Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely orchestrates the occupation from a chair in her living room. (Photo by Gabriel Stargardter)

Tenants and sympathizers in a dilapidated Harlem apartment building received good news Sunday night, when the Occupy Wall Street general assembly approved a $3000 donation as a gesture of solidarity.

The occupation, which has come to be known as Occupy477, began Nov. 1, when one of the building’s residents, Delois Blakely, urged people to occupy her apartment to protest gentrification and corporate malfeasance. This followed a previous occupation of the building’s boiler room; Blakely said the boiler had been defunct and the door bolted shut for months.

By Monday morning, workers were busy installing a new boiler, thanks to an emergency order by the city.

Upstairs in Blakely’s apartment, 11 protestors had camped out. Tony Cochran, 25, a Portland, Ore., transplant, who doubled as the movement’s ad hoc communications director, was joined by two Senegalese men, a temporarily-absent Norwegian and Semi, 25, a mono-monikered North Carolinian who had trekked up from Zuccotti Park.

It’s a small cadre, but “more than Occupy Wall Street started with on the first day,” said Malik Rhasaan, 39, of Occupy the Hood, which represents people of color and lobbied for Sunday’s donation.

The newcomers were quickly learning that they’d waded, perhaps unwittingly, into a thicket of residents’ animosity, financial mismanagement and looming foreclosure.

The dispute underlying Occupy477 can be traced to a long series of legal wrangles between the building’s various shareholders.

The property on 477 West 142^nd St. was abandoned when Blakely, who prefers the title Queen Mother Dr. Delois Blakely, took control of it in 1978. In 1982, she said, she negotiated with the city to purchase its eight units for $2000.

“I learned how to bring life to the building,” Blakely said.

But by all accounts, few, if any of the residents paid rent for the next twenty-odd  years and by 2007, the city threatened foreclosure for unpaid taxes.

“Some people lived here rent free for 10 years, and that’s a mindset,” Blakely said.

In May 2007, Shirley Pitts, who lives on the top floor, replaced Blakely as president of 477 West 142^nd Street Housing Development Fund Corporation, the building’s board.

Pitts, a bishop of the evangelical Faith Restoration Center, Inc., refused comment but asked her adviser and fellow bishop, Ken Bey, 64, to speak on her behalf. He said he managed to negotiate the debt with the Department of Housing and Preservation and Development down to $220,000.

The board then borrowed $650,000 from Madison Park Investors, LLC to pay off its debt to the city. The closing “attorney” for the loan was one Nathaniel McLeon who pleaded guilty in 1993 to practicing law without a license.

Nonetheless, McLeon continued to represent the 477 West 142^nd Street Housing Development Fund Corporation until last February.

At closing, the board received just under $300,000 of the loan. Bey said the remainder went into an escrow account or was misappropriated by McLeon, who is currently serving six years in Ulster Correctional Facility, convicted of grand larceny.

Neither Madison Park Investors, LLC, nor Thomas S. Fleishell, the corporation’s current attorney, responded to questions.

Now Blakely accuses Bey and Pitts of working hand in hand with what she termed “predatory lenders,” to pave the way to foreclosure so the building can be sold.

Bey disputed this, and said the board is pursuing a civil case against her. He also questioned what happened to the monthly $7,700 rent roll, which Blakely administered between 2003 and 2009.

“She has no lease, no standing, no deed to occupy unit two,” Bey said. “She’s misrepresenting herself to the public.”

“Who is Ken Bey?” was Blakely’s response. “I don’t do business with Ken Bey, never have and never will.”

Recently the building has been vandalized, its front steps smashed. On Sunday evening, the police forcibly removed Francis King, a toothless man in a cowboy hat who claimed to be undertaking maintenance work for Pitts.

“It will not happen again,” King said as he tried to regain entry Monday.

Blakely pointed the finger at King and a man named Frank Kargbo who occasionally inhabited the building’s basement, a labyrinth of dust and unused junk. Bey admitted to paying Kargbo between $40 and $100 a week for maintenance work, and granted that he sometimes lodged in the basement.

Blakely will now defend herself against eviction in the civil case brought against her by the corporation.

Despite the ongoing legal uncertainty – “this is only the tip of the iceberg,” said Semi – the protestors had no plans to leave.

Retrofitted apartments on West 135th street (Photo by Lucy Pawle)

Renovations to ten apartment buildings in Harlem are complete, making them the first project in the country to benefit from the Obama administration’s Green Retrofit Program, which invested $3.6 million.

The project, costing a total $50.9 million, is designed to make affordable housing more energy-efficient and save tenants 25 per cent on their energy bills —  a potential model of public and private investment to help solve New York’s affordable housing shortage in an environmentally-friendly way. But for residents at 107 to 145 West 135^th Street, it’s the security upgrades, not the environmental improvements, which have had the biggest impact on their lives.

National green real estate developer Jonathan Rose Companies renovated the six-story, century-old pale brick buildings. Improvements to the 198-unit property include new rooftop solar panels and ceiling fans, high-efficiency boilers replacing old models, and increased roof insulation.

Building manager Andy Sulaiman said most tenants are fairly happy with the improvements. “These are pretty good apartments for the area,” he said in his on-site management office. “You’d have to be mad to complain about improvements.” Residents remained in their homes throughout the year-long rehabilitation of the Section 8 property, where  qualified low-income households receive subsidies. Tenants earn less than 60 percent of the local median income and pay 30 per cent of their earnings, Sulaiman explained. “Some pay no rent but others will pay market rates – up to $1800,” he said.

