Harry, a broker at Senator Realty, was horrified when he walked into the two-story house occupied by Queens resident, Anne Perez and two other families

“Nothing was up to code when we got the apartment,” Harry said. “The previous owner had divided a one-family house into three apartments. They’d taken the boiler out of the basement and put three of them in the kitchens, next to the stoves. They could have blown up the whole block.”

Foreclosures on multi-family homes have risen in Queens. Without landlords, renters have been forced to live without basic utilities for weeks.

Washington Mutual, the mortgage owner, foreclosed on the property August 23rd. Senator Realty bought the building three weeks later, but during the transaction, Perez and the other family had gone without gas, electricity or water.

Perez’ situation has become a common one in Jamaica, Queens. A survey compiled by New York State Senator Jeffrey D. Klein has shown that property owners have filed foreclosures on more than 800 properties from July 2006 to July 2007. More than half of these properties had been designed for multi-family use.

Florence Fisher, co-op president and chairman of Queens Community Board 8’s Building and Housing Committee said that builders had not prepared for a plateau in the housing market.

“They came in to make a profit,” she said. “They hacked these apartments out of single-family homes thinking that they could make a profit on the side.”

“They weren’t in this to be landlords,” Fisher said.

Foreclosed properties, sold below market rate, have been acquired by companies like Senator Realty. But brokers have discovered that tenants are unwilling to move despite the lack of services.

“This is New York and prices keep going up,” said Fisher. “ People stay in the apartments because they can’t afford to live anywhere else.”

But concerns among real estate investors have centered on the need to make a profit.

Harry, who refused to give his name due to the sensitivity of this topic, has tried to bring Perez’s building up to code but she and her neighbors have to move first.

They have not made any attempts to leave their apartments.

“It’s a nightmare,” Harry said. “This has nothing to do with sub-prime: we’re trying to do right by these people.”

Though Fisher has fielded calls from angry renters anxious for services usually taken for granted, city housing spokesman, Seth Donlin, downplayed the foreclosures’ effect on renters.

“We’re sensitive to how this affects homeowners,” he said. “But the truth is that renters don’t really lose anything.”

Donlin has not met Perez, a woman who has lived in an unsafe apartment and may ultimately be evicted in order to bring the property up to code. He has never met the woman who may lose her home.

Highland Avenue reeked of red curries, sugar-crusted gulab jamun desserts and frosted Asian fruit drinks called lassis served in shallow white styrofoam cups but by three in the afternoon, the smell of 99 proof whiskey had sunk into the street in front of the Highland Irish Inn.

A pair of pockmarked doors marred by years of fights, angry outbursts and layers of brown paint separated a population of turban-clad, sari-wearing, Bengali-speaking immigrants from the four elderly African-Americans who have created a time capsule of 1970’s New York in blackface.

“We ain’t Irish, baby” laughed Anna Marie Scott, the Highland Irish Inn’s bartender. “The owner and his kids are, but that’s it.”

Two elderly couples sipped bourbon under a washed-out photo of owner Marty Brown as the sun began to set. Brown, an Irish immigrant, has owned the bar for decades. He has become almost invisible there except for his photograph.

“He comes in from 6am to 8am and then he’s gone,” Scott said.
“He’s a really nice guy and you don’t find too many nice Irishmen, you know what I mean?”

An older African-American man everyone called Eddie, cocked his hat and stared at a glass of Jim Beam through the web of his fingers. He had just played the lottery and lost

“I would have had five thousand dollars if it’d come up straight,” he complained to no one in particular. “Five thousand’s not a lot but it sure would’ve made me feel good.”

The heavily made-up woman who sat next to him sipped a vodka tonic careful not to waste a drop. She avoided eye contact with Eddie and chose to stare at the flat screen television across the bar where Steve Martin’s “The Jerk” played in silence.

“Hey Eddie,” croaked a man seated near the leaky sink in the back of the bar. “You ever heard of the bird of paradise?”

The woman watching television stopped to look back at the man. Ice melted and clinked in her glass.

The man got up from his barstool and took a swig of brown liquid before he placed his hand on Eddie’s shoulder.

“It means that all good things will come to you in life,” he said. “I
I hope you get all the best in life, man.”

He and Eddie shared a silent smile before the door swung open and rattled the photos, white balloons and tinsel that passed for Christmas decorations. An African-American man in paint-covered jeans too short for his long legs pulled a hand through his massive gray afro.

As he walked to the back of the bar, Anna-Marie began yelling.

“No, man! No!”

Everyone seated at the bar froze with shock.

“You need to get out, now!” she wailed.

