To the Editor:
Attorney Robert Chira’s articles on Island Housing that periodically appear in The WIRE have been excellent.
Mr. Chira’s familiarity with the legal basis for the Roosevelt Island subsidized housing program make the articles worthy of careful reading. They are based on reality rather than pie-in-the-sky dreams that individuals will be eligible for large gains from tax-supported properties.
I am thankful for the willingness of The WIRE’s editorial staff to publish all viewpoints on the purpose, successes, and possible future of the model community created by the taxpayers of the State and City of New York. Attorney Chira’s articles have been an excellent example of this willingness.
David J. Bauer
To the Editor:
I have worked hard for six years as the New York Public Library’s volunteer Community Advocate to obtain the New York City Council’s financial support for our Roosevelt Island Branch Library. Thanks to City Councilmember Jessica Lappin’s efforts, a grant of $2.85 million was allocated in 2005 for our branch library’s expansion. We are still waiting for that to happen.
Meanwhile, I have been working equally hard to get a clean rug installed in our present library. The rug there now is so stained and filthy-looking that it may be endangering the health of little children who sit on the floor during story hours.
To no avail! Therefore, I have officially resigned as the library’s volunteer Community Advocate. I am sick and tired of waiting for a response and action by New York Public Library officials for a replacement of that rug and other repairs.
I also urge library patrons to write to New York Public Library’s Branch Library management protesting the continuing lack of attention to the needs of our community’s library.
Mary Camper-Titsingh
To the Editor:
Another of my current pet peeves is that the Library is moving to Southtown. What a horrible idea. The Library wants to move in order to get a larger, newer, cleaner space. You can’t blame them. They have outgrown their space and have been dealing with water leaks for years. Moving is not the answer. Why should we lose another important community necessity on Main Street? Why is RIOC creating a ghost town in the middle of the Island?
What should happen is that the owners of Eastwood and RIOC should pool their resources, give them more space, which we have plenty of, and fix their space rather than let them move. Why shouldn’t the Library be in the middle of town, convenient for all? What poor judgment.
Vicki Feinmel
To RIOC President Steve Shane:
On behalf of the staff and board of Eviction Intervention Services, we extend our thanks for your efforts to preserve affordable housing on Roosevelt Island. The mission of EIS is to prevent homelessness in its various guises.
The cover article of the December 15 issue of The Main Street WIRE, headlined A Plan to Keep Vulnerable People Away From Hospital Dangers Could Help Preserve Affordable Housing Here, echoes our objective: to keep people, especially the elderly and disabled, in their homes. EIS has long known that this strategy is more fiscally responsible than hospitalization or sheltering. By receiving the needed social and medical services, people can remain in their familiar surroundings and live out their lives in dignity with family, neighbors, and community around them. Their position in the community provides stability, the root of the Aging in Place movement.
EIS recognized the integrity and power of doctors like Jack Resnick, who practice home visits, thus saving hundreds of individuals and families from medical crisis, when we honored him in 2005 for preventing homelessness and preserving affordable housing. What most people do not understand is that when patients are moved from regulated housing to a facility, their affordable housing is often lost to the system. The tension that this possibility places on patients/family is immense, as they count the days until Medicaid/Medicare demands payment to the facility – money that would otherwise be used to pay the rent.
Again, many thanks for your innovative thinking regarding medical and social service support to Eastwood. This model of homelessness prevention is one that EIS applauds and supports.
Audrey Berman Tannen, Executive Director
Karen Ingenthron Lewis, Advisory Board
Eviction Intervention Services
To the Editor:
It’s the new year and, as usual, people have been bombarding us with lists of the ten best and ten worst this or that. Forget about the seven plagues: that’s old hat. Though with things heating up again in the mid-East and freezing down in the mid-West, they may yet come back to plague us in another seven ways!
Ambling along wet Main Street this past New Year’s Eve, I was struck once again by the still-startling number of empty stores – though last year’s stretch was alight with bright, happy faces. Instead, there they were, the still-ghostly facades – though last year’s were alive with seasonal decorations and catchy bargain signs and those odd, bumptious cabbage-looking plants. And then, worse than ever, the need to hop over the puddles, often ponds, of water collected in the sunken vats that our humble sidewalks and streets have become – our brigade of City engineers still hasn’t learned how to train the water to drain off naturally. Why don’t they consult the physics books? Instead, as we look down into the dreary waters so as not to fall, our own mirrored faces stare sadly back at us, more’s the pity, sadly into our New Year... No! Nothing has happened to bring the street back to life except, thank god, the belated reconstruction of Blackwell House – which, rightfully, should have hosted a Christmas party for this beloved Island, this year – or at least have called on Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek to throw a fete on Twelfth Night!
So I went back to my desk and looked up the letter I had written to The WIRE last April, and which was gallantly published on April 21 in your infectiously rambunctious gazette, wherein I lamented in 18th-century style, the loss of so many little Main Street businesses in the domino series of foreclosures instituted by the Island’s cruel, near-sighted management – the end of the sweet salt-smelling Fish Store, the passing of the pungent pizzicato Pizza Parlor, the demise of the delicious, ducky little Bakery, the squeezing out of ye olde, tiny Shoe Repair service of former years, and no doubt numerous other victims before I ever began to walk these doomed streets.