Clayton McPhail, acquisition analyst at Jonathan Rose, which bought the 202,500- square-foot property in 2008, said that the company looked for simple changes that would make a big difference. “What are we going to get the biggest bang for our buck?” he explained.  Jonathan Rose’s attitude is that developers can “make a good return for investors but also cater to the environment, and we don’t think they should be mutually exclusive,” McPhail said. The company focused on three areas: “reducing energy consumption, improving the experience for tenants… and addressing the specific needs in the apartments.” Architects and engineers went into every unit and made assessments of their needs.

On the steps outside, Takiyah Tinsley, 30, who has lived in the building all her life, was complimentary about the changes. “It’s considerably different,” she said, “the best it’s been since I’ve been here.” She predicted that the environmental upgrades, such as air-conditioning in each apartment, have made her bills “about $10 to $20 a month cheaper.” But she added that the biggest improvement was the added building security. There are more security cameras than before, and an extra locked door in the building that means non-residents must be buzzed in.

Tonya Jackson, 42, agreed. She barely noticed the environmental changes, but the security measures make her feel much safer. “They keep the people out of the buildings who don’t live here,” she said. “It’s a good place to live.”

Her one complaint is the state of the common areas. “Right now the building’s dirty. They’ve got beer bottles and stuff lying everywhere.” A first-floor window stuffed with black trash bags seemed to verify her complaint.

The development was part of Mayor Bloomberg’s $8.4 billion New Housing Marketplace Plan, with a goal of 165,000 affordable units by the close of fiscal 2014. The project received $24.1 million in tax-exempt bonds issued by the New York City Housing Development Corporation, and the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development invested $5.9 million.

Enterprise Community Partners, a non-profit organization that provides development capital for affordable housing, gave $4.8 million in tax credits.

Green and affordable housing has become increasingly popular in Harlem. In 2008 Jonathan Rose Companies developed a $19.5 million building with 85 units of affordable housing, as well as a youth center and a community garden, on West 153^rd Street. That same year, Full Spectrum of New York and L&M Development Partners built a 249-unit mixed-income development on 116th Street, where 25 percent of the building’s energy comes from renewable sources such as solar and wind.

But the apartments on 135^thStreet were the first to receive federal money, a public and private collaboration viewed as a model for the city’s attempts to solve an affordable housing shortage. In a report last year, the New York City Rent Guidelines Board found the City had a net loss of 10,052 rent-stabilized units in 2009.

Though McPhail is proud that Jonathan Rose was the company chosen to begin the Green Retrofit Program, he is worried that in the current economic climate there isn’t enough government enthusiasm. The program should be renewed, he argued, because the changes to the 135^th street apartments “demonstrated that there’s a need for it, it stimulates the economy and it stimulates jobs.”

Officials at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development declined to comment.

This barred and vacant south side tenement at the Randolph Houses features a historic façade. (Photo by Nat Rudarakanchana)

On the north side of West 114th Street, between Frederick Douglass and Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevards, families mingle outside on a sunny weekend afternoon, seated comfortably on benches and stoops. Structures on the street’s grim and vacant south side, however, stand in quiet contrast, featuring peeling off-white paint and boarded-up doors.

This central Harlem block is home to the Philip Randolph Houses, an aging housing complex managed by the New York City Housing Authority. But while buildings on the north side still house residents, the more numerous south side apartments have been abandoned, deemed uninhabitable, since 2007.

Now, in a first for the city, the Housing Authority has teamed up with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to create a mix of public and private affordable housing within these 36 historic buildings.

The Randolph Houses date back to the 1890s, but were only converted into city-owned public housing in the 1970s.

Heralded as an innovative public-private partnership, the plan has drawn cautiously positive responses from housing activists and current residents. Although residents have been waiting for improvements for years, nothing concrete has materialized. Now, both groups seem hopeful about the change, though neither thinks that the move is truly revolutionary.

Although other cities have mixed public and private housing, this is New York’s first such development. The use of a mixed finance program authorized by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development means that public, private and nonprofit funds can be combined. While up to $40 million in federal subsidies will be available through the city Housing Authority, the actual amount will depend on detailed subsidy calculations.

“The main reason we’re doing this is for the tenants,” said Amy Chester, NYCHA’s deputy director for development. “NYCHA’s current housing stock are known as ‘old law tenements’. They are five-floor walk-ups that are not handicapped-accessible, do not adhere to the building codes by providing adequate light and air, or are not up to current room size standards.”

Any renovation must nonetheless preserve the historic facades and stoops. Though the Randolph Houses are not yet listed on national and state registers, they are eligible for such protected status, said Dan Keefe, a spokesman for the New York State Historical Preservation Office.

The buildings, therefore, can’t be demolished and replaced by new construction, as government agencies had originally planned.

A recent request for proposals, issued jointly by the city’s Housing Authority and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development in late August, seeks a private developer to help integrate 140 public housing units with at least 155 affordable housing units.

So far several hundred people have downloaded the request, but the real response from developers won’t be known until November 7^th, the deadline for submissions.

Public housing residents pay at most 30 percent of their income towards rent, while those eligible for affordable housing can earn no more than 60 percent of the area median income, or $49,080 annually for a family of four.

Although “affordable housing” is often a broad term, varying slightly across federal, state and local agencies, in this case tenants, applying through lotteries, will pay at most half their income in rent.

