Something is Rotten in the Neighborhood of East Harlem

Restaurant owners in East Harlem say that rain can be hazardous for their business. The issue is that the sewers are not properly maintained, and this causes them to flood and back up when it rains on major streets.

Orlando Plaza, owner of Camaradas El Barrio, says that he has had an ongoing problem with a sewage back up that occurs below the building that houses his restaurant. Since he opened seven years ago, he noticed the pungent smell of raw sewage that would emanate from the back of his restaurant every so often.

“We call it the mystery smell,” says Plaza. “Who’s going to want to sit down and pay ‘x’ amount of money for that kind of smell?”

Kartik Chandran, an assistant professor at the Department of Earth and Environmental Engineering at Columbia University, says that the root cause of flooding is the combined sewer system that New York City is built on. This means that both rainwater and sewage together are conveyed through the same pipes.

“During times of severe rain it’s a big problem,” says Chandran. “This is a problem where the sewer capacity is exceeded. It happens quite often.” When the capacity is exceeded, water can’t be conveyed quickly enough and the streets flood, according to him.

East Harlem’s problem with flooding might be comparatively more severe than the rest of the city because parts of it are on low-lying land, Chandran says. “I can see the streets going down towards the East River,” he says.

However, for Plaza, it’s emblematic of the city’s disregard for poorer neighborhoods like East Harlem, which he why he never contacted them in trying to solve his problem.

“That the sewage problem doesn’t receive the attention it should from the city agencies doesn’t surprise me,” he says. “That’s always the way it’s been in this neighborhood.”

iFFY The Badman

When speaking of East Harlem-bred musicians, names like Tito Puente and Celia Cruz come to mind. The pioneers of the rich Afro-Latino, mambo and salsa musical genres that have helped shape the area’s music scene today are immortalized through murals and street signs all around the neighborhood. But as East Harlem has evolved, through the wave of cultural and economic change, so has the definition of what an East Harlem musician is supposed to sound like.

Meet iFFY The Badman, a singer and songwriter of pop and soul influenced punk music who is a walking representation of that change.  After moving to East Harlem at 12 years old, his deep Rock and Roll influences clashed with El Barrio’s Afro-Latino culture, and his musical identity has made him stand out from East Harlem’s current musicians. Despite being recently signed to Universal Republic records, gaining his neighborhood’s support for his different sound has been a challenge, one that he has chosen to use as motivation to stick to his guns.

As he performs for the first time in New York City, iFFY The Badman provides a glimpse into how it feels to represent something different than the norm.

The Ups and Downs of Selling Leather Jackets

Abraham Mussafi, an Israeli turned New Yorker, has been making and selling leather jackets and other leather products, for the last few decades. Before he started selling leather products, he was the owner of a clothing store. He decided to move to selling leather products because he found that selling clothes wasn’t fulfilling enough.

After decades of experience selling leather products, Mussafi says the market has changed quite a lot in the last few years. He explains why he thinks that customers in East Harlem are no longer buying luxury products like leather jackets as much as they used to a few years ago.

Click on the play button below to hear Mussafi’s thoughts on the leather jacket business.

[audio:http://cdn.journalism.cuny.edu/blogs.dir/383/files/2011/11/111105_Grover_LeatherStore.mp3|titles=111105_Grover_LeatherStore]

Building Futures In East Harlem

In East Harlem, youth violence, especially gun-related crimes, have been a hot topic of conversation for the past several months. From the broad daylight shooting on 122nd Street and Third Avenue in late September to the many deadly gang-related shootings this summer, the violence among youth has put the neighborhood on edge.

YAPH has been on 118th Street for nearly 33 years. (Photo: Sarah M. Kazadi)

Violence among youth is nothing new, but the recent surge in youth gun-related crimes have shed new light on the issue. From local elected officials implementing task forces to non-profit organizations focusing on youth initiatives, the community is taking various approaches to grappling with this pertinent issue.

One of those youth-focused organizations is East Harlem-based Youth Action Programs & Homes, Inc, part of YouthBuild Americorps. For nearly 33 years, the organization has used construction and community development projects to give youth members practical skills and leadership abilities, as well as presenting an alternative to the streets. Most of the young people in the program come without high-school diplomas and earn a GED at the completion of the 10-month course. All around East Harlem, the program’s youth members have helped build various affordable housing developments and buildings, keeping busy and out of the evident trouble that permeates the streets they work on daily.

Below is staff member Jacqueline Mason-Francis, speaking about YAPH and its role in the East Harlem community.

About Youth Action Programs & Homes, Inc. by smkazadi

Slide Show: One of the Last of the East Harlem Community Gardens

On Lexington Avenue, between 104th and 105th Streets, is a little green oasis behind a gate with painted letters that read, “Modesto Flores Garden.” A little Puerto Rican flag is tucked behind the word, “garden.”

The Modesto “Tin” Flores community garden in East Harlem was born in 1981, according to Yvonne Pacheco, 56. She has been volunteering to run it for the last 10 years for Hope Community, an organization that owns around 75 affordable housing buildings and around eight community gardens including the Modesto garden.

Roger Cabán is 75 and sits on Hope’s Community’s board of directors. He says that the 50-feet wide, 100-feet deep garden was started by the Puerto Rican superintendent of the building adjoining the garden. Cabán says his name was Modesto Flores, and he was known by his nickname, “Tin”. When he passed away, the garden was named after him.

A few decades ago, East Harlem’s community gardens were buzzing with activity. Puerto Ricans would build a caseta in each one, Spanish for “little house.” According to Jordan Dyniewski who works with New York Restoration Project, helping to restore some of these gardens, these were once extremely prevalent in the community.

