Press Conference and NYC Council Hearing Testimony from Neighbors to Save Rivington House Coalition Members:
Testimony for the New York City Council Committee on Governmental Operations and Committee on Oversight and Investigations
The Lifting of the Rivington House Deed Restrictions
September 29, 2016
– and Press Conference organized by NY Communities for Change:
James Rodriquez GOLES for Press Conference:
Since last spring, we at GOLES, us from Neighbors to Save Rivington House, Community Board 3, and residents across the Lower East Side have consistently said one thing: Return Rivington House. But that call has gone unanswered by this administration. Investigations into the deed restriction scandal, and efforts to reform that process are necessary, but not enough. This community has already suffered the loss of healthcare facilities with the closure of Bialystoker Nursing Home in 2011, the Cabrini Center in 2012, and Mt. Sinai Beth Israel’s upcoming downsizing — leaving our most vulnerable residents — literally our aged, our sick, our differently abled — without adequate access to healthcare. The loss of Rivington House is one we can’t abide, and especially not for the alternative of luxury condos. Luxury condos where for decades, New Yorkers received care for HIV/AIDS, and from where over 100 residents in need of care were displaced. Luxury condos where right across the street, people sleep on park benches because the city is in a homelessness crisis without an adequate shelter system. Luxury condos in a working class neighborhood where people are already in need of housing they can afford –not “affordable housing” — but housing they can actually afford. This is what it looks like when developers are allowed to profit from public land, and more and more, from working class communities of color across the city. Rivington House is a healthcare issue, a housing issue, a racial justice issue. This is what the tale of two cities looks like. This is what gentrification looks like. Elected officials throughout this administration have called this transaction a mistake. But refusal to correct that mistake makes you complicit. We call on this administration, on City Council, on the mayor, to right this wrong the only way it can be: Return Rivington House.
Kevin Tobar Pesantez, Senior Housing AdvocateUniversity Settlement House:
Good morning, my name is Kevin Tobar Pesantez. I’m a Senior Housing Advocate at University Settlement. We are America’s first social settlement house and have been across the street from Rivington House since 1899.
For over 130 years, University Settlement has joined with our neighbors in the never ending fight for social and economic justice. The Lower East Side didn’t become a destination neighborhood overnight; we built this neighborhood. Community activists reclaimed our streets and parks; renovated and repaired tenement buildings; created new affordable and supportive housing; and we continue to invest resources in a robust social service and education network.
Today, we stand with our neighbors and say that the Mayor’s response to the Rivington House scandal is not good enough. We demand that Rivington House be returned to the Lower East Side community with deed restrictions that protect the uses for the most vulnerable of our community.
What do we think of the City’s promised investment of $16 million? Too little.
It cost New York City tax payers $70 million dollars to renovate Rivington House into a functional and compliant nursing home. Will they be reimbursed for this loss? Additionally, the deed restriction fee should have been $29 million, not $16 million, based on the price Allure paid for Rivington House. Will the City make up the difference? Even with this amount we would not regain all that New Yorkers have lost.
What do we think of the City’s efforts to change the deed process? Too late.
First Bialystoker and Cabrini nursing homes were closed. With the possible loss of Rivington House, our community would lose another150,000 square feet of community-benefit skilled nursing home space. Where is the City’s concrete, detailed plan to replace Rivington House if it isn’t restored to the neighborhood?
The City needs to do much more than make a few promises and hope that we go away.
Here are the facts. The Lower East Side is ranked the third highest gentrifying district in New York City. But there are still deep, chronic needs in our neighborhood. The Furman Center ranked the Lower East Side as one of the neighborhoods with the highest gap between lower income and higher income residents. Nearly one out of three seniors in the Lower East Side lives in poverty. Over 70% of seniors in the neighborhood are foreign born – one of the highest rates in NYC. University Settlement knows these seniors – we serve over 2,000 people, ages 60 to 106, each year. We work with them through every cycle of life, including when it is time for long-term nursing care assistance in their own neighborhood.