The project won’t relieve heavy demand on the city’s public housing, for which almost 144,000 families are on a waiting list. It can take up to eight years to apply for and secure public housing, according to Habitat for Humanity.

“The main intent is to rebuild the place for the people who are living there now, and to create a mixed-income residence,” Chester said. “If there were additional public housing units available after those residents return, then NYCHA might be able to accept some public housing applicants on the waiting list, but that isn’t the main purpose.”

Robertus Coleman, 67, resident association president at the Randolph Houses, expressed mixed feelings about the upcoming transformation of her block. Reconstruction and repairs have been in the works for a decade, she said, without actually materializing.

“The plan is excellent: I just hope it happens! I also hope that I will live long enough to move in and see these new apartments myself, even if only for a day,” she said.

As for other Randolph Houses residents, Coleman added, “If they really look at their surroundings, they’ll recognize that this project is the best thing that can happen here. We could never normally afford to live in these renovated apartments.”

Coleman said that the south side of the block has always been associated with drug trafficking, and had seen two recent homicides, though they didn’t involve Randolph residents.

“Randolph Houses is a family-oriented development,” continued Coleman. “Even if it becomes a mixed income residence, we don’t want to lose our sense of feeling and community for each other. We don’t want people in the same building who are paying $2000 a month to feel superior to us. Our lives and apartments should and will be intermingled.

“I’m telling tenants here to look forward to this mixed income development, so long as it is mixed and equal. That’s the important part: mixed and equal.”

Local housing activists also expressed cautious optimism about the new proposal.

“These private affordable flats are hardly market-rate luxury flats,” said Lee Chong, a housing expert and member of Community Board 11. “Public-private partnerships and joint ventures are a good thing, so long as the outcome creates genuinely affordable housing.

“That’s the issue here, real affordability, especially if public property and government housing is involved.”

Donald Mack, director of resident and community services for Harlem’s Congregations for Community Improvement, commented: “If it doesn’t displace current residents, I’d be agreeable to the project.

“Even though I don’t believe this public-private element is that new or special, repair and maintenance services could improve if placed under private management. But you never know until the project is actually built.”

Fears over gentrification may be partly mitigated by restrictions in the official Request for Proposals, which gives the common preference to current Community Board 10 residents and also requires a minimum of  50-year terms for affordable rents.

Community Board 10 has declined to comment, saying that its standard policy is to wait until a developer is chosen and a proposal outlined in detail. A wait of several months after the November deadline for proposal submissions could be in store.

The abandoned school's dilapidated courtyard. (Photo by Lucy Pawle)

A derelict former public school in East Harlem will be converted into affordable housing and studio facilities for artists and their families, says a national arts developer. Costing $52.6 million, the enormous building will be converted into 90 units and 10,000 square feet of community space.

Construction on P.S. 109 at 215 E. 99^th Street is scheduled to start early next year now that the Department of Housing Preservation and Development has approved, and will announce in the next few days, grants worth about $20 million for the project, according to Will Law, chief operating officer at Artspace, a nonprofit real estate developer of the arts.

Once slated for demolition, Artspace, in conjunction with El Barrio’s Operation Fightback, an East Harlem community development organization, now has the development rights to P.S. 109. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development was handed control of the site by the Department of Education, and is providing tax credits and subsidies for affordable housing.

Built in 1898, with a gothic, almost castle-like design, the imposing building has fallen into disrepair since the school’s closure in 1996. Five stories tall with drip moldings, green spires corner towers and steeply pitched roof, it stands in stark contrast to its surroundings: a dilapidated housing complex, basketball court and low-rise residential streets. “In the community it’s an iconic building, it’s a landmark,” says Law. Fenced off with signs saying, “Keep Out – Poison,” the overgrown shrubbery, graffiti and boarded up windows, make it an eyesore and health hazard.

“We saw the gorgeous building, so the opportunity to give it a new life is quite exciting,” says Carol Corletta, president of ArtPlace, a public and private investment agency that worked with the National Endowment for the Arts among others to raise $1 million for the project. Corletta says the whole neighborhood will benefit from the plans. “The chance to reinvest in the artists, the location, and in the community – it’s a slam-dunk in our eyes.”

City Council member Melissa Mark-Viverito, who has supported Artspace’s plans, is equally enthusiastic. “I’m very excited about it,” she says. “I’m very proud of it.”

Yet squabbling about the best use for the building has continued for years. Local activist Gwen Goodwin organized the Coalition to Save P.S. 109, which successfully prevented the building’s demolition in 1999. Goodwin wants to see a restored school there, saying, “We are at a severe shortage of space in every district, East Harlem especially.”

School overcrowding is a hot topic in the area, and to Hector Nazario, president of the District’s Community Education Council, the cause is simple. “We have an overcrowding in East Harlem simply because 109 was closed,” he says.

But Mark-Viverito says that this argument is moot because the Department of Education didn’t want the school anymore. “They handed it over to DHP, it was just too costly,” she says, arguing, “Housing is our biggest problem.”

Law says that given the housing problems in El Barrio, “we fill a void.” He explains that an employee from the Department of Housing Preservation and Development first introduced him to P.S. 109, and as early as 2005 Community Board 11 approved the project.

A lack of agreement about the building’s use was the reason it fell into disrepair initially, argue Mark-Viverito and Law.  Law says that although in recent years “there’s been total consensus on the Community Board,” he admits that in in the past, “it was mired in a lot of community dissension.”

