“Outreach workers have requested more pop-up homeless outreach sites. We think the Stanton Building could serve that purpose. We have a crisis. Intelligently shared resources must be committed to solve the reality of climate change and the burgeoning homeless population.  As we take the (realistically) slow but concrete and steady steps to end these crises, these are rational and humane ways forward.

We get a park anchor for safety, a community meeting site in the evenings, a climate resiliency lab and emergency hub, a youth after-school training center in all things ‘Green’. Everyone wins. No one is left behind.” – SDR Coalition.

From Politico NY:

“An annual count of the city’s unsheltered population showed a 40 percent increase in homeless people on city streets, despite the efforts of the de Blasio administration to curb the rising rate of homelessness.

…It was the largest number since 2005, when the city first began estimating the unsheltered population.

“The de Blasio administration has dramatically increased funding for services for unsheltered homeless people, increasing funding by 250% since 2013 …

[Commissioner Steve] Banks said these services will have their full effect this year, as 260 more Safe Haven beds … 500 new supportive housing units, and the increased outreach staff will be in the field long enough to have developed relationships with homeless people. He said it takes on average five months to develop a relationship and bring someone in off the street.

“To us the most important thing is…the individuals that we are working with on a daily basis to bring them in off the streets,” Banks said. He noted that outreach teams helped 748 individuals come in off the streets last year.

The estimated number of unsheltered homeless people confirms what outreach teams…were seeing… The teams have a list of more than 2,000 individuals who they know by name and a list of more than 1,500 additional individuals they know of and are trying to work with.

…One goal and product of the increased outreach funding was to identify every unsheltered homeless person and have them included in the city’s caseload.”

How cities and citizens are turning back privatization

See video Here. Begins at 2:09.19

Debra Jeffreys-Glass VP of SDR Coalition and Co-Chair of the M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden asked Mayor de Blasio for the Stanton Park Building’s return to community use.

Mayor de Blasio: What is your ideal outcome?

VP SDR Coalition Debra Jeffreys-Glass: “…a resiliency center, homeless resource center, a place for a community organization to provide programming for students, for the homeless, as a community center, it used to be a community center.”

Mayor de Blasio: “Non-committal, in the interest of not being misunderstood, but interested, it’s a first date [laughter] it stands to reason what you are saying that if we could free it up there’s something very good about that. I think Parks is legitimately struggling to find an alternative location in a city in a borough that are getting more and more crowded all the time. This is the challenge were facing everyday in everything we do. At a certain point we are just running out of space. And obviously we need the parks department to provide all the services it does for that park and for other parks. But I still get your point and I’m still sympathetic so I want to hear how we’re doing at looking, if there is any alternative space and what you think about what could be done in terms of addressing homelessness through such a facility or otherwise.”

Manhattan Park’s Commissioner Bill Castro: Yes thank you Mr. Mayor, we are looking to try to find a better space for the storehouse operation which distributes the supplies on a 7 day-a-week basis for our park workers who are out there keeping the parks clean. We’re very serious about it, it’s not easy as the mayor said but wer’re very sincerely looking for this we work with the community we meet with them every month or two for years now about Sara D Roosevelt so we’re going to continue this in a very good faith effort and if we can we will definitely do it. I’d like to get out of there so we have a better space.

Commissioner of Social Services Steve Banks: “On behalf of the Department of Social Services we certainly gotta take a look at this with the parks department I just want to acknowledge and appreciate the leadership of the Council Member and you and others in the community for proposing this kind of resource that would help our clients that don’t have a roof over their heads. We’re trying to bring people in off the streets. We’ve brought in a number of people in this community from the streets and anything we can do to work with the community along the lines of what you are suggesting, we want to work with parks and see what is possible.”

Help Plan How to Improve McKinley Park!

PS 63 The Star Academy, Neighborhood School

6:30pm-8pm

121 East 3rd Street between 1st Ave & Ave A

EVGrieve: “Reps for the Parks Department will be collecting input this Thursday evening on improving the McKinley Playground on Fourth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue…”

“Worth Dying For?‘

A powerful film about how the murder of famed activist Berta Caceres has unleashed a wave of activism across Honduras”

From The March on behalf of Berta Cáceres Outside the UN 2016:

Politics of Death: ‘Am I next?’ Honduras land activists

“Honduras is the deadliest place on earth for environmental activism, according to a January report by UK-based watchdog Global Witness, with about 120 activists killed since 2010 but most crimes going unpunished.

The dangers involved hit the spotlight when renowned environmentalist Berta Caceres – a prize-winning grassroots campaigner – was gunned down in her home in March last year….

…Caceres led a decades-long campaign against the construction of the $50 million Agua Zarca hydroelectric dam that threatened to uproot hundreds of Lenca people and destroy livelihoods.

Both the government and Desarrollos Energeticos SA (DESA), the private company building the Agua Zarca dam, have denied any involvement in Caceres’ murder.

International backers of the dam – the FMO, the Dutch development bank, and a Finnish state investment fund, Finnfund – suspended $20 million in funding following Caceres’ murder.”

…According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR)… there are nearly 840 mining projects, most for gold, in the pipeline or under consideration, covering a third of Honduran territory.

From the Guardian: Leaked court documents raise concerns that the murder of the Honduran environmentalist Berta Cáceres was an extrajudicial killing planned by military intelligence specialists linked to the country’s US–trained special forces, a Guardian investigation can reveal.

DNAinfo:

NYPD: “The elderly man was walking with a walker east on Rivington Street when [a cement] …truck … hit him while [the truck was heading] south on Chrystie at about 12:51 p.m…”

This area has a new configuration since the two-way bike lane was installed on Chrystie Street on the Park side of the street with a ‘rest area’ included for safety of pedestrians.

CB3 last night passed a resolution joining our electeds in asking the Department of Buildings to create working and timely communications when DOB makes any change to permits to Rivington House. Given the recent history whereby neighbors and CB3 warnings went unheeded and given several open investigations including the Attorney General’s Office it is the least that should be done.

We are honored to learn that the Columbia University Libraries Web Resources Collection Program has selected our Sara D Roosevelt Park Coalition website  for inclusion in its Avery Library Historic Preservation and Urban Planning web archive “to ensure its continuing availability to researchers”.

“The Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library collects books and periodicals in architecture, historic preservation, art history, painting, sculpture, photography, decorative arts, city planning, real estate, and archaeology–and now makes archival copies of important web resources for preservation and access purposes.”

We’ll be in great company. Check it out here. (will take two to three weeks for our website to be added).

Columbia University Libraries will provide public online access to the archived version(s) of our website to ensure its availability to researchers.

They will also create a cataloging record for of the website in the international online library catalog Worldcat and the Columbia University online library catalog, increasing our visibility to the scholarly community.

We helped build a great park and a great coalition of people to care for it and one another. Unbeatable.

Thank you to Alex Thurman, Web Resources Collection Coordinator Columbia University Libraries!