For, lo and behold, in the almost nine long months since, not a single one of these ill-fated stores has been replaced. Our trippingly hip teenagers can no longer loll away their evenings in the Piazzetta, nor even we elders. Decent fish can no longer be slurped on the Island. We have to hobble, nay crawl, to Manhattan to get our shoes fixed. True, we’ve since been blessed with a second coffee shop, a replica of one of those dreadful, ubiquitous Starbucks salons in a Southtown building, next to the subway, but hardly a site for young lovers, middle-aged couples, or even ancient crones. And more recently another ubiquitous branded store, Duane Reade, has arisen vis-a-vis the branded coffee shop where, supposedly, you can fish for anything with a label. Ideal partners!
But what about those still-empty, lonely spaces on Main Street? What on earth is RIOC, or whatever it’s called, waiting for? The money it may have saved in a pile-up of unpaid rents has now been nullified by the potential lost revenues those spaces would have earned, even with the old tenants! Wouldn’t it have been more expedient, and humane, and potentially profitable, for RIOC to have worked out a scheme whereby those supposedly failing businesses could have been propped up – at least until a better shop entrepreneur came along to replace one of them? What false economy! And why continue to bolster dull, enormous, unwelcoming Gristede’s with a subsidy and not these cheerful little spots? Gristede’s, with its rows of empty benches, and its mechanical coffee counter that nobody wants to drink from? And apparently nobody does, unless he or she is desperate. (They once served a very good coffee, in those tall, roast-fragrant pitchers; but, of course, it didn’t make enough profit.) Besides, they would have to clean up after the customers left, and that would consume more money. And then they would have to wipe off the floors more often. And that would have added up to still more unnecessary expenditures. When in doubt, downsize! And so on, and so on... the litany of our corporate world.
Perhaps we could persuade Dr. Johnson to call up Adam Smith to complain, Or ask RIOC to consult his Wealth of Nations.
A last-minute addition: I’ve just learned about the walls coming disastrously down at our "gothically forbidding smallpox hospital" (New York Times) – another example, alas, of incremental procrastination. Caveat carem!
Maurice Edwards
To the Editor:
In response to James Flak’s letter (The WIRE, December 15), I’d like to point out to him a few things about why he may think that we have been less than happy about the behavior of some of the Octagonians.
In case you haven’t heard, this Island was named for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. (You may have read about him in grade school history: he was that fellow in a wheelchair, paralyzed by a disease you may also have read about, called polio.) You see, this Island was the first planned community built to meet new ADA [Americans with Disabilities Act] requirements, with the concept of mainstreaming physically challenged people and integrating them into the general population.
One of the main complaints we have about many of your young and very physically fit neighbors is that they get on the Red Bus, grab the front seats, and at Motorgate, they won’t get up for a disabled or elderly passenger. They often allow their children to stand on the seats so that if we want to sit down our clothing is subject to the dirt from the bottom of their children’s shoes. They play dead if we ask them to move or point to the clearly visible signs directing them to do so. It’s as if their message is that they don’t have to have good manners nor do they have to follow the rules. I’ve even heard some of them curse if they have to move because a wheelchair is being brought onto the bus! Perhaps if you feel that we don’t like you, is it because so many of you and your neighbors have repeatedly shown disdain for long-time residents in the existing community?
After a tragic fire destroyed a good part of the Octagon building, it lay in disrepair until your developer came along in a sweetheart deal with the Pataki administration and built your current residence. As part of that deal, your developer wiggled out of the need for funding extra buses to handle the increased population, as the developers of Manhattan Park were made to do. Thus, we were suddenly stuck with not being able to board the buses or count on a schedule, as we had for over 20 years. So it’s not that we want you to walk from the Octagon to the Tram, but then again, we shouldn’t be kept from being able to board the buses, either.
Then, the rotunda of your building was supposed to have been a landmark, open to the public with historic exhibits. Instead, we can’t even visit it, and we have been chased for trespassing if we dare to step onto the grounds on the western side of the building to try to see it. Indeed, several of my neighbors were threatened with arrest for daring to get too close to look at this renovated marvel. As a matter of fact, that space used to be a community picnic area lovingly maintained by an elderly man whom everyone called "Farmer Brown," where we used to go with our kids and neighbors, complete with barbecues, swings, and poison ivy.
Talk about "acceptance and accommodation"... those are just a few of our gripes.
Quite frankly, I don’t care whether you make a ton of money or whether you are a member of the working poor. What I care about is that you don’t come into this community with a chip on your shoulder and draw a line in the sand. In short, don’t complain that we are not accepting and accommodating you, but do rally your neighbors to play by the rules of respect and decency. And maybe work together with us to get RIOC to provide a few more buses, rather than letting them divide and conquer by pitting neighbors against each other.
A hearty welcome to you!
Raye Schwartz
To RIOC President Steve Shane:
Thank you for the idea of exploring the possibility of Affordable Housing and Home Health Care, and for exploring the idea with Dr. Resnick.
You have made progress in upgrading RIOC services; now you are embarking on addressing the needs of the community fabric. Such an effort has been missing for 12 years. The WIRE article is a signal that we may be getting back on track.
Dr. Resnick has been a longtime center of good things for the community. In addition to his devoted medical care to the older people on the Island, he was responsible for resuscitating the Island newspaper, reworked as The WIRE.
With both of you putting energy into this obvious need, there is hope that it will happen.
David J. Bauer