The front entrance remains closed. (Photo by Lucy Pawle)

Daisy Matias, 52, who lives in the housing project opposite P.S. 109, remembers this well. “People kept coming and checking the building for years but nothing happened,” she says.

Matias is not particularly enthusiastic about the plans. “They could have opened it up as a school again,” she says wistfully. “The kids need it more.”

Ambivalence is rife among neighborhood residents. “It’s nice that it’s being used but we’d rather it was a school,” says Nilsa Diaz, 52.

Gentrification is the cornerstone of both sides’ argument. Over the last decade the area’s white population has increased by 55 percent, according to the 2010 census. Goodwin says most new residents will be paying rents that locals can’t afford. Describing the project as a “frivolous idea,” she argues current plans “doesn’t have a lot to do with residents of East Harlem.”

Diaz agrees, saying, “It’s for the rich, it’s not for the poor.”

But Law counters that Artspace is part of the solution, not problem. “Increasing gentrification is going on that is continuing to force artists out of Manhattan,” he says, and with apartments expected to rent for $550 to $1,100 a month, he argues that P.S. 109 will help alleviate the impact of rent increases. “We are staking out affordable housing,” he says.

Local artists are enthusiastic. “It sounds like a great idea; I loved it from the very beginning,” says Argentinean painter and Harlem resident Mariano Cinat, who declares he would jump at the chance to move into P.S. 109. “I see the need in the community for more art programs and for more people to get involved.”

But few of those affected, both locals and artists, were aware that the project could move ahead so soon. “I didn’t know,” says Matias. Diaz was unaware, too.

Five years ago Harlem sculptor Lina Puerta completed a survey about what kind of apartment she lived in and the size of her household, “but that’s all I’ve heard.” She adds, “I signed up to their mailing list but I haven’t received any newsletters or emails or updates.”

Law admits Artspace could improve its dialogue with the community. Once the go-ahead is officially given, he says, “then we will really start to liaise with the community.”

With the department’s approval of Artspace’s plans, tenants could move into the restored building in autumn 2013.

Law, who has worked on Artspace P.S. 109 for six years, says he is certain that when the project is completed, the benefits will be evident to most. “I believe it can be transformational,” he says.

For the last two weeks, Sinan Atlin has been studying for the GMAT test in the quiet lounge of his new building – something he could have never done in his previous residence, which he said had loud neighbors, an abusive management and poor hygiene standards.

“It was not a nice atmosphere,” Atlin, 27, said of his previous home in East Harlem. “But this building is enough to make you forget about everything.”

The much anticipated affordable housing project, named in honor of the late urban planner Ibo Balton is ready to house low- and middle-income tenants in 226 apartments on West 127^th and 128^th Streets between Frederick Douglass Boulevard and St. Nicholas Avenue.

“There is a change in the landscape of Harlem but the change in the lives of the residents is also papable,” the city’s Housing Development Corporation’s president Marc Jahr said at the ribbon-cutting ceremony. “The Balton and Douglass Park will provide homes for families, retail space for the neighborhood and help build a stronger community.”

Despite the city’s efforts to build affordable housing in low-income areas, many Harlem residents will not benefit from these changes.

The Richman Group, the project’s developer, is sorting through 18,000 applications for both buildings, giving priority to residents of Community Board 10, who have good credit histories, no criminal records and who meet family size and income requirements. The applicants will then be randomly selected through a lottery process and called in for interviews by the developers.

“We got a very strong response,” said Christopher  Cirillo, vice president of Richman. “Our staff continues going through the applications and moving people in until we fill all the building.”

At the opening ceremony, Councilwoman Inez Dickens cautioned against the issue of displacement and emphasized the importance of affordable housing at a time of revitalization and rezoning.

“Harlem is under transition and change is good,” she said. “But those who stayed in the community and made it viable need to be part of the redevelopment.” She fought to make this development affordable to Harlem residents, to the community it is built in, said Dickens.

The Balton and Douglass buildings were built on land formerly owned by the city through the Cornerstone Program – an initiative that encourages the construction of mixed-income housing on city-owned land.

The development also received $20.8 million from the Tax Credit Assistance Program and $45.2 million through a combination of bonds issued by the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

The buildings are part of the new wave of residential construction across Harlem encouraged by Bloomberg’s Five Borough Economic Opportunity Plan, which seeks to create affordable and attractive neighborhoods. According to city housing data, the plan has managed to build or renovate 10,300 units in Community District 10 since 2004, including the Balton and Douglass Park.

In 2007, the Office of Manhattan Borough President monitored 358 vacant blocks in Upper Manhattan.

“The vacant lots and abandoned buildings that once plagued and characterized Harlem are a thing of the past,” said Housing Commissioner Rafael Cestero at the project’s groundbreaking in 2009. “Today, through the efforts of Housing Preservation Development and our partners, we are restoring vitality block by block, bringing quality affordable housing, new economic opportunity and stability back to this proud neighborhood.”

The Richman Group is a major player in Harlem, having previously built two projects on West 145^th Street: The Hamilton, a mixed-use co-op building and the Langston, a mixed-use condominium and retail complex.

“It was a great opportunity to build in Harlem because of the property HPD has owned here – vacant space or property taken for tax foreclosure,” said Cirillo. “As the neighborhood redevelops, vacant land is developed, new affordable housing is created so that people in the neighborhood don’t get displaced,” by higher rents caused by Harlem’s ongoing gentrification and growing appeal to wealthy and middle class families, Cirillo said.

