"Section 3, Not Work for Free"
Public-Housing Residents Protest Forced-Labor Plan

On August 21, 2000 public-housing residents and union members protested the New York City Housing Authority’s plan to force tenants who are not working full-time to do eight hours per month of community service without pay. Various unions, community groups and others walked across the Brooklyn Bridge to NYCHA’s headquarters at 250 Broadway. The rally was attended by mayoral candidates Fernando Ferrer, Mark Green, Peter Vallone, and Alan Hevesi. Jahahara Alkebulan-Ma’at from the Alliance for a Working Economy spoke out against mandated community service as slavery.

"Forcing people to do community service is not fair; the only other people who are forced to do community service are criminals. I want to work," Lower East Side public-housing tenant Jessie rivers told the rally. "I have applied at three different Section 3 sites and all I have gotten is occasional work as a day laborer."

The requirement would apply to public-housing residents who are not working full-time and are not elderly or disabled. Residents who fail to participate would face eviction. Despite opposition from residents and community members, NYCHA’s Fiscal Year 2002 Agency Plan does not broaden the exemptions to the community-service requirements, as has been done in Boston and San Francisco.

Additionally, the plan does not include improvement to the federal Section 3 program, which is supposed to provide job training to NYCHA residents on all federally funded construction sites within public housing. A recent study by Good Old Lower East Side, MFY Legal Services and Columbia Law School found that Jersey City, Baltimore, Atlanta, Oakland, Los Angeles and San Francisco all have successful apprenticeship programs with union locals that employ public-housing residents.

Public-Housing Residents of the Lower East Side organized 150 public-housing residents to join the protest, piling onto buses provided by Rep. Nydia Velazquez and New York LECET. Good Old Lower East Side members Carmen Pabon, Dalia Soto, Jessie Rivers, Lillian Rivera, Debbie Carcano and others educated friends and neighbors about the mandated community service. Gregory Rivas, Justin Calderin, Louis Torres, and Junior Calderin, members of GOLES’ YOUTH STAY group, prepared signs and T-shirts saying "Section 3, Not Work for Free."

Contact: Alliance for a Working Economy; (718) 857-4865.

A version of this story originally appeared in the Good Old Lower East Side newsletter.