Northattan

What would you do with a million dollars? That’s the question four New York City Council members are asking their residents. The money’s in the bank; now they just need to figure out how to spend it.

Protestors have taken over Wall Street. Photo by Mayeta Clark/Northattan.

For three weeks now, protesters have filled the area around Wall Street, voicing their anger at the state of the U.S. economy. One theater troupe from Inwood and Washington Heights traveled to Wall Street to add their voices to the mix. But protest wasn’t the only thing on their minds: Their aim was to add some drama to proceedings. Nadine Natour reports

Northattan’s multimedia team traveled to the heart of the protests at Wall Street to gauge the mood after three weeks on the street.

Photos and Video by Mayeta Clark/Northattan

Youthbuild Program Director Wendell Moore speaks to a group of students. Photo by Ben Teitelbaum/Northattan.

Youthbuild is a nonprofit organization that helps low-income high school dropouts succeed. It gives 16- to 24-year-olds construction training, and a second-chance at an education. Three-quarters of its funding comes from the federal government, and recent cuts mean three New York-area Youthbuilds have closed. East Harlem is where the organization started more than 30 years ago, and now that chapter’s future isn’t clear either.

Ben Teitelbaum reports.

Obama magnets once sold like hotcakes in Harlem. How about today? Photo by Tomos Lewis/Northattan.

Presidential memorabilia, some say, is as old as the presidency itself. And when Barack Obama won the election in 2008, the demand for Obama souvenirs shot through the roof. Especially in Harlem. Today, a few merchants still peddle Obama-themed wares here. But the U.S. economy has declined, and the president’s popularity has followed suit. Sales of Obama merchandise have also slumped, and its vendors have fallen on hard times.

Tomos Lewis reports.

Weston United's mission statement painted on one of Gallery M's walls. Photo by Linda Abi Assi/Northattan.

Raju Ratti used to be one of the 36,000 people who are homeless in New York City. He was also among the more than half of them who are mentally ill.

But a year ago, he was admitted to Weston United, a nonprofit organization that provides housing to people who are homeless and mentally ill. He started out in supportive housing with 24-hour coverage, but he now has a job, acting as a peer leader, and he has moved on to more independent living.

In Weston United’s newsletter of April 2010, he wrote: “I am not alone. I used to think I was. This was because I am guilty of prejudice.”

Weston United provides both transitional and permanent housing programs, as well as residential services, job training and mental health services and houses about 150 people. It’s one of many providers all over New York City, but according to its CEO, Jean Newburg, it’s the only organization in Harlem that is grassroots. “We are from Harlem and by Harlem,” she says.

Since its founding in 1985 by members of St. Phillip’s Episcopal Church and Harlem Hospital, Weston United has expanded to several buildings and programs scattered all over Northern Manhattan and the Bronx. A clubhouse, Club United, was recently put in place at West 125^th street and St. Nicholas Avenue. Members, in addition to gaining social skills, receive help in securing government benefits, housing, case management and educational advancement, along with medical and psychiatric care.

Newburg says the clubhouse concept is an international model, originally started by Fountain House, a nonprofit based in New York that also targets the mentally ill. Weston United’s programs have long been following the clubhouse example- its first clubhouse, Casita Unida, is in Spanish Harlem. But the state of New York is now embracing a new model, called P.R.O.S (Personalized Recovery Oriented Services). Newburg says it is a more “educational and person-centered model” with different levels of intensity as patients’ needs change. “We’ll also have a clinical treatment component by next summer, so every member of the P.R.O.S., which we have renamed PROsper Academy, can have access to services from a psychiatrist and nurse,” she says.

Mahamadou Savane's collages are currently displayed at Gallery M, where some members of Weston United volunteer. Photos by Linda Abi Assi/Northattan.

Weston United is celebrating is 25^th anniversary this year, but despite recent changes, its future is uncertain. “We had rollbacks of state contracts, our Medicaid rate was reduced, then there was another cut on top of that. We’ve had to tighten our belts,” says Newburg. One program that “has been under-siege from every side” is Gallery M, Weston United’s art gallery on 135^th street.

Last week, its latest exhibit displayed paintings and collages by Willie Torbert, an African-American contemporary artist, and Mahamadou Savane, a Senegalese artist who currently lives in the Bronx.

Newburg says that for many years, Weston United had a contract with the NYC Department of Mental Health, which allowed the gallery to employ 12 members of Weston United on a part-time basis at Gallery M and its Visionary bookstore. “The city of New York canceled our contract in June,” she says, “and members who were receiving minimum wage for their employment are now volunteering their time.” Gallery M was also asked to sign a costly lease after a new owner took control of the building.