The Balton, is divided into two wings, one with 12 stories, one with six, contains 156 studios and 70 two or three-bedroom apartments. Rents start at $1,492 for studios and rise to $2,609 for three-bedroom apartments. Tenants must meet income guidelines, for example, $46,100 to $99,840 for a family of four.

The building offers concierge services, a rooftop terrace with panoramic views, a fitness center with mirrored walls and a yoga room.

Children can play on a playground in the outdoor courtyard or in the residents’ lounge that has a fireplace, billiard tables and flat screen TVs.

“They have everything here – a yoga room, a playground, a lounge and it’s great for me because I have so many nieces,” said Melody Rosally, 36, a transit worker who is considering moving here from the Upper East Side.

Carla Kim, 25, a researcher at Columbia University, said that the Balton’s extras motivated her to move from the Upper West Side.

“It’s cheaper here but the amenities are so much better,” she says. “I haven’t seen anything that would compare to here price wise and value wise.”

It took the City $100 million to transform a former vacant lot into apartments that feature wood and ceramic tile floors, designer kitchens and baths, private terraces and views of St. Nicholas Park.

“The apartments are really luxurious – the size, the standard, the quality of the material,” said Atlin, 27, a part-time business student who works at a non-profit downtown.

The building, carries on Ibo Balton’s legacy, which was about “creating new opportunity in places long dismissed as unwanted and irredeemable,” said Housing Commissioner Mathew Wambua at the opening. “The new affordable homes at the Balton and Douglass Park put this thought into practice, and signal the end of the blight and abandonment that stifled this neighborhood for decades.”

Police sweep public housing stairwells top to bottom, like this one where Eleanor Britt's grandson was arrested in 2009. (Photo by Jason Alcorn)

Two police officers knocked on Eleanor Britt’s door in West Harlem in January 2009. Her grandson Roman was in handcuffs downstairs, arrested for criminal trespass in public housing, a class B misdemeanor.

Britt was shocked. Her grandson wasn’t the type to get into trouble. Eighteen months after graduating from Bowdoin College with a degree in government and legal studies, he was working at Harlem Children’s Zone under education reformer Geoffrey Canada.

“I told them: ‘You really don’t have to do that. He’s a good person, a decent person,’” Britt recalls. “He lives here.”

The officers had come across Britt’s grandson and a friend talking in the stairwell leading from the 17th floor to the roof, just two flights up from the apartment he had shared with his grandmother for more than 20 years.

“They frisked him head to toe,” Britt says. “Then they put handcuffs on him and arrested him.”

Three New York Police Department officers took Britt’s grandson into custody, fingerprinted him and jailed him for six hours on Jan. 31, 2009, because he did not take his ID with him into the stairwell of his own building.

Britt is still as bewildered as she was during her 10-minute argument, Roman’s driver’s license in hand, with the officers who knocked on her door two years ago.

“You’re in the hallway of your building,” she says. “Why would you have your ID?”

Last year, the police department stopped more than 59,000 people in public housing. Fewer than 9,000 of the stops resulted in arrests, according to a recent City Council briefing. Maybe Britt’s grandson was just unlucky, but he doesn’t see it that way. Neither do Britt and a handful of city politicians, including Council Member Rosie Mendez.

“It is my belief and the belief of many of the residents that reside in public housing,” Mendez said at a committee meeting in September, “that the New York City Police Department is targeting people in public housing because of where they live and because of their demographic composition.”

Britt’s grandson, like nearly half the residents of public housing, is black. More than 60 percent of those stopped for trespass in the city are black, as are more than 50 percent of those arrested, even though they make up just a quarter of the city’s population. Latino residents of public housing face much the same situation.

Now the department is coming under increasing legal and political pressure, including a class action lawsuit filed in January against the city and the New York City Housing Authority. Britt and her grandson are two of the 17 plaintiffs in the suit, which alleges that the Police Department’s policies constitute racial discrimination and lead to unlawful arrests for trespass.

“The treatment of residents of NYCHA has been a longstanding issue of debate,” explains Johnathan Smith, an NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund attorney working on the case. “I think the fact that this case is taking place so that people have the right, the ability to enjoy their residence, to have an impact on the NYPD, it’s really important.”

The plaintiffs’ stories, outlined in a complaint filed with the court in June, show daily routines interrupted by run-ins with law enforcement. Four plaintiffs in addition to Britt’s grandson were arrested in upper Manhattan:

¶Edwin Larregui, 39, was arrested after a visit to see his wife’s grandmother, who lives in the George Washington Carver Houses in East Harlem. He spent the night at Central Booking before seeing a judge who let him go the next day.

¶Three months later, Anthony Anderson had just dropped off his niece and nephew at his sister-in-law’s apartment at the Thomas Jefferson Houses when he was arrested and jailed for two weeks. All charges against him were dismissed.

¶The police arrested William Turner, 39, leaving a friend’s building in the Drew Hamilton Houses in early 2008. After six months and four court appearances, his case was dismissed.

¶David Wilson, 53, was arrested last year by two plainclothes officers on West 114th Street in Harlem. When his elderly aunt, whom he was visiting, came to the courthouse to explain, a judge dismissed the case.

Most arrests don’t result in conviction. A trespass charge is easy to disprove: a sworn statement from a building resident is usually enough. And arrests in public housing often involve rookie officers, says Christopher Fabricant, director of the criminal justice clinic at Pace Law School. “The result is sloppy paperwork and bad witnesses,” Fabricant says.

