December 9, 2005
EAST HARLEM SHOWDOWN
 |  |
FACE-OFF: HU's McGovern (left) and opponent Calderon | |
A group of East Harlem businessowners and residents are challenging the state's decision to allow AIDS agency Harlem United (HU) to open an adult day-treatment center serving roughly 80 clients a day over a bank on East 116th St., a main business strip.
Last week, East Harlem Chamber of Commerce chair Henry Calderon told AIDS Issues Update that he and others had recently filed a so-called Article 78 suit against the New York State Department of Health (DOH) questioning its judgment in authorizing the center, which is slated to open in February or March. According to attorney Shelley Mayer of Manatt, Phelps and Phillips, which is representing HU, an Article 78 usually accompanies an attempt to stop work on a project. Mayer says the DOH has not yet alerted HU to the suit. Calls to the DOH to confirm the suit were not returned by this story's deadline.
The filing is the latest move in an increasingly bitter dispute that dates back prior to late October, when this story appeared in Tiempo New York, a Latino community newspaper.
ONGOING BATTLE
On one side of the dispute is HU, an $18 million annual agency (and frequent Housing Works ally) founded in 1988 and serving nearly 2,000 clients with HIV/AIDS in Harlem, where HIV/AIDS rates are high. HU's executive director Patrick McGovern and deputy director Soraya Elcock say that the agency has successfully run two other day-treatment centers in Harlem—including one on 118th St. in East Harlem—for years now without incident. They say the agency has cleared all legal and regulatory hurdles to open the E. 116th St. center, which will be the first completely bi-lingual adult day-treatment center in New York City to serve people with HIV/AIDS living in East Harlem--something the neighborhood desperately needs, they say, because it has the highest HIV/AIDS rates in the city excluding Chelsea.
Overflow from the 118th St. site has necessitated the opening of a new site, say McGovern and Elcock, noting that 128 clients (out of 150 total) are already lined up for treatment there, where 40 new jobs paying roughly $40,000 will go mostly to area residents.
McGovern and Elcock also claim they have collected over 2,500 letters of support from East Harlem residents and businesses and organized a letter to elected officials supoprting the site signed by 85 AIDS agencies. They say they are going ahead with construction there because other venues—which they say they explored at the urging of the opposing groups—simply weren't adequate for their needs. And finally, they say that opposition to the site is "based upon bias against people with AIDS and/or a narrow sense of their own economic self-interest," as McGovern puts it.
Calderon, an East Harlem businessowner, concedes at least that much. "It's all about dollars. We all have interests," he says, adding that he fears HU's clients will congregate on the sidewalk outside the treatment center and "disrupt the flow of business. When we're talking about AIDS, the majority [of people with it] have a drug problem," he continued. He is echoed by George Sarkissian of the neighborhood's Community Board 11, which also opposes the center's site. "Locating a facility like the one proposed by Harlem United in the heart of our community's economic engine undermines all our efforts to create a stronger East Harlem," he e-mailed AIDS Issues Update.
McGovern and Elcock say they are building a special outdoor back terrace at the center where people can smoke so they don't have to go out on the street. They say they have also reassured opponents that the center does not include methadone treatment. Still, maintains Calderon, "It's not appropriate for a commercial thoroughfare," adding that he takes issue with state laws that allow groups like HU to circumvent community approval when opening sites—and that have resulted in East Harlem being "oversaturated" with social-service facilities. "Where are the checks and balances?" he asks.
POLITICAL OPPONENTS
Also opposing the 116th St. location is a raft of elected officials, including New York City Councilwoman-elect Melissa Mark Viverito, Assemblyman Adam Clayton Powell IV and State Senator Jose Serrano, who told AIDS Issues Update he objected because HU consulted the community only after the state had granted them approval to develop the site. "I have no issue with the services or the clients," he said. "But I want my neighborhood treated the same way as folks on Fifth Avenue, where you would not open up any type of facility without community involvement. That is a lack of respect."
Elcock says that HU did in fact approach Community Board 11 in 2001 with the idea for a new day-treatment center in the neighborhood, but was "shot down." After that, she says, the state imposed a temporary moratorium on new adult day-treatment centers, and when it was finally lifted, HU was "next up in the queue" with a tight timeframe to finish the application process that left little time for re-notifying the community.
Assemblyman Powell, while calling the current HU treatment site on E. 118th St. "a great neighbor that's done good work," echoed Calderon, saying that the commercial strip of 116th St. was "totally inappropriate for this or any other type of social service." Asked why, Powell said, "because the business owners believe this will reduce property values, and people may not shop as much." Asked what businessowners thought the HU center would do to make that happen, Powell said, "It's hard to answer with specifics."
The district's city councilman Phil Reed, whom Viverito will succeed on January 1, has remained quiet on the issue up to this point. Contacted at Elcock's suggestion, Reed, who is openly HIV-positive, told AIDS Issues Update that though he felt East Harlem "certainly needs [HU's] services" and he "questioned the motives of [the] opposition," HU had "made a dreadful and unforunate miscalculation in how to approach the community. You can't [open] a health-care facility in some stealth fashion and expect there not to be a reaction," he added, declined to say whether he supports the 116th St. site.
DEFENDERS
HU has its defenders, not least Housing Works CEO Charles King, who says that Harlem's community boards "adamantly oppose any social services, especially [those for] AIDS"—and that Housing Works faced similar opposition to a Harlem AIDS residence it plans to open early next year. "We notified the community when we first submitted our application and then did aggressive outreach," says King. "It didn't matter. We faced the same outraged response from the same chamber of commerce people and several frivolous lawsuits before we finally just bulldozed forward. HU may not have done the community outreach that we did...but it wouldn't have made a damned bit of difference."
HU again points to the thousands of East Harlem residents, businesses and agencies it says have written letters of support for the center. Anne Elliott, who heads Project Greenhope Services for Women, one such agency HU suggested AIDS Issues Update call, said she was unaware there was dispute over the exact site but generally supported HU opening such a center in East Harlem because "it's sorely needed." A representative of East Harlem HIV Care Network, another agency HU called a supporter, wasn't available for comment by this story's deadline.
Meanwhile, HU is standing firm by its legal right to enter the space come February or March. Says agency head McGovern: "We fundamentally object to any suggestion that people with AIDS should be relegated to our back streets—or that not-for-profits are detrimental to economic development. Fundamental values...are at stake here. We will use whatever resources are necessary to protect them."