Newburg says Weston United is currently looking for a sponsorship for the program, by mobilizing what she likes to call the “Harlem Cultural Connection.”  When it opened in 1986, Gallery M was the only small community arts gallery in the neighborhood. Now that it’s in danger of closing its doors, Newburg hopes the community will in turn chip in to help save it.

Along St. Nicholas Avenue and 181^st Street in Washington Heights, street vendors and their folding tables pack the sidewalks, offering everything from stuffed animals to designer watches, and pungent perfumes.

A shopper stops to check out some bracelets on a crowded sidewalk. Photo by Brett Teal/Northattan.

The vendors can satisfy almost any shopper’s needs, but not everyone is happy with their presence.  Recently, they have been targeted by local businesses that think there are too many in the neighborhood and that the stands have an unfair advantage.

“They’re selling items that we have, but cheaper,” said Alex Min, who manages a sports apparel store, FootCo, on the corner of 181^st Street and St. Nicholas Avenue.

For example, Min’s shop sells gloves for $20 and beanies for $10, but a vendor directly in front of FootCo sells similar items for $5 each.

New York City requires everyone selling merchandise such as clothing, dolls or watches to have a license.  But the city grants only 853 licenses to nonveterans and has a waitlist of thousands, forcing many vendors to operate illegally.

Without a permit, vendors escape paying a $200 yearly license fee and they don’t have to pay taxes. If they’re caught selling without a license, they can be arrested and their merchandise can be confiscated.

One unlicensed vendor, Zouhair Hoteite, has been selling hookahs and perfume in Washington Heights without a permit since 1988.  Last week he was arrested and this week he has already received two tickets.

“You’ve just got accept it,” Hoteite, who earlier in the year was fined $1,300, said.

“I can’t pay tickets, I don’t have money, my rent is $1,300 and I have a wife and kids,” he added.

Hoteite said he explained this to the judge, who dismissed the ticket.  But he now has two more to deal with and knows it will happen again.

Another table on St. Nicholas Avenue pushed up against a fire hydrant is filled with eclectic belt buckles. Photo by Brett Teal/Northattan.

Many street salespeople have flocked to Northern Manhattan, and as many as 40 operate near St. Nicholas Avenue, according to the Washington Heights Business Improvement District.

“I mean it’s really crazy to have three to four tables,” Nash Siddiquv said about the vendors in front of his 181^st Street T Mobile store.

The cluster of tables often block the building’s entrance, touching up against the windows and leaving a narrow path.

“There’s only two feet in between for people to walk,” Siddiquv said.  “People complain, they’re in front of the door and they can’t get in.”

He said he would like the number of vendors, or at least their tables, lowered in the future.  That wish may be closer to becoming reality.

The Washington Heights Business Improvement District, which oversees the area around 181^st Street from Amsterdam Avenue to Fort Washington Avenue, has been taking in feedback from residents and local merchants in hopes of creating a solution to the vendor problem early next year.

“It’s a very important issue for Washington Heights,” Angelina Ramirez, its executive director, said, adding that vendors, “put a strain for maintaining cleanliness on the sidewalk and they create traffic.”

All of the area’s vendors will be surveyed to see who is operating without a permit and Ramirez hopes to find a group to represent the street salespeople to create a “win-win” solution.

“The economy the way it is, we just don’t want to blindly take this livelihood away from people who make their money by selling,” Ramirez said.

New York City Councilmember Ydanis Rodriguez, who represents Washington Heights, said he doesn’t want to outright get rid of vendors, but understands the complaints.

Zouhair Hateite's colorful goods include everything from tobacco smoking accessories to perfume. Photo by Brett Teal/Northattan.

“We have to support our small businesses that pay taxes,” Rodriguez said.  “We need to be sure our streets are clean and pedestrians have the space to walk.”

Rodriguez said one possible solution would be to create a plaza specifically for street vendors where they wouldn’t clog the sidewalks.  The salespeople would be able to purchase a temporary permit allowing them to set up their tables for the day.

This would be modeled after the street vendor market on 175^th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, which was created in 1994.

Rodriguez and Ramirez have been in talks with the Department of Transportation to explore the possibility of a new location.

But vendor Zouhair Hoteite said he would rather risk being arrested than selling in a plaza.

“There’s no money, people don’t go there,” Hoteite said.  “There’s no traffic.”

He said even if another plaza opened he would continue selling on St. Nicholas Avenue and 181^st Street.

The banners and billboards are purple. So are the t-shirts and hats worn by men who catch passersby outside MetroPCS stories on the business thoroughfares of Broadway and St. Nicholas Street in Washington Heights. And the purple seems to multiply every week. One local wag calls MetroPCS the neighborhood’s new McDonald’s: they’re inexpensive, and there is a store on nearly every block.

