Organizer’s To Do List

Organizer’s To Do List

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

Day of SUN’s meeting
to push the city to knock down vacant apartment building.

Barack Obama, Organizer-In-Chief

As I’ve noted before, Barack Obama spent time in the late 1980’s working as a community organizer in Chicago, working with tenant groups in public housing to fight for repairs.

The current Syracuse New Times article has a great column by Ed Griffin-Nolan comparing and contrasting the skills of politicians and organizers. He notes that “the community organizer and the political operative each played complementary roles in the process of social change.”

The article gives a great overview of the role of an organizer, developing leaders to challenge entrenched power. Organizers stay out of the limelight and help everyday people to gain the skills, knowledge and strategic vision to best fight for their own neighborhoods.

The only jarring note in the article? Mr. Griffin-Nolan states that organizers, unlike image conscious politicians, “can reach for that second doughnut without a second thought.” I’ve been an organizer for nearly 15 years and I’ve reached for many a second doughnut in my day. I’ll try to cut back on the grease, I promise!

More Photos Of Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Photos Of Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Hose coming out of basement. Woman in window has apartment
immediately above shit pool.

More Photos On Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Photos On Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Shit rolls downhill alright. Across the lawn (dirt patch) adjacent
to apartment building.

More Pictures: The Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

More Pictures: The Shitstorm At 170 W. Brighton

Sewage pooling up due to leak in hose connection–right at the front
stoop of the rear of the building. Three families, one with
an infant girl, live directly above this pool.

They Don’t Give A Shit About Us, Literally

They Don’t Give A Shit About Us, Literally

Originally uploaded by Phil At Sun

This photo is of the remains of a sewage backup that the absentee
landlords of 170 W. Brighton Ave. pumped out of
the basement into the adjoining yard. This apartment building tells
a years’ long tale of our neighborhood’s abuse
at the hands of slumlords and neglect at the hands of city officials.

The apartment building was owned for years by Harry Murphy, a
notorious Southside slumlord. The apartments
were actually two buildings–each containing 12 units. Tales of
drug trafficking, noise and gun shots were common
at this property, nicknamed Fort Apache by area residents. Many
members of the Brighton Brigades gang cycled
through the property. The properties taxes were unpaid for years.
This was actually a strategic move on the part of
Mr. Murphy, since the city decreed that it would not issue a
certificate of compliance–required of all multi-unit buildings
in the city–since the owner was tax delinquent. Was the logical
next step closure of the building until the taxes were
paid and the buildings inspected for code violations? No. The next
step was to do nothing. SUN complained to
Code Enforcement, the Community Development Commissioner, numerous
Common Councilors and the Mayor.
No response.

The building was sold in 2005 to an out-of-town developer based in
Long Island. The taxes remain unpaid, totaling
over $22, 000–not including the current years arrears. A fire
destroyed a good portion of one of the buildings, one
tenants manner of settling a dispute with another tenant. In 2007,
162 W. Brighton was torn down.

As a result of SUN’s complaints on Wednesday May 21st, city DPW came
out to the remaining building and stopped
the landlord’s hired men from pumping more sewage into the adjacent
lawn. City Code Enforcement and the County
Health Department both came out the next day as a result of our
complaints. The building was declared unfit for
habitation and the landlord hired a knowledgeable plumber to drain
the remaining sewage. County Health determined
that the sewage pumped onto the lawn could stay there, as the sun
would kill any toxins.

With the exception of Tim Carroll, Director of Operations, who
managed to get DPW out to the site and stop the pumping,
no one acted with concern or speed. Code did not
return phone calls on either Wednesday or Thursday evening. The
Health Department did not return Wednesday’s
phone message and when contacted on Thursday stated they would get to
the dumping site the next day
“if nothing big came up.”

Five families still remain in the unfit building. They do not
qualify under HUD guidelines for relocation assistance. The
agency the city used to help relocate families in unfit properties
went out of business and the city never replaced the
service, despite putting $10,000 into the CDBG budget for this
purpose two years ago.