From 2005 to 2008, the city declined to prosecute over 11 percent of trespass arrests, according to a study published this fall in the Columbia Law Review, nearly twice the rate for drug sales or resisting arrest. The Bronx Defenders, which provides attorneys to indigent defendants in court, won nearly 90 percent of its trespass cases last year; two years ago, 54 percent of the cases that went to trial boroughwide ended in acquittal or a hung jury, Fabricant says.

But he is quick to point out that often there are still serious repercussions. At the very least, an arrest usually means a night in jail, and if it’s not dismissed the average misdemeanor case takes more than a year to go to trial.

The consequences, William Gibney, a Legal Aid Society attorney, testified in September, include “missing work or medical appointments, being unable to satisfy family obligations, and navigating the criminal justice system over several months and with multiple court appearances.”

As a result, innocent people plead guilty, sometimes to a lesser charge, a trespass violation, which carries a $120 fine. They return to work and their families more quickly. But as public housing residents, criminal conviction can be a reason for eviction. A conviction can also affect future employment, since it will show up on background checks.

Britt went to the precinct building that night two years ago to learn what was going to happen to her grandson.

“When your child’s arrested, you don’t know what to expect,” she says. “They didn’t allow me to see him or to speak with him.” So she left and came back with Roman’s uncle. Still, they told her: “You just need to leave. We’ll release him when we’re ready.”

Around 1 a.m. Sunday morning, her grandson’s fingerprints came back clean and he was allowed to leave. Within a few days, the public defender assigned to the case called and a court date was set for March.

Despite advocates’ concerns, the increase in trespass arrests over the last decade and a half corresponds to safer public housing: Between 1998 and 2003, crime fell 34 percent, according to a report by the New York Lawyers for the Public Interest.

A causal link is doubtful, but in many ways it doesn’t matter. The perception is that the current approach to policing is effective, so some residents want aggressive stop-and-question policies, no matter the tradeoff.

“It’s a very sensitive issue,” Bishop Mitchell Taylor of the Civilian Complaint Review Board said in September, “because residents want safe neighborhoods, but residents also want the balance of not being harassed in their own neighborhoods.

“I think that’s the dance that’s being done now.”

City Council Member Derek Halloran addressed the question at a committee meeting in September. “In the late ’80s and early ’90s, there was an explosion of trespassing that led to crimes in public housing facilities,” he said, defending the Police Department’s record.

The increase began with two changes in city policy. In 1992, nonresidents for the first time needed an invitation to enter public housing. Prior to that, the lobbies and hallways of buildings were as open to the public as sidewalks. Three years later, the city Police Department absorbed the housing police and became the security force for the Housing Authority.

“The controversy back then,” Tosano Simonetti of the complaint review board said at his group’s October meeting, “was a lot of people in public housing said: ‘Don’t take our housing cops away from us.’ They wanted them to remain because they felt they had a better – or they had a good understanding with them.”

The demographics of public housing don’t match the rest of the city. The Housing Authority operates 53 buildings in upper Manhattan, among 334 developments and 2,600 buildings across the city, making it the largest such agency in North America.

Its more than 400,000 residents skew young and old; over 35 percent are 62 or older and nearly 37 percent are under 21, compared with 15 percent and 26.5 percent citywide, according to agency data and the Census Bureau’s 2009 American Community Survey.

Britt remembers when the relationship between building residents and the police started to sour: It was when the two police departments merged. “We used to have one officer assigned to the building,” she says.

Now she rarely recognizes the officers. “Don’t get me wrong, we need police presence in the community,” she says, “but they need to know how to interact.”

Sitting on the building’s tenant board, she hears the same stories again and again. Her neighbor’s sons have been wrongfully arrested. And each month new complaints are raised about police conduct.

“The answer to a crime problem cannot be the arbitrary arrest of everybody in the building because you don’t like the way they look,” says Fabricant, the Pace legal clinic director.

Halloran also acknowledged the lawsuit’s importance. “I think that one of the things that you’re pointing out, egregiously, unfortunately, is that the Constitution sort of takes a second seat towards the goal of safety,” he says.

“We are very much engaged in the litigation,” says Smith, the Legal Defense and Education Fund lawyer. “Our goal is for residents to be treated with dignity and respect. To the extent there are other avenues, we are taking advantage of them.”

One of those options is bringing about the kind of political pressure via the City Council that forced changes in the Police Department’s stop, question and frisk policy last year.

The September committee meeting where Council Member Mendez condemned the Police Department’s targeting of public housing residents focused exclusively on trespass arrests. Twenty of the 51 council members attended, including two uptown representatives, Robert Jackson and Melissa Mark-Viverito. No one from the Housing Authority or the Police Department testified, despite invitations. Instead the committee heard testimony from the Civilian Complaint Review Board, counsel in the class action case, tenant advocates and public housing residents who all testified against current police policy.

“We understand the need for police officers in NYCHA developments,” said Council Member Debbi Rose.

“Cameras might be a help but they’re not addressing the core issue about the relationship,” Gibney of the Legal Aid Society said in response to a question from Jackson.

Mark-Viverito, whose East Harlem district has more than 18,000 units of public housing, the highest in the city, said her constituents regularly raise issues of police harassment.

“This somehow has become a rite of passage that they’re going to have these kinds of experiences of being stopped and frisked,” she said. “So this is obviously a very serious issue that we have to be aggressive about and we have to be more vocal in denouncing it.”

It fell to council members to question whether the Police Department could take credit for reducing crime, as the discussion moved from acknowledging a problem to looking at fixes.