Across the nation, cell phone service providers AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-mobile are household names. But in parts of New York City like northern Manhattan and the Bronx, the fifth largest cell phone service provider in the United States is gaining ground on its better-known rivals.  For a fixed monthly rate, MetroPCS offers unlimited calls, texts and Internet service.  Service is purchased month-to-month, without the long-term contracts that other companies require. Like other providers cell phones are sold separately, but the no-contract policy is rapidly making MetroPCS an attractive option for people with tight budgets.

MetroPCS launched its first market in South Florida in 2002. Adam Bree, the New York region director of marketing for MetroPCS, says after South Florida and other successful starts in markets like Philadelphia and San Francisco, New York was the logical next step. The company came to the city just two years ago.

“It’s very straightforward and, it’s a service that was long overdue in a market like New York,” said Bree.

In New York, late payment fees and contract breaks from traditional cell phone service can present unexpected and costly expenses for residents in communities like Washington Heights, where many people work in low-income jobs and live pay check to pay check.

Near 161^st Street and Broadway, Saul Vega says the shop where he works, like most in the area, opened in February of last year.

“When we first started, not everybody knew what MetroPCS was all about. [Some] traveled back and forth between Miami and New York, so they kind of knew. But now, it’s all over the state and all over the city and every company knows who MetroPCS is now,” said Vega.

Today there are over a hundred locations that provide MetroPCS service in the five boroughs of New York.  The only other provider that comes close to that number is Verizon, with 60 locations.  The numbers include official stores, as well as third-party retailers, or independent storefronts that provide technical and billing support for the providers. A map on MetroPCS.com shows stores clustered mostly in Washington Heights, the Bronx and Jackson Heights, where most of the residents are immigrants from places like the Dominican Republic or Colombia.

For generations, calling home meant going to a bodega and purchasing a calling card, a tedious effort, with 10-digit pin numbers, automated messages and several options that must be selected before any ringing can occur. MetroPCS service replaces the need for calling cards, and thus appeals to a demographic that wants inexpensive, pay-as-you-go phone service to foreign countries.

“MetroPCS has their international rate plans absolutely for free for house phones, unlimited. So it has been a great service to the community,” said Ricky Balboa, one of the employees at a bustling store on West 181^st Street.

Sales pitch aside, Balboa is referring to a $60 fixed monthly plan that allows those away from their home to make international phone calls to land lines.

While appealing and a first of its kind, this service can be limiting. Cell phones are increasingly taking over in places like Africa and the Caribbean, where landline telephone service is poor.  So if a MetroPCS customer wants to reach loved ones with cell phones, calling cards may remain the preferred way to pay for international phone calls.

David Samberg, a spokesperson for Verizon Wireless in New York contends that pre-paid plans are nothing new. Though Verizon relies mostly on contracts, pre-paid services have always been an option for his customers. He says that the people who want pre-paid wireless services are those with little credit or those who prescribe to a cash culture, which aligns with some of the immigrant communities in Northern Manhattan and the Bronx.

Either way, MetroPCS has been remarkably profitable.

The Wall Street Journal reported in August that MetroPCS’ earnings nearly tripled in their second quarter report. MetroPCS added another 223,000 net customers.

Representatives from MetroPCS and Verizon say regional numbers are unavailable, but according to their company filings, MetroPCS has about 8 million customers in the United States, in comparison to Verizon’s 90 million.

The numbers put the local hype into perspective: MetroPCS still has a long way to go.

After a one-year absence, Christmas lights are back on Harlem’s 125^th Street, bringing some holiday spirit to a neighborhood hit hard by the recent economic recession.

An estimated crowd of 300 people gathered in front of the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Building in freezing weather Tuesday night as Telemundo correspondent Isolda Pequero hosted a music and dance program preceding the lighting ceremony.

“We usually have to travel far to see these kind of things going on,” said Harlem resident Enera Boli, who brought her two children.   “We go to Washington Square or 42nd Street. But Harlem is growing and we are more together and we would like to see more of these things going on,” said Boli.

The 125th Street Business Improvement District, a local business advocacy group, launched the holiday lighting program in 1994 when Harlem was in midst of an economic renaissance.

But last year due to budget constraints, the group suspended putting up the holiday lights, breaking a 15-year tradition.

Telemundo correspondent Isolda Pequero hosted the music and dance program preceding the lighting ceremony. Photo by Martin Markovits/Northattan

Earlier this year, 125^th Street Business Improvement District CEO Barbara Askins, decided to reach out to the community to raise money for the event, after the group considered suspending it for the second year in a row.

“That’s when we decided to talk to the community so people could understand what was happening and the best way to do it was for all of us to come together,” said Askins.

Harlem vocal group, Renaissance honors U.S. troops overseas. Photo by Martin Markovits/Northattan

Askins teamed up with Harlem community boards 9, 10, and 11 to hold fundraisers, and send out mailers which raised the necessary $60,000 to put the lights back on.