Remember, when you say nobody gives a shit about us, you are
absolutely right!

Nuisance Abatement

SUN is pleased to see the city use the Nuisance Abatement law to order the closure of Zak’s Market on W. Newell St. SUN helped create the law in 1991, as well as make several amendments to the law, including a provision allowing residents to file written impact statements and give oral testimony at Nuisance Abatement hearings.

The idea that landlords are responsible for their property and share responsibility for the conduct of their tenants has been a feature of common law since the 16th century. Many books and articles have been written about nuisance abatement, but a member of SUN put it best when she said: “Your right to throw a punch ends at the tip of my nose. Anything after that and I’ll see you in court!” If an owner allows his property to interfere with other people’s rights to the quiet enjoyment of their property, your property is a public nuisance.

Properties owned by absentee landlords and corner stores business owners are terrorizing Syracuse neighborhoods. Rowdy tenants and loiterers around stores blast music, drink alcohol and use drugs, vandalize property, urinate on adjoining property and lawns and start fights. The worst places also have blatant drug dealing and gun violence.

In Syracuse, public nuisance properties are hauled before an administrative hearing and asked what they plan to do to end the problems. If they do not show or do not have a realistic plan, the police chief has the option to issue a closure order for a period of time, up to one year.

The most recent case, Zak’s Market has dragged on for several years. The most recent hearing was the store’s third. Police have made 9 arrests in the past year at the store–well over the threshold of 3 arrests in a 2 year period. The store even has been accused of exchanging money immediately after drug deals, a manuever done to rid drug dealers of any marked money passed to them in undercover sting operations.

However, there are still neighbors that will complain bitterly about the closure of the store. The owners have created many supporters in the neighborhood by extending credit to poor families, misusing food stamps by allowing them to be used for tobacco and alcohol or by buying them for 50 cents on the dollar, cash. However, Zak’s Market deserves its penalty. Many businesses on the Southside operate without losing control of their property, refuse to cooperate with drug dealers and still do a decent business.

The store can appeal this decision to State Supreme Court, so this issue may still not be over.

I Forgot Lesson Number One

The cardinal rule of a community organizer is never take on a task that can be done by your organization’s members. If you are serious about building an organization, the leaders of organizations need to continually step forward and take responsibility for its activities.

I forgot this lesson when I gave an interview to a Post-Standard reporter. I didn’t think of it as such, to me it was a wide ranging discussion on the phone about development issues on the South Side and the relative merits of various schemes to develop businesses and plan for future growth in the area. If you’ve read this blog, you’ll know I love talking about local issues and the arcana that piles up around the intersection where government, business and non-profit agencies meet. I bloviated awhile on a number of topics near and dear to my heart. I forgot that when you talk to reporters, stories are usually the result.

When the article came out I’m featured with a couple of non-quotes summarizing my feelings:

Phil Prehn, senior organizer for Syracuse United Neighbors, is critical of the Urban Design Center plan. Its focus on commercial and mixed commercial and residential development is wrong for the neighborhood because its identity is residential, Prehn said. Residents are telling SUN that the South Side needs better single-family housing, not the kind of mixed-use development proposed in the plan, he said.

Even though the comments aren’t exact quotes, I’m sure that they are accurate. It sounds like me. It’s only part of what I said, but its accurate. My qualms aren’t with the reporter, she did her job professionally. Why did I open my big yap? I don’t live on the South Side. I work for people who do live on the South Side. It’s my job to prepare those folks to be in a position to make the comments. Oh well, it’s only one story, something else will come along tomorrow and all will be forgotten, right?

Well, it got worse today. The lead editorial picks up on this story and writes about the importance of this particular development scheme. No argument there, we have to get serious about South Side development. Then I come across this statement:

“Syracuse United Neighbors has criticized the Gateway plan, which was developed by Urban Design Inc. SUN says neighbors prefer single-family housing rather than commercial development.”

