300 Rally to Save Public Housing

By Steven Wishnia

Bearing signs reading "Save Public Housing" and "Mayor Giuliani: Protect Tenants' Rights -- Or Else," about 300 people marched from the Lower East Side to City Hall Sept. 11 to protest federal plans to deregulate public housing.

The marchers, mainly Latino and black public-housing tenants with a smattering of squatters, focused their ire on a deregulation measure sponsored by Rep. Rick Lazio, a Long Island Republican. The bill would repeal the Brooke Amendment, which limits public-housing rents to no more than 30 percent of their income, for all but the poorest tenants; weaken protections against evictions; and expand "demonstration projects" in which local housing authorities could experiment with selling buildings to private owners, requiring unemployed tenants to find jobs or do community service, and setting limits on how long people can live in public housing.

Lower East Side tenant Eddie Lopez, speaking at the City Hall Park rally, called the bill "an act of aggression on the working poor" that "would eliminate affordable housing as we know it." If the city Housing Authority were allowed to sell buildings, he suggested, the projects that line the East River on the Lower East Side would be among the first to go. "Who doesn't want a river view?" he asked, to cries of "That's right!"

A House-Senate conference committee is working out the differences between the Lazio bill and a milder deregulation measure passed by the Senate. The House bill, H.R. 2406, preserves the 30 percent rent cap for tenants making less than 30 percent of the area median income; the Senate bill, S. 1260, retains it for tenants making less than half.

Mayor Giuliani has endorsed the bills. In a July 29 letter to Lazio and Senator Connie Mack (R-Fla.), he urged the conference committee to include the New York City Housing Authority in the demonstration projects. The Mayor said it was "absurd" to think that time limits and rent deregulations "would violate tenant rights and endanger the stability of the city's public housing."

Several elected officials -- Assemblymembers Deborah Glick and Richard Gottfried, City Councilmembers Stanley Michels and Kathryn Freed, State Senator Catherine Abate, Manhattan Borough President Ruth Messinger, and Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden -- attended or sent representatives. However, the demonstration's organizers -- the Lower East Side Coalition to Save Public Housing and Section 8 -- limited speakers to tenants and activists. Bertha McHale of the Riis Houses on Avenue D said the projects' low rents had enabled her to send her children to college.

"The people of the Lower East Side are not going to take this," declared Denise Echevarria, a widowed mother of seven. And Judy Smith of the Upper West Side's Douglass Houses drew laughter when she remarked that the Clinton Administration "doesn't want to give us 50 dollars worth of food stamps, but Dick Morris can pay $200 an hour to suck a prostitute's toes."

Police presence was heavy, with at least 75 officers_including mounted and motorcycle squads -- in the City Hall area.

"They're out to get all of us," said Met Council activist Gloria Sukenick, tying the deregulation bills to attempts to eliminate rent controls. "We've got to fight for all affordable housing."

Co-organizer Margarita Lopez echoed that theme, lambasting Giuliani and calling Housing Authority head Ruben Franco "a traitor" for supporting the bills. Wearing a "The Government Houses Its MISSILES Better Than It Houses Its PEOPLE" T-shirt, she urged project residents, rent-regulated tenants and squatters to stick together: "We must preserve the Lower East Side for low and moderate-income people, multiracial, multicultural, and never discriminating against gays and lesbians."

City Councilmember Adam Clayton Powell IV has introduced a resolution that would put the Council on record opposing the repeal of the Brooke Amendment. The protest's organizers are trying to get a stronger resolution, opposing deregulating the Housing Authority, introduced, said activist Janet Freedman.