Gibney responded: “I think there’s a considerable debate. I don’t think there’s a clear answer as to what the relationship is.”

Jin Hee Lee, Gibney’s co-counsel from the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund,* added: “It’s not a matter of security or no security. The real issue is how that security is being provided and whether residents’ constitutional rights are being respected.”

The Police Department has already taken several steps this year to improve the relationship between officers and public housing residents. In June, the department announced a revision to the Patrol Guide, literally underlining the need for reasonable suspicion to stop a suspected trespasser. The guide also instructs officers on what to do if they suspect someone is not authorized to be in the building: First, “take reasonable measures to verify such authority (e.g., asking for identification, a key to the building entrance doors, etc.).” Then, ask them to leave. Only then can the officer make a trespass arrest, if “the person refuses to exit the building and does not promptly establish a right to be in the building.”

In November, the 2,000 officers in the Police Department’s housing bureau received training on the new guidelines. Fabricant is skeptical: “The patrol guide simply states what the law already was. That the NYPD felt the need to revise it seems to me absurd.”

He has seen fewer public housing trespass arrests in the Bronx courts in the last two months, though he cautions that he hasn’t done a rigorous count to know for sure.

A spokesperson for the Housing Authority, which helped the Police Department create the new guidelines, said via e-mail only that the agency is “pursuing and rolling out new policies and procedures that will improve the long-term safety and well-being of public housing residents in New York City.” The Police Department did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Soon after his arrest, Britt’s grandson received three letters in the mail. Because he worked with schoolchildren at Harlem Children’s Zone, his arrest triggered warnings to his employer, even before his first appearance in court.

“Thank God he worked for good people who understood,” Britt says. Roman was able to explain what happened and avoided getting suspended.

Others find themselves in worse circumstances. Among the plaintiffs arrested in Harlem: David Wilson missed a job interview, Edwin Larregui was suspended for two weeks for missing work while in custody, Anthony Anderson lost his job as a private security guard and the Department of Education suspended William Turner for eight months without pay.

Britt and her grandson arrived for his desk appearance on March 2 to see their lawyer coming out of a meeting with the district attorney’s office.

“The D.A. said this was nonsense,” says Britt, “and it didn’t even merit making a desk appearance.”

Roman’s record, including his fingerprints, has been sealed, as if the arrest simply never happened. But for him it’s not so easy to erase the past, even though he now lives in Los Angeles. When he was home visiting, he ran into the police officer who had arrested him.

“Do you remember me?” the officer asked.

Roman replied, “Yes, you’re the idiot who arrested me for trespassing in the building where I live.”

It wasn’t a joke. The officer laughed anyway.

* The article originally described Jin Hee Lee as counsel at the Legal Aid Society. The Uptowner regrets the error.

General Ulysses S. Grant Houses and other projects in the spotlight. (Photo by Zaheer Cassim)

On a warm Monday morning, 17-year-old “Cheddar,” gets a call from his girlfriend who has just finished a session at the gym. “She is coming over,” he says. In need of privacy, they end up on the roof of his building in the General Ulysses S. Grant Houses on 125th Street.

Fifteen minutes later, a police officer is standing next to the two teenagers. At housing complexes like Grant, Manhattanville and now at St. Nicholas Houses, someone is always watching.

St. Nicholas Houses has begun installing 160 surveillance cameras throughout the project, following Manhattanville, which set up 96 last year. Privately sponsored, these cameras aren’t monitored by the police, like the “video interactive patrol enhancement response” (VIPER) cameras at Grant Houses.

Councilwoman Inez Dickens secured the $2.5 million funding for the Manhattanville and St. Nicholas systems. St. Nicholas received the bulk of that and the system should be operational by November, says Heidi Morales of the New York City Department of Housing.

The VIPER cameras at Grant Houses, remotely connected to Police Station Six, are in demand with Harlem public housing managers.

“They all want it,” says Detective John Ramos who works with the VIPER team at Police Station Area Six. But he says, “it’s very expensive. When you get the VIPER program, somebody has to monitor those cameras.” He acknowledges that St. Nicholas Houses needs a VIPER unit, but there is no money.

With VIPER cameras, police at local stations in what are known as “VIPER rooms” are watching. When they see a crime committed, a squad car heads for the project, usually within minutes. The VIPER video footage then serves as evidence in court. With a closed-circuit system, as at Manhattanville and now St. Nicholas, it’s up to the buildings’ management to find someone to monitor the cameras.

Still, residents at St. Nicholas sound happy about the new cameras and say they have seen improvements already. Vera Robinson, a St. Nicholas resident for more than 50 years, says she and other residents are upset with neighbors who keep urinating in the elevator. “I’m 69 years old. If I can make it upstairs they can make it to where they are going,” she says. Since cameras were installed in the elevators, the nuisance has stopped.

Manhattanville Manager Kamilla Kusiec says that after Grant Housing received the VIPER unit, “criminal activities migrated to Manhattanville”, which was forced to get its own surveillance system. “Ideally everyone in the city would like VIPER cameras,” explains Kusiec. who now watches the cameras in her spare time. Since installing the cameras, crime in Manhattanville and Grant housing projects has decreased by 17 percent, according to Ramos’s internal statistics.

The 32nd Precinct police report, which includes St. Nicholas, shows that overall, crime has risen nearly 5 percent since last year, though it remains 28 percent below the level of 10 years ago.