These days, most of them are falling into disrepair, according to many older Puerto Ricans who’ve lived in the community for a while. As it is a block away from the Hope Community offices, “in the heart of East Harlem,” according to Cabán, the Modesto garden is like “the old guard” of community gardens, he says.

The Corner

Spend 10 minutes on the corner of 124th Street and Lexington Avenue and you’ll get a quick glimpse into two longstanding issues in East Harlem: drug addiction and homelessness.

Jose Gonzalez sorts through his bag of recyclable items. (Photo: Sarah M. Kazadi)

There are seven recycling machines stretched along the wall of the Rainbow clothing store on the corner, offering money in exchange for aluminum, plastic and glass. The most common visitors of the recycling engine, also known as a redemption center, are either homeless or living in local shelters, says manager Auto Ferril, and many of them are either still on drugs or recovering drug addicts. Ferril opens the center at 6 o’clock every morning. In some cases, the change his visitors earn in exchange for digging through garbage for recyclable materials is their only income.

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Survey: “Stop-and-frisk” in East Harlem and is it Affected by Youth Unemployment?

Some advocacy groups and community organizers in East Harlem feel that there might be a connection between the rising level of youth unemployment and the NYPD’s “stop-and-frisk” policy.

The issue of “stop-and-frisk” in East Harlem has been a point of contention for some time. It’s when the police stop people they think are suspicious for one reason or another and, very simply, frisk them. The New York Daily News wrote last year, “The most likely neighborhood in New York where you’ll get arrested or hit with a summons if cops “stop-and-frisk” you is East Harlem, records show.”

Chair of Community Board 11 Manhattan, Matthew Washington, says of “stop-and-frisk,” “A lot of the time it’s without cause.”

To make matters worse, the black youth unemployment rate is 30 percent and the Hispanic youth unemployment rate is 21 percent, according to the U.S. Department of Labor – much higher than 9.1 percent – the national rate. Looking at the census data for this part of Manhattan, the majority of the population is either black or Hispanic.

“If the kids are out of a job and they’re hanging out on the corners, they’re going to be subjected to “stop-and-frisk”,” Yolanda Sanchez, President of the National Latinas Caucus.

“The police have to do their job,” says Nina Saxon, Vice President of National Alumni Council of Youth Build, “but what we have to do is hold our leaders responsible.”

Whose problem should this issue be? And what should they do about it? Take just a few minutes to do the survey below (click “continue reading”) and voice your opinion on this subject.

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Small Stores in East Harlem are Feeling the Pinch

Small, local stores in East Harlem are suffering. One of the big ones reasons why is that rent in East Harlem has been on the rise for a while.

Seema Gul, 35, is the owner of Star Electronic Discount, Inc. between 110th and 109th streets, on Third Avenue. She bought the store with her husband two years ago.

“We were making $2000 a day. Now I can’t pay the rent. I have to borrow,” Gul says. They make about $200 a day now, and their rent is $5500, according to her.

According to a report by MNS, a real estate broker in Manhattan, while rent there is still low compared with any other area, when you scroll down to the very bottom and look at Harlem’s price trends, rates there are clearly rising as well.

While the rent prices going up has definitely affected local business owners, there has been a sharp drop in the bottom line of most local stores in the last two to three years specifically because of the opening of the East River Plaza.

As more people of middle income moved there, it made sense for stores like Target, Best Buy, Marshalls and Costco to to open as these people would be more inclined to buy a lamp from, say, Target than the 99 cents store. Unfortunately, local businesses like Gul’s electronic store cannot compete in terms of pricing.

“Sometimes people come in and say, “It’s cheaper in Best Buy,” and I say that this is not Best Buy. We are a small business, we can’t afford to have such low prices,” she says.

On the other hand, the competition might be good for the local community, specifically for people who live in Public Housing or are struggling to make ends meet as their rent goes up.

What do you think? Is the East River Plaza opening up a good thing for the community? Or do you feel that it’s not worth it due to way it affects local businesses?

East Harlem On Obama’s Jobs Bill

Spanish Harlem’s unemployed population, hovering around 16 percent according to the Census Bureau, is tentatively hopeful that President Obama will get his jobs bill passed. The primary concern, however, is whether the bill can actually create more local small business jobs instead of just painting a brighter picture.

Guadalupe Castro owns Fierce Nail & Spa salon on 117th Street in East Harlem (Photo Credit: Sarah Kazadi)

Will the incentives work?: The $447 billion American Jobs Act comes with incentives the president believes will get small businesses hiring again, including payroll tax cuts and a $4,000 tax credit to companies hiring the long-term unemployed. Guadalupe Castro, a small business owner in Spanish Harlem, said she wouldn’t mind hiring to “help out,” but that the incentives are not a guarantee that she’ll expand her staff. “They have to be professional, they have to know what they’re doing, it’s going to be a lot of things all together before I can say yes,” she said.

How long will the incentives last?: There is skepticism that the bill’s incentives will create long term job opportunities. “I don’t think it’s going to work,” said Eladio Perez, an East Harlem resident who has been out of work since October 2009. “If they hire you just based on the incentives, a little after that you’ll be out again looking for work,” he said.

How long before results?: Some unemployed East Harlem residents applaud the plan but believe that it may take too long to bear fruit. “What they’re doing may not come fast enough to help us. You still have to eat, you still need a roof over your head and hot water,” said Angelo Marquez, who has been unemployed for two years. President Obama added a measure to pay small businesses faster, “So that puts more money in their pockets quicker, which means they can hire folks quicker,” he said in an address at North Carolina State University. 

President Obama sent his job bill to Congress on Monday. There is currently no set date on when it will be voted on.