Word: tenants
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Queens. In 1973, when the Federal Government charged racial discrimination, Trump hired the notorious Roy Cohn to defend him, then eventually signed a consent decree. No less vexing was the 1983 controversy at the 1,400-apartment Shore Haven Apartments in Brooklyn, where the Trump organization started charging new tenants $40 to $60 a month for garage fees regardless of whether they had cars. One tenant, Viola Salomone, actually acquired a car and parked it in the unlocked and unattended garage, then found it vandalized. She refused to pay any more. The Trumps cracked down. Said Salomone...
...troublemaker. "I'd go to meetings and get so mad I'd yell and turn the place out," she says. Politicians tried to block her plans, so Gray used a tool no politician can ignore: votes. In 1976 she organized and registered to vote 12,000 public-housing tenants. As chairman of the citywide public-housing board, Gray is now a local political power of the first order. The success at Kenilworth-Parkside hasn't come without struggle. Poverty can % drive out hope, and Gray admits that at the start of the tenant management struggle, "there were nights I cried...
Slowly, attitudes began to change, aided by new tenant rules that Gray admits are neither gentle nor subtle. Example: residents must take turns serving as hall and building captains. "People don't throw trash on the ground when they know it soon will be their turn to pick it up," she says. Tenants can use the day-care center, but only if they are working or looking for work. Residents are expected to take care of their property, which means fixing broken toilets and sinks themselves. One member of each family must take six weeks of training in such subjects...
Conservative black scholar Robert Woodson argues that "people change their behavior in order to stay in Kenilworth-Parkside. It's a class-specific solution in which poor people help themselves." Woodson, whose National Center for Neighborhood Enterprise helps promote tenant management throughout the U.S., says that "the federal and state governments have spent nearly $1 trillion over the past 20 years in a largely failed effort to fight poverty. Now Kimi and others are taking it out of the hands of professionals and giving jobs to tenants...
Gray is the first to admit that tenant management and ownership are not the only antidotes to public housing and welfare, but she insists that her efforts can be duplicated elsewhere. "There are thousands of Kimi Grays in America who are willing to try," she says. Woodson agrees: "Kimi and other leaders are the last best hope for many of these public-housing projects. Tenant managers can't offer guarantees, but they hold great promise. The only thing worse than poverty is accepting the status...