Dear New Yorkers:

The New York State Comptroller’s Office is conducting a survey on noise in New York City neighborhoods and would like you to take the survey.

You can access the survey through your Community Board. Your Community Board will email the survey weekly so make sure that you are on your Community Board’s email distribution list.

Community Boards may also choose to post  the survey links on their websites, Facebook pages, Twitter feeds and other social media.

Research has demonstrated that noise can adversely impact public health. For example, noise can disturb sleep and increase stress levels.
We want to learn about your experience of noise in your community and solicit your ideas for reducing noise.

Toward that end, we are asking all community residents take the survey by March 15, 2016.

Thank you!

State Government Accountability
New York State Comptroller’s Office

Survey Links:

English: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5B9QWY5

Chinese: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/B5DC5TR

Spanish: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/8YTWYXV

Happy New Year Everyone

Sometimes things matter enough to take action on even in the midst of our overwhelming lives.

Tonight, Thursday January 7^th at 6:30 Community Board 3 Committee will take up the issue of the sale of Rivington House which has been left exposed to becoming market rate housing.

Please come to the meeting below, call 311 or email 311 ( Office of the Mayor) and email the mayor’s liaison: Tommy Lin (TLin@cityhall.nyc.gov).

Thank you to everyone who has already written or called.

Health, Seniors, & Human Services 

Thursday, January 7th at 6:30pm — Chinatown YMCA Cornerstone at Rutgers – 200 Madison Street (btwn Rutgers & Pike Sts)

Item will be third:

3.  Position on future of Rivington House nursing facility—replacement of beds and future of facility

This has been a building that served its low-income neighborhood from its inception. As a public school, then AIDs hospice and finally as a non-profit, low-income nursing home.

The mayor’s administration has seen fit to remove the protection of a carefully crafted deed restriction (which required it to stay a non-profit health care facility in perpetuity). Leaving it utterly vulnerable to market rate conversion. 

They removed the restriction in an obscure and opaque procedure this June – knowing this neighborhood and our electeds  had rallied successfully to save the building, just months before, as a low-income community facility. We did this despite our scarce and stretched resources, time and energy.

It is an insult to ask us to listen to the rhetoric of a “Tale of Two Cities”, to be asked to trust an “affordable housing” plan when this valuable resource was sold cheaply and silently to a corporation with a for-profit agenda. Sold away from a community that sorely needs it for any kind of low-income housing.

Either this is incompetence or egregious contempt for the “unimportant people” whose lives have been or will be greatly impacted, disrupted or destroyed.

We have lost three nursing homes in our Community Board to market rate conversions. Forcing elders to leave their neighborhoods (when they can no longer live at home) breaks relationships, leaves our elders without the care of their families and friends, it dismantles the communities we built out of love and caring  – the only real security anyone ever really has –  and leaves our most vulnerable citizens as refuse in the wake of stupid and short-sighted profiteers.

It sends a clear message: No elders, no disabled, no one in need of help will be allowed to live in our brave new (and very hip) world. 

To follow the saga of Rivington House please see the excellent coverage in the Lo-Down. http://www.thelodownny.com/?s=rivington+house

And most recent news: http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2015/12/followup-city-cleared-the-way-for-luxury-housing-at-former-rivington-street-nursing-home.html

…Patty Astor who ran the Fun Gallery in the 80’s “…said it … hurt to see a new symbol of affluence on the Lower East Side linked in any way to the neighborhood’s grittier past.

[she]…is among those depicted in that work, and she has objected to the use of her image and Mr. Purple’s to ‘validate and advertise‘ the hotel…..”

“They are trying to say that this new, manufactured reality is O.K.,” she said. “I’m saying not in my name.”

Dear Neighbors,

We see the continuing displacement of our community members most in need to benefit those least in need.

We need answers, we need City Hall to find a way out of decisions made that would sell Rivington House to the highest bidder.

Send this simple message.

