Acorn: Yesterday's Tenant Activist, Today's Landlord

Subject: Acorn: Yesterday's Tenant Activist, Today's Landlord
Date: 1/30/2006 4:53:27 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: tenant@tenant.net
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from the NEW YORK TIMES:Yesterday's Tenant Activist, Today's LandlordNew
York Times
January 11, 2005
CITYWIDE

Yesterday's Tenant Activist, Today's Landlord
By DAVID GONZALEZ

Four years ago, dozens of frantic tenants in some dilapidated EastHarlem buildings known as Pleasant East confronted the threat ofeviction by enlisting the help of housing organizers from anationally known activist group.

The organizers taught them thebenefits of direct action, and a strategy of demonstrations, ralliesand meetings saved their homes.People were pumped up and happy. But the joyful strains of "Solidarity Forever" were abruptly silenced last month when theactivists - New York Acorn Housing Company - went from partners in organizing to landlord. The group bought the buildings from the federal government,
which had been managing the foreclosed properties. People who had once marched alongside tenants were now informing them that security and maintenance staff would be halved and a local management office closed.

Many tenants, who pay a fraction of market rents for their subsidized apartments, are angry and said the decisions were made without consulting them. But in contrast to their situation four years ago, when they had little idea how to save their buildings,now they are taking aim at the very people who taught them how to be grass-roots housing warriors.

"We're fighting Acorn with their own weapons," said Carmen Pichardo,a tenant leader and former volunteer with the group, which is formally known as the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. "What is Acorn but an organization of people? I learned a lot from them. They showed me we deserve certain things. So if we do not get certain things now, we will fight them.

"Acorn officials said the turn of events, while unpleasant, was notunexpected. They had faced similar upheavals in other buildings they had bought, but rode out the problems and won over doubters. Still,the current dispute offers a window into the
competing tensions confronting advocates turned landlords.

Acorn is known for its advocacy work for low and moderate-income families nationwide, and its political involvement with the Working Families Party in New York City. Its housing group controls more than 500 apartments in New York, and some of them are home to dedicated volunteer members of the organization, said Ismene Speliotis, who is in charge of housing. "The tension is as a landlord, we have to maintain affordable housing," she said. "But I can't just do good housing and say that's enough. I have an obligation to the institution so our members become city wideleaders. So if I do a bad job with housing, it hurts our organizing.

"At Pleasant East, Acorn's one-time allies now speak bitterly of having been used by the organizers. The buildings, four of them on two different blocks on East 117th and 119th Streets, had a sorry history of neglect over the years. Crime, especially drug dealing,was rampant, and the buildings were broken into regularly. At one point,numerous violations led federal housing officials to conclude that there was little option but to order a complete eviction.

Tenants reached out to Acorn organizers, who had begun to be active in the area, which has increasingly become the target for real estate speculators and yuppies seeking cheaper rents. The campaign that they mounted was ultimately successful, as
federal housing officials took over the building from its private landlord and canceled the eviction plans.

Under the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, armedguards were posted in the buildings, and a local management officewas set up in one of them so residents could make rent payments orrequest repairs.

Acorn, which expressed interest in buying the buildings in 2000,finally bought them in mid-December for $17 million, winning out over many speculators who had been eyeing the properties. The group realized since then that it could not afford to provide armedsecurity, which HUD had paid for from its own budget and not from the building's limited rent rolls. A similar review of maintenance staffled it to be cut in half, although those who remained were enrolledin a union.

Of the 111 apartments that are occupied, 25 of them now receivefederal rent subsidies. The rest of the tenants are paying reduced rents and have to be certified for government housing assistance.

Tenants pay 30 percent of their income, resulting in rents that range from about $300 to, in one case, $24 after subsidies.

"It was not a realistic way to run a building," Ms. Speliotis said, referring to the
staff and guard levels. "The tenants had been lulled into this sense of security and having an on-site office. But it did not make mathematical sense. I told them the numbers did not work. We did not have that luxury.

"She hopes to explain herself to tenants at a meeting next week. She already won over some of them at a recent gathering; they trust her to make good on promises that the building will be safer and better.

Dionisia Agramonte, a tenant, said she thought it was a waste of money to have armed guards on duty when the money would be better put to use rehabilitating apartments.

"Anytime the management changes, there are problems," Ms. Agramontesaid. "Now there will be no more transitions. In time, it will be a benefit to us.

"Ms. Speliotis said that she had hoped tenants would be willing to work with the local precinct so the police could come into buildings and patrol for trespassers, but that tenants refused. She admitted that supporting police patrols was an odd call for her group, which usually champions community power.

"We set up a committee in our Bronx building to work with the police so they could do vertical patrols," she said. "It is not a program in line with Acorn's view of civil rights, but it is a tool we have as a landlord."

This has not gone over well with residents who embraced the group four years ago.

"Humiliation is bad, but betrayal is worse," Ms. Pichardo said.

"They are worse than any landlord, because they used to struggle with us."

As she walks through the neighborhood, fellow tenants approach her, confused about where and how to pay rent or get repairs. Several tenants said they had called the new management office in Yonkers but had yet to have anyone come by and fix broken lights or closets.

The loss of armed security has especially alarmed tenants, who said they have already encountered teenagers drinking and smoking in the stairwell. Ms. Pichardo said the daughters of one neighbor came home recently and encountered a couple having sex in the hallway.

Miguel Ortiz, a musician who lives in one of the buildings, said he had not experienced any problems.

"Not yet," he said. "But it's still early."

Like many of his neighbors, he is unsure what Acorn plans for his building. Not that the group has been invisible.

"I think they are more political than anything else," he said. "We only see them in the newspaper. It's always about political action. That's cool, but we just want to make sure we have a place to live next week."

Politics has been a big part of Rafael Verdejo's life for much of his 68 years. For 27 of those years, he has lived in a six-room apartment, in whose living room he proudly displays his two diplomas and a portrait of Pedro Albizu Campos, the late Puerto Rican Nationalist leader.

Mr. Verdejo, who is retired, now gets by on $1,000 a month. "I do not have a bourgeois mentality," he explained.

His first dealings with Acorn were good. He has since soured on the group, feeling that it did not understand the tenants' concerns during the transition. Maintenance is bad, and so is communication, he said.

"I was always pro-working class," he said. "But when there is no collectivity in class struggle, then I have to criticize the organization. We cannot fool each other."

Maybe Engels was right, he added: Only a revolution will solve the housing crisis.

"He had such a futuristic vision," he said. "When you turn your back on the working class, something is wrong with you."



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