The City’s needs to step up and seriously discuss returning Rivington House to the Lower East Side. It’s fair, it’s right, and it’s necessary. We need and deserve better than promises and excuses. Thank you for your time.
Tessa Huxley President of a Limited Equity Cooperative near Rivington House and member of Neighbors to Save Rivington House
I have lived in the neighborhood since 1971 and on Forsyth Street since 1981. I am the President of a Limited Equity Cooperative near to Rivington House. I am also a member of the Neighbors to Save Rivington House. I am here today to tell you a story about a serious, significant and permanent commitment made by the City of New York to me, to my neighbors, and to the Lower East Side community in general. That commitment was broken. Today we are asking for that commitment to be honored and for the situation to be remedied. We want Rivington House back in operation serving our neighbors who desperately need its services. Rivington House was permanent affordable housing which Mayor DeBlasio has repeatedly said is a major priority of his administration. It appears that we have been repeatedly ignored and lied to. We do not accept this situation.
In the early 1990’s, when AIDS was an epidemic without any obvious positive outcomes our community was asked to approve the reinvention of our school on Rivington Street between Eldridge and Forsyth Streets as a nursing home for AIDS patients. While many communities were uncomfortable with the idea of an AIDS facility in their area, we welcomed the Village Nursing Home and its quest for a place to create Rivington House. We were promised that the building would remain a community medical facility forever, even if the need for an AIDS facility was eliminated. That promise was memorialized in the form of a New York City deed restriction, which, we were told, was permanent. The community garden that used to exist where the current loading dock was eventually built voluntarily chose not to fight for its survival because we believed, that this community ought to be welcoming and supportive of such an important community resource and that a permanent facility of this type was critical.
In early December of 2015 I received a call from a man named Jay Henges, an employee of Slate Construction. He called to inform me that Slate would be starting construction on Rivington House and that Slate wanted to meet with our cooperative beforehand. I told Mr. Chenges that this could not be possible since the property had a deed restriction that would not allow a luxury condominium to take over Rivington House. I immediately called Community Board #3 and was told that they were trying to find out what was going on and that they would be sending a resolution to Mayor DeBlasio asking for his assistance in preserving the facility for the community. I then wrote a letter on behalf of my cooperative to Tommy Lin, the Mayor’s Director of Constituent Services (dated December 14th). There was no response. I wrote another letter to Mr. Lin (On March 31st, 2016) and again had no response. I spoke directly to the Mayor via the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC; he tried to evade my question which was about how we were going to get Rivington House back for the community by discussing how he was going to make sure that the deed restriction removal process was reformed. Mr. Lehrer pointed out that I had asked a particular question and he had not answered it. At that point Mayor DeBlasio said he did not have an answer YET but that his staff was working on it and he would get back to the community. After the show was over, Mr Lehrer’s staff called me to ask if they could give my telephone number to the Mayor’s staff; that they said they wanted to follow up. I was delighted. I am still waiting for that follow up call, I am still waiting for the Mayor DeBlasio’s Director of Constituent Service to respond.
Communities are strongest and most vibrant when they are a mix of incomes, religions, races, etc. The Lower East Side is being overwhelmed by high rise, market rate apartments. We need the Mayor and the City Council to take the lead in the effort/the fight to bring Rivington House back to our community, to the public for whom it was created and to whom it belongs. We want our neighbors back!
K Webster member of Neighbors to Save Rivington House and President of the Sara Roosevelt Park Community Coalition.
Last night we celebrated a neighbor’s exhibit. Council Member Chin wrote a Proclamation for him. But he losing ground to Alzheimer’s disease and should be a resident of Rivington House – and would be – if it had been protected, as was intended in perpetuity, as a health care facility.
The final days of Rivington House as a skilled nursing home for people with AIDS I saw the last five residents reluctantly end their visit to the Park’s quiet turtle pond. They didn’t want to leave.
Bob who has worked in the park as a volunteer since 1980 said: “I have given my life to remove drug dealers and pimps to make this park a good place for children. I thought that when I could no longer give back – I would be in Rivington House looking out the window at my life’s work.”