So, my comments have gone from ill-considered bullshitting on the phone to official position statement by my organization. The editorial folks didn’t do anything wrong either. Why shouldn’t they expect the comments made by an organization to their reporter reflect the opinion of the organization?

Well, at least I know what the topic will be at the next public meeting of SUN’s Southside Coalition.

SUN Chair Dick Breland Kicks Off Black History Month In The Post Standard!



photo by Li-Hua Lan of the Syracuse Post-Standard

cross-posted at the SUN On The Rise blog.

Dick Breland, the chairman of SUN’s Board of Directors, was recently featured in the Post- Standard to kick off the paper’s Black History month coverage. This year the paper focuses on local families whose photographs are in a collection of local African-American history, housed at the Beauchamp branch of the Onondaga County Public Library.

Dick is featured in photographs of his time growing up in the 15th ward neighborhood, his service in the Army and from his days working at the General Electric plant, when over 19,000 people labored out at Electronics Park in Liverpool. Dick became one of the first African-Americans to work in management at G.E.

Dick joined SUN when it first started and has served as an officer in both the Southside Coalition and on our Board of Directors. This is his second go-round as the Chair of our Board. Most importantly, Dick is the reason SUN works on financial justice issues, especially the bank discrimination that still has a negative impact on our community.

In the late 1980’s, Dick walked into the SUN office and complained that OnBank had turned him down for a home improvement loan, despite his good income and credit record. That led SUN to investigate the bank’s record in our neighborhood. At the same time that this was happening, OnBank was in discussions to buy out Merchant’s Bank. We discovered that OnBank had the worst record of making loans in our neighborhood, while Merchant’s had a much better record of lending.

SUN organized the Syracuse Community Reinvestment Coalition, a mix of community members like Dick, local business people, church pastors and academics from Syracuse University. The group filed a challenge to the OnBank/Merchants merger and successfully negotiated a five-year Community Reinvestment Agreement with OnBank. OnBank’s lending improved, but near the end of the agreement, OnBank was itself bought up by M & T Bank. SUN has since negotiated two separate lending agreements with M & T Bank. M & T continues to work with SUN today, even hosting seminars on credit issues and home purchase to help improve lending in our community.

When you see Dick Breland, thank him for being one of the pillars of our community, as well as the nicest person you’d ever want to meet.

Separate But Equal Sub-Prime Crises

“Jump up–hold on tight / Can’t trust the promise or a guarantee
‘Cause the man ’round the curve says that he’s never heard / Of you or me”
–Elvis Costello

The issue of sub-prime loans has been around for years. It never entered the pubic consciousness when groups like SUN framed the issue as one of financial justice–a new form of redlining. Looking at Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data supplied annually by the banks, the pattern was obvious in Central N.Y.: good loans for suburbanites, sub-primes for the inner city. It worked out well for everyone, supposedly. Despite the wide gap in home values between city and suburb, sub-prime loans were profitable.

Now we know that many of the sub-prime loans were profitable because of the people lined up at the banks’ back doors–the folks buying up these loans on the secondary market. With an alchemist’s wave of the hand these loans were turned into financial products that were further sliced and diced on Wall Street. Billions of dollars sloshed through our national and international monetary system, all based on a fleeting promise by a family to pay back their original mortgage loan.

SUN has dealt with the impact sub-prime lending has had on our neighborhoods for many years, convincing the city to create a successful mortgage foreclosure counseling program and working with a national coalition of neighborhood groups to negotiate loan repair programs with several large sub-prime lenders: Citifinancial, Ocwen, Chase. SUN has helped hundreds of families keep their homes.

But this is a tale of two sub-prime loan crises. The crisis SUN’s neighborhoods have faced and the one playing itself out in the international monetary system and the media. The local version is called predatory lending. Target families with a valuable asset, but are cash poor. Hook them up with a mortgage refinance loan that gives them a moderate amount of cash to deal with a pressing emergency like a loss of job, medical catrastrophe. The terms are onerous, larded with fees and charges that accrue to the lender immediately. Eventually, the loan will result in default and the the lender can then seize and liquidate the asset: foreclosure. Often the borrower would go through a couple of refinances with the same lender, enough to shake a little more cash from the target until they are bled dry.

