hank Prussing’s 1974 mural in an interactive graphic.

Harold House and Michael Perry prepare their youngest son, Isaiah, 2, for bed in their one-bedroom apartment. (Photo by Sarah Tan)

When Harold House comes home, he steps directly into his family’s kitchen, and then into the living room. He only has to move a few feet further to go to bed. House and his girlfriend, Michael Perry, live with their two children, a toddler and a teenage son, in a cramped one-bedroom on 172^nd Street in Washington Heights. Three months ago when Perry’s two other children also lived with them and slept on the living room floor, their situation was even worse. The family applied for a larger space in a public housing complex, but Perry has been on the Housing Authority’s waiting list for 11 years without being placed.

The New York City Housing Authority owns about 53,000 apartments in Manhattan. Yet with a citywide vacancy rate per year below one percent, a family typically waits from three to five years — and sometimes up to eight — before being placed. Housing Authority buildings are  99.3 percent occupied in Manhattan and the wait list continues to grow. In October, the waiting list for public housing in the borough reached 49,000 applicants.

The Housing Authority ranks and places applicants on two scales, a “working families” income measure and a determination of need. The House-Perry family has been designated as need-based, but given the lowest priority, N5, which includes families who are overcrowded, involuntarily displaced or living in substandard housing. The highest priority goes to those who are homeless, disabled or abused. The Housing Authority currently also gives priority to working families, a category that House and Perry cannot apply for because House, 49, works off the books and Perry, 33, is unemployed.

Though House and Perry say they are thankful that they still have a roof over their heads when others don’t, they still want public housing because they struggle to pay their $890 monthly rent on House’s minimum-wage salary. In public housing, rent is adjusted to be about a third of a family’s monthly income and the average rent is $400.

House and Perry attempt to make the most of the limited space they have. A visitor who enters encounters, in quick succession, their freezer, their cat and then a wall of filing cabinets that the family uses to store extra mattresses for their other children when they visit.

House and Perry and their two-year-old son sleep on a queen-sized bed that seems far too large for the space it occupies in the living room.

They’ve yielded the only bedroom to their teenage son, Darren – but it also functions as a makeshift laundry room. Instead of teen posters decorating his walls, the family laundry hangs around his dresser and bed. Shirts, pants and socks arranged in layers dry on bars by the window and hooks by the door.

Though House’s family has not been designated as high-needs, which might have sped the process along, Perry still has no explanation for why they’ve languished on the list for over a decade. She said she has recently renewed their application.

“Every time I tell somebody I’m on the waiting list and they ask how long I’ve been waiting, I say11 years and they say ‘What?’” Perry said. “How long do I really have to wait? What’s going on? I would really like to know.”

Long waits are not a new concept for those on public housing lists, however. Though the city Housing Authority has stated that wait times “range from a couple of years to many more years,” Senior Housing Policy Analyst Victor Bach of the Community Service Society said it isn’t uncommon for his organization to see clients who’ve waited upwards of eight years.

“It’s dreadful that 130,000 families are on the waiting list,” Bach said, referring to citywide statistics. “There is a working family preference and also there are space problems. If there’s a large family applying, it’s a longer wait to find an appropriate-sized unit.”

In addition, some families face extended waits because housing applications are only valid for three years, the Office of the Public Advocate said. After that time elapses, applicants must reapply.

“From the letters that we receive, they would seem to suggest that people on the waitlist for housing aren’t notified as well,” said Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for the advocate’s office. “Not only are they not given status updates periodically, they usually have to call in for updates.”

Thus far, Perry has had two placement interviews with the Housing Authority in those 11 years, but neither brought results. Two years ago, she changed her borough placement priority to Staten Island because she’d heard people were placed faster there; that switch hasn’t led to anything either.

“Sometimes I feel like I should just take my children and go into a shelter,” Perry said. “I don’t know what to do.” Moving to a shelter could move her application higher in the pile.

Meanwhile, “it’s cramped. It’s horrible. My son is going to be 17, that’s the reason he has the bedroom, because he needs his own space, he’s at that age,” Perry said. “But you can’t have certain stuff. I would love to have a couch, but I can’t have a couch because there’s no room. We can’t all walk through the hallway together; one of us has to go into the bathroom if another person needs to go by. We try to make the most of it, but it’s always something.”

House added that their cramped situation also isolates them. “We don’t have a living room,” he said of the way they’ve had to arrange their space. “It’s so embarrassing, you can’t invite no one over because they come into the living room and right there they see your bed. Nobody’s supposed to look at your bed.”

House and his youngest son in the bedroom which also functions as the family's laundry room. (Photo by Sarah Tan)

In comparison to the homeless or disabled, both House and Perry acknowledge that their situation may not merit immediate public housing placement. But eventually, they feel, they deserve a place if they need one.

“I can understand that if I was waiting two years or three years, O.K, I understand those people should go first,” House said. “But it’s been 11 years. You want me to be handicapped by the time I get housing? I probably will be.”

At this point, House and Perry feel stuck. Earlier this year, when the landlord threatened to evict them because they couldn’t pay their rent, Perry was able to get assistance from the Family Eviction Prevention Supplement. The couple has considered moving out of the city altogether, but that would be difficult given their low income and the fact that they have no relatives elsewhere, House said.

Nonetheless, he remained hopeful.

“Sometimes it takes so long , but keep praying, keep hoping,” House said. “Somebody or something will come sooner or later.”