The cameras have drawn criticism from outside the projects, however. A 2008 University of Southern California study, “Measuring the Effects of Video Surveillance on Crime,” shows that while such cameras help apprehend criminals, their presence doesn’t stop crime. Conducted at several Los Angeles locations, including the housing project Jordan Downs, the study found that “cameras used in conjunction with larger crime-reduction strategies should be viewed as one tactical element, not a strategy in-and-of themselves.”

The American Civil Liberties Union has published several reports arguing that video surveillance hasn’t proved effective and violates individuals’ right to privacy. Communications director Jennifer Carnig explained its position. “It’s essential, when the government engages in surveillance, that it acknowledges that there are privacy risks and takes steps to reduce the harm,” she wrote in an e-mail. The ACLU wants police to consider residents’ privacy and to place cameras where they don’t intrude on people’s lives.

As for communication between Cheddar and his girlfriend, he’ll have trouble arranging private conversations at Harlem housing projects. He was lucky the officer was in a good mood that day and only reported him to his family. He now lives under the close surveillance of Grant’s VIPER unit and his mother.

A woman walks next to a playground and parking lot, which will be eliminated by the proposed extension of West 129th Street. (Photo by Andrew Seaman)

A plan to build a charter school inside the St. Nicholas Houses has triggered heated debate among residents. The proposed Harlem Children’s Zone school will occupy 93,000 square feet of open space between the complex’s 13 buildings in central Harlem.

Opponents fear the building’s long-term effects such as pollution, lack of parking space and higher crime. Proponents say the complex’s own children will benefit from the school, which will also make the community safer.

Community Board 10 will organize a town hall meeting to air opinions about the school, Chairman W. Franc Perry announced at the board’s most recent meeting.

The Children’s Zone has been seeking a site on which to build for several years. “The Housing Authority asked if we would partner with them to build our school at and bring services to one of their housing developments,” says Lauren Scopaz, director of strategic initiatives at the Children’s Zone. “They did an internal study of where in central Harlem we could build the school. St. Nick’s, they decided, had the most space.”

Scopaz adds that the Authority initially approached the Children’s Zone with the idea of using the open space, part of an effort to meet President Obama’s challenge to integrate housing and schools with other social services.

Residents contend, however, that the proposed extension of West 129th Street from Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass Boulevards, which will cut through a cul-de-sac in the middle of the complex, will pose unwelcome risks.

“Where are the children going to play?” asks Carolyn Anderson, who has lived in the complex for eight years. “There’s traffic on the street. Where are they going to ride their scooters?”

“All cars will be going through and we have children going around,” agrees Cynthia Barr, a St. Nicholas resident. She says the city and the school could have done a better job of involving residents before making a decision.

According to the project overview from the Children’s Zone, “the new street will facilitate access to the school and open the development to the community.” Its safety features include a one-way westbound street with curb extensions at the intersections and two midblock speed humps, the overview says.

But Barr argues, “There are many vacant lots they could have chosen. They didn’t ask the residents. They held the meetings only after they decided. We don’t want it here.” She admits, however, that because of her work schedule she was unable to attend the community input meetings.

Scopaz responds that residents have had many opportunities to voice their concerns. “Starting from January, we have been at every St. Nicholas Tenant Association meeting,” says Scopaz. “The first big meeting we did for the residents was the beginning of May – it was open to the public – to give information and receive feedback about the project.” She adds that the Children’s Zone also held a meeting on a June Saturday to accommodate workday schedules.

Security within the school and the complex has been a concern on both sides of the debate. The Children’s Zone promises 24-hour security within the building, but neighbors worry that the students may bring additional crime. “Kids always fight outside of schools,” Anderson says.

Community Board 10’s land use committee devoted an hour of discussion to the project at its September meeting. Children’s Zone Chief Executive Geoffrey Canada, Housing Authority Chairman Michael Kelly and dozens of local residents turned out for a passionate debate.

Tyrone Ball, vice president of St. Nicholas’ Tenants Association, announced that an architect has been working on an alternative design that does not include extending West 129th Street. Canada offered to look at the plan.

Tenant association president Willie Mae Lewis, a vocal proponent, argued that the school would benefit children living in the complex.

However, some residents object to their children having to participate in a lottery to gain admission.

“Since there are only 33 three-year-old applicants from St. Nicholas this year, they all got in, since the number was less than 100 available slots,” says Scopaz. “We do the lottery early so we can give them access to the early development program for three-and four-year-olds.” She adds, “Due to the demographics at St. Nicholas, we anticipate that every St. Nicholas three-year-old will get into the school in future years.”

State law requires the Children’s Zone and other public charter schools to hold admission lotteries, Scopaz explains. The school will bring additional benefits for the complex, she adds, notably jobs. “We’ll give St. Nicholas residents priority for employment in the new school and construction jobs,” she says.

The school will be built with $60 million from the city government and $40 million from the Children’s Zone, including $20 million from Goldman Sachs Gives, the investment company’s charitable arm. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development must still approve the use of the land for the project, says Scopaz.

Certain parts of the facility – such as the gym, cafeteria, library and computer lab – will be available to the community after school hours, Scopaz says, allowing the building to serve as a community center, as well as a school.

Canada admitted at the land use committee meeting that his organization could have done a better outreach job. He has offered to help accommodate anyone affected by the project, adding, “We’re trying to make this work for everybody.”

The most recent Community Board 10 meeting on October 6 was much more docile, but St. Nicholas residents still turned out.

“Open this process up for scrutiny, bring NYCHA in front of the Board,” urged resident Sandra Thomas.

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.”