Holiday lights shine on 125th Street. Photo by Martin Markovits/Northattan

Donnette Dunbar, a media consultant at Dash Media, which helped promote the event, believes the lights will not only lift the spirits of the Harlem community, but also help local businesses hurt by the weak economy. ,

“Once the lights are on, it encourages the people to actually shop and purchase and be in the mood for the holidays.” Said Dunbar.

The lights will shine on 125^th Street nightly until the end of the first week of January.

Cars pass under the holiday lights on 125th Street. Photo by Martin Markovits/Northattan

A 'Building Available' hangs over the church's entrance. Photo by Kim Chakanetsa/Northattan

Bernard Smith arrived at Harlem’s Mount Moriah Church on Nov. 22, as he had done for the past 20 years. But that week, for the first time, the church’s wooden doors were locked. A notice pasted onto the door said the church’s parishioners would no longer meet at the location where they had gathered for 76 years.

The church was out of money to keep its building. And so, Mount Moriah joined a grim litany of churches across Harlem which have been forced to close in the past three years.

Mount Moriah was a prosperous church. From the late ’60s up until the ’90s, the church arranged regular trips abroad for members to raise money. Puerto Rico, Israel and Canada were some of the places visited. In 1996, the church choir traveled to Brazil where it produced a music CD called “Harlem Sunday.” We did well with it,” recalled Pastor Edward Earl Johnson, who has led the church for the past 35 years.

Through an arrangement with a local agency, the church also says it received up to 300 tourists every Sunday and a donation.  But by the mid 2000s, soaring maintenance costs made it difficult for the church to maintain its upkeep of the handsome Roman Gothic building.

“It was a dwindling congregation,” said Rob Merker of Merker Advisory Services, which owns the property.  Although the church maintained that it had a congregation of 500, Merker disputed the size of the congregation. “It was about 30 to 40 over 70,” he said. Regardless of these disputed attendance figures, the real issue lay in the financial figures.

In 2005, according to Pastor Johnson, Merker, through RLB 2050 Funding, became the mortgage holder after he loaned the church money. Documents later filed with the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York show  that nearly $1.4 million was due Nov. 6, 2006.  On Feb. 16, 2007, after RLB did not receive the full amount due under the agreement RLB took action against Mount Moriah.

What followed between 2007 and 2010 were various attempts at settlement and court proceedings. As of Aug. 3, 2009, the church was said to owe $2,848,617.32, and it declared bankruptcy on March 9 this year.  RLB  foreclosed on the property, seizing it in November.

A sign directing members to an alternative service location is pasted on the church's front doors. Photo by Kim Chakanetsa/Northattan

The shuttering of the church did not come as a complete surprise to all congregants. A member who identified himself as Ozzie said that while he knew of the church’s difficulties, which “had been going on for a little while, I thought we were doing fine.” The final closure of the church caught him unawares, though; he’s the church’s sound engineer, and the changed locks meant that he was unable to retrieve his musical equipment.

For Smith, the closure was unexpected. “My wife started here and she passed away. I kept coming. This is my home. This is where I found the Lord. I put my pot and tithe and all that.” Looking at the bolted doors, Smith added, “When you are closing God’s houses, something wrong.”

God’s house had not completely closed down — that Sunday Mount Moriah’s congregants gathered in a second-floor space in the National Black Theatre, a few blocks down from the church. The mood was surprisingly optimistic. Addressing his displaced congregants, Pastor Johnson said: “Don’t worry about the negative stuff.  Everyone must go through some battles. Victory is on its way.”  Alluding to the difficult environment facing churches in Harlem he said: “Mount Moriah is not the only church in Harlem going through trouble.”

Among some of the churches in Harlem that have closed down in the past three years are Little Flower Baptist Church, Our Lady Queen of Angels Church and Greater Calvary Baptist Church. Johnson says that the majority of his congregation wants to return to 2050 Fifth Ave. “I am trying to find financing. I am hopeful that in the week to come it will come through,” said Johnson.

The Roman Gothic building building was constructed circa 1867. Photo by Kim Chakanetsa/Northattan

The “Welcome to Mount Moriah” sign that previously stood over the church’s wooden doors has been painted over and a replaced with a prominent “Building Available” sign. “The sign may be painted on but it is still Mount Moriah,” Johnson said.  It is uncertain how long it will stay that way. Merker is hoping to sell the building to another church rather than to another real estate developer. Equally uncertain are where Mount Moriah’s congregation will go from here.

On this particular Sunday morning Pastor Johnson took in his new surroundings and was upbeat: “It’s not 2050 but its good enough,” he said to which several congregants responded with a resounding “Amen!”