Call 311 (I’m hearing this is the most effective)

Email Tommy Lin <tlin@cityhall.nyc.gov>

Come to the Community Board hearing on January 7th (see below for details)

Health, Seniors, & Human Services / Youth, Education, & Human Rights Committee Joint Committee with 

Public Housing & Section 8 Housing Subcommittee

Thursday, January 7th at 6:30pm — Chinatown YMCA Cornerstone at Rutgers – 200 Madison Street (btwn Rutgers & Pike Sts)

 agenda

1.       Approval of previous month’s minutes

2.       Presentation by 3 Cornerstone program providers of their programs in CB 3

3.       Position on future of Rivington House nursing facility—replacement of beds and future of facility

4.       Request for support for new Admissions policy in School District 1

5.       Request for support for K-8 school at Essex Crossing

With thanks.

We mourn the loss of a true friend: generous, funny, self-effacing, and kind. He had tremendous integrity. Old school.

“Bowery Pete”

From Jane Barrer Co-President of M’Finda Kalunga Community Garden:

“Dear Gardeners:

I am sorry to tell you that we lost our friend and gardener Pete Lambert early this morning.  Pete passed away shortly after midnight at Beth Israel. 

…We will all miss him.

Rest in peace, Pete.”

Please link the Lo-Down for the latest on Rivington House.

“Department of Citywide Administration Services (DCAS) Last month, the city agency agreed to lift a deed restriction in place since 1992 requiring the Rivington Street building to be “limited in perpetuity to a Not-for-Profit Residential Health Care Facility.” The Allure Group paid the city $16,150,000 for the deed. Cathy Hansen, a spokesperson for DCAS said, “The deed restrictions were lifted after a request by the owner to allow the property to be run by for-profit and/or non-profit operators. The deed modifications were approved following a public hearing on June 24, 2015.”

A “public hearing” that no one knew about. Done on behalf of a corporation that did the same thing in Bed Sty. Bait and switch in order to get this goldmine of a public resource on the cheap?

Please read the article for more detail.

And please, let us not let this go by as just another crummy thing that we have to endure. This is going to cost us. It’s going to cost our elders and neighbors who will have no nearby nursing home to go to. And for some elders their need is imminent.

It’s going to increase pressure on lower income tenants and neighbors in the area.

Please write to the Mayor’s liaison and comment on the Lo-Down:

Tommy Lin

Director of Constituent Services

Mayor’s Office Community Affairs Unit

City Hall, Ny, NY 10007

The Lo-Down has our deepest gratitude for their investigative and factual reporting.

As many know, the former Rivington House, now Manhattan Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation, has been targeted for sale – yet again.

In June, unknown to anyone locally, including local electeds and the community board, the building was readied to be sold by NYC’s Department of City-wide Services Administration. 

We ask this Mayor to keep this a desperately needed nursing home, or for use as affordable housing, or to create supportive housing. We do NOT need more luxury housing in this neighborhood!

This building was promised to our community to be of benefit to the public and this neighborhood, in perpetuity.

We need to ask, demand, plead (whatever you are comfortable with!) City Hall to maintain the use of this building with its original intent intact.

Call 311 

And/or write a letter to:

Tommy Lin

Director of Constituent Services

Mayor’s Office Community Affairs Unit

City Hall, Ny, NY 10007

Sample letter:

Dear Mayor:

Please keep 45 Rivington Street a community facility—do not sell our neighborhood out to highest bidder. We need affordable housing, shelter beds, community services. In the midst of your affordable housing agenda it makes NO sense to lose this site for the many New Yorkers who need housing.

We restored our community when no one else would come into it due to the high crime here – not even City agencies and departments would come here.

Now that we have built a good, solid base for our neighbors, friends, visitors and families we are being pushed out, marginalized and priced out.

This building is an institution here – it has always served the public. First as a school, then as an AIDs Hospice (when those patients were not welcome anywhere else).

It has served, and should continue to serve, those most in need. The nearby co-op gave up a garden in the plot next door to let the nursing home have a co-generation plant installed in its location, volunteer gardeners worked for 3 and 1/2 decades building a garden in the park across the street – they made those sacrifices for the common good –not to serve those who have no need of the largesse of the poor, working and middle class.

As you are the Mayor of the “Tale of Two Cities” we ask you to live up to those words.

Yours,

(your name)

For more information http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2015/12/rivington-street-nursing-center-closes-next-week-relocation-anticipated.html

The Lo-Down has done excellent reporting and investigating of the situation.

Thanks everyone.