The afro-man stopped in his tracks looking confused.

“Can’t I just use the bathroom?” he asked.

The man who spoke about the “bird of paradise” raised a gold-ringed hand and gestured to the door.

“The lady said that you have to leave,” he said. “Now go.”

The man with the afro lingered for a moment before he turned to leave. The little crowd laughed as the door slammed shut.

“He’s strung out on that crack,” Anna-Marie said pouring Eddie a drink. “The last time I let him use the bathroom he just messed it up so bad that now I only let my friends and people I know use it,” she said winking to the foursome at the bar.

Just then, the song “Tell It Like It Is” came on the jukebox.
The man with the ringed fingers reached out to the woman next to them. He held her close as they danced slow.

Traffic along Union Turnpike, which cut Kew Gardens and Kew Gardens Hills into two, virtually indistinguishable neighborhoods buzzed quietly while shop owners and passersby baked in the afternoon sunlight. With less than a week before the November 6th elections, the North and South sides of the turnpike, lined by Chinese restaurants, take-out sushi joints, storefront tax services and liquor stores were as they had always been: colorless; bland; and now, strangely devoid of red, white and blue posters riddled with the stars, stripes, perfectly-coiffed hairdos and capped teeth that have become hallmarks of the American political campaign.

Even hoary political warhorses seemed ambivalent about an election in which Republicans are challenging four Democratic incumbents for judgeships in both the 4th Municipal Court and the 11th Judicial District of the State Supreme Court
“This is an off year,” said Phillip Ragusa, Chairman of the Queens County Republican Party.

Ragusa and the Queens County Republican Party have decided to let the elections ride. Instead of actively campaigning for the judicial candidates, Ragusa threw a party to bring more of the area’s 15,870 Asian Americans into the Republican fold.

The event, which drew over 300 people including Republican Senator Frank Padavan and raised more than $30,000 for the party, introduced Queens’ overwhelmingly democratic Asian-American community to rising stars among the Republican set, among them, District Leader Peter Koo and Carolyn Chen Ming, a prominent organizer in the borough’s GOP.

“We’ve had a strong relationship with all members of the Asian-American community for years,” said Senator Padavan. “They voted for me and I’m a Republican.”

John Wang, executive director of the Asian-American Business Development Center doubted the truth of Senator Padavan’s statements.

“I’m not sure about the number of Asian-Americans participating in the Republican committee,” Wang said. “But in any event, there are still more Asian-American democrats in Queens than Republicans.”

More than 63 percent of registered voters in Queens were listed as Democrats in the last United States Census. Only 14.3 percent self-identified as Republicans.

A party foot soldier, Ragusa said that Asian-Americans in Queens have the same values as Republicans and, when faced with a choice, would support the party’s platform: lower taxes; less government involvement; family values; and good schools. Together with Peter Koo, Carolyn Chen Meng and party stalwart Meilin Tan, formerly vice-president of the Queens County Republican Party, Ragusa planned to organize outreach to Asian-Americans in Queens. Regrettably, Koo has been out of the country for the last few weeks; Chen Meng has been unavailable by phone; and he has not spoken to Tan since he supported Peter Koo against her in the last District Leader election.

Undaunted, Ragusa has arranged to speak at a Republican
Fundraiser in Flushing tomorrow night where he’ll try to
Build financial support for candidates in the 2008 and 2009 elections.

“We’ve got two seats in the Senate and we’re trying to get a third,” he said.

Queens has not had much in common with Harlem since the 17th century, when both had been buried in the wilderness. Now that St. Johns University has leased a private building for student housing, the area has become a scene of protests, picketing and civil disobedience talk reminiscent of Morningside Heights.

“We protested outside of St. Johns on Sunday,” said Queens resident Romaine Johnson. “And we’ll continue to protest for as long as it takes.”

Like poor African-Americans in Harlem, relatively well-off homeowners have discovered that universities have the money and clout to build what they want where they want. And nobody can stop them.

“They’ve got more money and a law school full of lawyers,” said Martha Taylor, Vice Chair of Queens Community Board 8.

“There is nothing we can do.”

St. Johns’ had leased six-story dormitory adjacent to Henley Road to provide off-campus housing for over 400 students. The ten-year, renewable lease has allowed school administrators to deny that they have built any new structures in the overcrowded neighborhood. Instead, the school has let developers tear down properties in the area while they rent the finished structures.

Residents have protested against the lease since the plan had been discovered this past Fall. Taylor and the board have argued that more bodies will strain the area’s resources but those arguments have not gone farther than the Jewish Community Social Center in Hollis where the board meets once a month.