The national version of the sub-prime crisis is a lot more sophisticated than our neighborhoods’ fight against loan sharking schemes. There are many more actors involved, all with different agendas. The home is often not a consideration, at least not for the lender. They just want to make more loans, once you buy they are on to the next score. Companies like Countrywide, New Century and Ameriquest had their marching orders. Sell the loans and the money would pour in from the insatiable secondary market. The lenders are like the lab mice in a famous scientific experiment. Trained to press levers that release food and narcotics, in a short time the mice are constantly pressing the drug lever, neglecting even basic nourishment.

So, given all the handwringing in the media and the real crunch to financial markets, how many people are being threatened by foreclosure? There has been a 75% increase in foreclosures between 2006 and 2007. But that number is just a shade over 1% of all mortgage holders in the U.S. 99% of all mortgages are being paid. The tumult is a result of the spectacular ruin to one of America’s newest innovations: the exurb.

Tim Egan writes about the American west on his NY Times blog, and his post The Pools Of Riverside County points out the hard times: “if you want to find some of the highest foreclosure rates in the country, you go the places where exurban America is pushing into farm fields and forests.” George W. Bush carried almost all of the 100 fastest growing counties in America in the 2004 election. The exurb was the distilled essence of the new America: deracinated, auto-dependent sprawl, few public services. A bunch of McMansions plopped down in the middle of old farms or deep in the desert. Now, these boomtowns are home to thousands of vacant houses and undrained pools turning green with algae, breeding mosquitos.

The states with the highest rates of foreclosures are Nevada, California, Michigan and Florida. While Micigan is being hammered by the loss of manufacturing, the other states have been hammered by investors bidding up home prices to astronomic levels–all looking for a killing. 3.4% of the properties in Nevada are in foreclosure–three times the national average.

People seem to be desensitized to pictures of urban decline. SUN neighborhoods on the south and near west sides of Syracuse have borne the brunt of this decline for years. Our neighborhoods lost 25% of its population between the 1990 and 2000 census. SUN neighborhoods make up 15% of the city’s households, yet harbor 45% of the city’s vacant houses. For over a decade, 5% of the properties in our neighborhoods have been vacant and abandoned. But this media-friendly crisis is happening in middle class neighborhoods, neighborhoods with pools for god’s sake!

The national crisis will eventually abate, house prices will come down from their investor-inflated levels. But will we have learned anything? The superficial take on this mess seems to absolve the lenders and their Wall Street enablers, focusing on the personal ethical shortcomings of borrowers–how dare they borrow more than they can afford? But what if the game was rigged to turn out exactly this way? Bust follows boom follows bust ad nauseam. Such is the nature of modern capitalism. The current wave is unusual because the financial sector and its increasingly complex structure bumped up against the current governmental concensus against strict oversight and regulation.

That concensus is rapidly disappearing. The recent turnover in Congress has put Rep. Barney Frank at the head of House Financial Services Committee. His recent editorial in the Boston Globe recognized the crisis as a tale of two cities:
“one aspect of the subprime mortgage crisis that deserves special attention is that it was in large part a natural experiment on the role of regulation. And the results are clear: Reasonable regulation of mortgages by the bank and credit union regulators allowed the market to function in an efficient and constructive way, while mortgages made and sold in the unregulated sector led to the crisis.”

However, once the sub-prime lenders searching for a killing through the secondary market are shaken out of the system by increased regulation, who will take on the predatory lenders of the Rust Belt? They are are still operating below the radar and they never needed the more exotic loan products like interest-only and adjustable rates to fleece poor homeowners struggling with declining wages and the increasing costs of basic needs like energy and health care. The mainstream credit markets have not worked for people in the inner cities, creating the niche now dominated by predatory lending. When the picture on the cover of Newsweek goes back to one of an inner-city duplex, rather than an exurb McMansion with a green pool, will anyone still care?