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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Hobbs Court and The Ciena will create hundreds of new, permanently affordable apartments for lower- and middle-income New Yorkers, as well as hundreds of new jobs,” said Councilman Melissa Mark-Viverito, who represents East Harlem.

Lawmakers hope the projects will help mitigate employment woes in an area where the Nielsen Company estimates that unemployment rates run twice the city average.

“This is more than creating 340 units of affordable housing,” said John B. Rhea, chairman of the New York City Housing Authority. “It is an opportunity to create much-needed jobs for this community to build that housing.”

According to the Department of Labor, 659,000 construction jobs have been lost in the U.S. between September 2008 and September 2009. Nationwide construction unemployment has risen to 18.4 percent, nearly 10 percent higher than last year.

“Construction has already started,” said Jennifer Colman, director of marketing for Phipps Houses, one of the developers. “Hirings have already taken place or will take place as the project moves along.”

Approximately half of East Harlem is Hispanic, according to census data. The Bureau of Labor reported this month that Hispanics have been hit particularly hard during the recession, with 12.3 percent unemployed. The national unemployment rate is 9.8 percent.

It is unclear, however, whether Hispanics in particular will gain jobs due to the new development projects.

“We don’t do any discriminatory hiring, so I can’t tell you anything about hiring specific groups, such as Hispanics,” Colman said. “We don’t have any quotas to fill.”

Hispanic construction workers in Harlem have some of the lowest employment odds in the country. City officials said their goal is to use stimulus money to help such beleaguered groups.

The Tax Credit Assistance Program “is significantly boosting our efforts to put the American people back to work, right here in New York City,” Shaun Donovan, secretary of housing and urban development, said in a press statement. To that end, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s office recently released a plan to create and retain 400,000 jobs over the next six years.

Hobbs Court and The Ciena are expected to be completed in November 2011.