“We’ve got low water pressure. It’s hard to find parking. And now we’ve got to deal with 400 college students,” Taylor said, as she shook her head in frustration.

The community has mobilized under Johnson, Taylor and a host of civic organizations to stop the dorm from being finished. But Joseph Sciame, vice president of community relations for St. Johns, said that the residents have buried their heads in the sand.

“Take a look around you,” he said. “This isn’t just happening in Queens. It’s happening all around New York. “

“These people can try to ignore it but you can’t stop development.”

Sciame said that the new development would create jobs and improve residents’ quality of life. But not even experts have been able to say conclusively whether or not university building projects have provided any real benefits.

“It all comes down to values,” said Janet Foster, associate director of urban planning and historic preservation at Columbia University. “The trash may be picked up on time, but that doesn’t mean that a new dormitory is for the greater good of the community.”

The community board has written letters to Mayor Bloomberg. Borough president Helen Marshall had visited the site in person. But, despite their efforts, construction has continued.

“We are appalled by the stunts the university has pulled,” said
Community Board chairman, Alvin Warshaviak. “And we will stand behind the residents 100 percent.”

Later in the meeting, Warshaviak asked Congressman David Weprin’s representative to the board if the Congressman would help them stop the new dorm.

“The congressman is committed to the people of this community,” the aide said. He then disappeared into the crowd.

Neither Warshaviak nor Taylor has publicly admitted defeat. They have continued to support protests against the development while they appeal to Queens’ elected officials.

Joe Schiame, reclined on a chair in the front row with his arms folded against the diamond-encrusted SJ pin on his lapel as he listened to Warshaviak’s speech.

“It’s not so bad,” he said later. “I was expecting this to be a lot worse.”

Columbia Students Protest Noose Found at TC

A couple of weeks ago, an Iranian-American journalist asked me to articulate my thoughts about Jena and race in the US.

“Don’t you feel that the African-American community is legitimately disturbed by the nooses,” she asked.

I laughed long, hard and somewhat bitterly before giving her my two-cents.

“The words “African-American’ and ‘community’ shouldn’t be in the same sentence together,” I said.

She was taken aback.

“But, what about the legacy of Dr. King and Malcolm X?”

Then it struck me: even reporters from half a world away expect African-Americas to join together in a noble show against discrimination.

Nooses have been re-introduced as symbols of oppression post-Jena. Lynching had been popular during Jim Crow but with the advent of the Civil Rights Era, the practice had fallen out of vogue. It was easier and less conspicuous to shoot someone, burn a cross on their property or blow up a church. Lynching never left the public lexicon but talk about the “truly disadvantaged”, urban violence and glass ceilings became more prominent.

Now that Dr. Madonna Constantine’s noose has appeared, the social issues that have been part of the ongoing discussion about race for the last 30 years have seemingly disappeared. Everyone’s focused on the symbol: nobody asks what it represents in this context or if it represents anything anymore.

Dr. Constantine is angry. In a prepared statement, she thanked her family and community for their support in the wake of this “unbelievably vile incident” and urged students and faculty “to stay strong in the face of such a blatant act of racism”. But with the focus so fine tuned on Columbia the casual, day-to-day slights and prejudices felt by African-Americans, homosexuals, women and any other group categorized as a “minority” disappears.

Jena is newsworthy; Constantine’s noose is newsworthy. I still can’t get a cab in New York City.

A Columbia University student carrying a placard reading “We all live in Jena” made the front page of the Metro this morning. I don’t know about that. Somebody at Columbia was at least familiar with the history of lynching and cognizant of the effect that hanging a noose on a high-profile African-American’s door would have. Does that mean that we live in Jena or does that mean that Jena lives in us?

In a written statement, Teachers College President Susan Furhman, said that the community would gather to talk about the issue. The meeting, held yesterday at 3:30PM was closed to the media as well as faculty and students outside of Columbia’s Teacher’s College.

After the Ahmendinijad debacle, President Lee Bollinger, may have decided to pull the wagons tight on this one. Janice Robinson, executive director of Bollinger’s Office of Diversity and Community has not returned phone calls. John De Angelis, Columbia’s chief of public safety was silent on the happenings at yesterday’s meeting. Even Kecia Brown, Assistant Director of Multicultural Affairs and advisor to Columbia’s Black Student Organization has yet to return a call. So, here we are with a noose, an angry mob and no dialog on what kind of thinking precipitates a hate crime.

The world will get past Constantine’s noose. She’ll continue teaching: she may even get to publish a book about the experience. But it’ll go away and the public will have to wait for another chance to march together in lock-step.

For now, the NYC cabs still pass me by.