Those whose home it was, those in need of skilled care now or in the future, families with loved ones who need care, health care workers who lost their jobs (almost 200 of them) are the only ones who have felt the consequences of this mess.
For the evicted this has been a nightmare – losing home, caregivers and sometimes their health. For those who need care and for those who are trying to provide it that nightmare is just beginning. There are eleven neighbors and friends, two caregivers and a senior center trying to keep one elder safe until we find him a nursing home bed.
All for the profit of a few.
Those of us who refuse to give up on Rivington House have been treated to stonewalling, pity, dismissal, insults, callousness and sarcasm by this administration for our, admittedly, dogged and angry fight.
I personally spoke to Tommy Lin the mayor’s official liaison on December 1, 2015 and emailed him later that evening with my warning about Rivington House. I didn’t have $50,000 to offer a campaign. I had only the representative I was afforded by this administration.
And I spoke at length to the new operator of the supposed nursing home The Allure Group set up. He could not figure out how to instate long-term care contracts – and didn’t seem to want help getting them. Rehab patients are much easier to empty from a building you intend to sell.
There were so many missed opportunities, smoking guns, lobbyists, profiteers and outright lies told.
People understand there isn’t a level playing field in our city or country. Some despair and follow demagogues; some just walk away, some settle for the wrong way to reach goals – ending up eroding our confidence in democracy and continuing rotten practices.
As Preet Bharara said recently about the ethics of his office: “You do the right thing in the right way for the right reason. Always. That’s it.”
A nursing home bed is a home. We insist that these 215 affordable ‘homes’ be returned to the community as Rivington House. Because it’s the right thing to do.
Thank you.
Neighbors to Save Rivington House
Twitter #CareNotCondos #RivingtonHouse
Anonymous from ACT-UP Member:
Council Woman Margaret S. Chin open remarks on the New York City Council hearing on the Rivington House debacle, draw from the early history of the HIV epidemic in NYC and the role Rivington House plaid on it.
The hearing went from around 9:30 AM to 5PM. I was planning to talk but by 4:40 the last panel was called to testify and they had another event in the room afterwards, so I came home without saying anything. That is the reason for this long post.
The hearing focused almost solemnly on the procedures and what went on from the closing of Village Care, to the sale of the building to a developer to build luxury condos, in a building which had it’s deed changed from non for profit nursing home only to no restrictions..
Council members were trying to understand how that happened and the explanation I heard, was as if a loophole on procedures allowed the buyer to offer the money the city was asking, with the understanding that a nursing home would continue to operate. After meeting the financial side, the developer which operates at the same time a non-for profit and a for profit business, requested the change on the deed and the bureaucracy just rolled the usual procedure . The City sold the building and changed the deed or the other way around, not sure yet.
Now we come to the part of what I was going to say. After thanking City Council members and Ms Chin in special, I’d introduce myself as a member of ACT UP New York and as a person living with HIV since 1994. I’d say I was there to speak for the PLHIV (Persons Living With HIV) who used Rivington House as a recovery or nursing home.
Around 2005, a friend of mine who is HIV+, had a stroke and stayed at Rivington House for months until he could go back home. I visited him there many times. That was before the ACA and the boom of hospital building that is happening now in the city.
Still, HIV is not history. Most of the +/- 120K PLHIV in NYC are over 50 years old. We still see around 2,500 new infections and 1,500 PLHIV die every year in the city (2014 data). That is despite the great job Dr Demetre C. Daskalakis, MD is doing at the head of the DOHMH Bureau of HIV Prevention and Control.
Sure we will have more hospital beds, but where PLHIV will go for long term care, if we need a nursing home or end of life care, considering HIV stigma is still so high? We talk about the loss of a facility, of jobs , of money, but I’d like to bring the conversation back to the people who lost a place they could receive the care they need. A provider in downtown Manhattan, perhaps close to where they used to live and their friends, so they can have visitors.
Granted that Rivington House was a dump, but it is also the duty of the city to take care of New Yorkers. The place should have been renovated and not closed, much less have it’s deed requirements removed so NY could have another condo.
Thanks for reading..
