Roundtable looks at

racial, ethnic disparities

in education

01:00 AM EST on Monday, January 18, 2010

Journal Staff WriterPROVIDENCE — When Jim E. Albert visits other schools for sports meets or academic competitions, he can see the difference between the haves and the have-nots.

In inner-city schools, he said, he sees few if any computers in classrooms, students use outdated books, and buildings are old and musty.

But in the suburbs, said Albert, a 17-year-old senior at North Providence High School, he sees schools that look more like his own: televisions and computers in each classroom, well-lit corridors and clean locker rooms.

“This shouldn’t be happening in our schools,” Albert said. “We need to start with equality in our schools. When we have that, we can begin to build a more just and equal society.”

Albert’s observations were the lead-in to The Rhode Island Civil Rights Roundtable’s discussion on racial and ethnic disparities in state education. In its 12th year, the organization hosts a forum on a current civil rights issue to honor the legacy of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.

This year’s panel included David Abbott, deputy commissioner of the Rhode Island Department of Education; Elaine Budish of KIDS COUNT; Monica Teixeira De Sousa, a professor at Southern New England School of Law; and Kenneth Wong, chairman of the Education Department at Brown University.

Budish said that 58 schools were classified as making insufficient progress according to 2008 Education Department data. Of those schools, 44 were in the six core cities where the majority of the state’s minority or low-income population resides.

“It’s no longer legal to have separate but equal, but we still have separate and unequal schools,” she said, “they just are not based on a law.”

Providence Mayor David N. Cicilline said that education is the civil rights issue of our time, and called for a state school funding formula, calling it the “single best and most powerful tool to give young people the opportunity to realize their full potential and get out of poverty.”

But, Abbott said, pumping additional money into a “broken funding system” won’t do much to improve education for those in need.

Teixeira De Sousa also warned that focusing only on education and not the student’s circumstances as a whole — including whether they have food to eat or their parents have jobs — is just as ineffective.

For his part, Albert suggested that combining school districts would help ease the disparities. Having one district for every five communities or so would mean that more districts would have higher expectations for students and would be able to share resources. He isn’t sure it would work, but it would be a start, he figured.

Otherwise, Albert said, “How is tomorrow ever going to be equal for everybody if one person is already one step ahead?”

tbuford@projo.com

If you are a tenant living in a home or apartment subject to foreclosure please read this important advisory from HUD pertaining to the Helping Families Save Their Homes Act of 2009, effective May 20, 2009.

Click here (PDF format):  HUD Advisory – Tenant Protections in Foreclosure

Also, check out http://www.nlihc.org for the most up-to-date information for tenant protections after foreclosure.

City of Providence enacts ordinances to protect tenants in foreclosure

Additionally, there were two city ordinances recently enacted in Providence that provide additional tenant protections in the event of foreclosure. See below for an outline of the protections provided. Basically, no one should move out of their home due to foreclosure unless they wish to do so.

Tenants Protection Against Foreclosures Ordinance

§ Allows renters to remain in the foreclosed property for the duration of their lease agreement. Month-to-month rental agreements would be subject to state law governing such arrangements.

§ The financial institution/lender would be required to provide tenants with written notice (in Spanish and English) stating the name and address of the successor, so that the tenant will know to whom they should pay their rent.

§ Require the successor of the property to continue to provide essential services such as heat, running water, hot water, electric or gas to tenant.

§ If a property is about to enter into foreclosure, the new mortgage holder or financial institution must provide the tenant with written notice of the property’s sale.

§ The mortgage holder must also provide contact information for Rhode Island Legal Services as well as other HUD-approved counseling agencies.

Foreclosure Mediation Ordinance

§ Provides a safety valve for owner-occupied homeowners who are facing imminent foreclosure by establishing a mandatory mediation process between the homeowner and mortgage holder/lender.

§ Both sides would be required to meet with a third party, HUD-approved independent counseling agency for mediation prior to entering into foreclosure.

§ City would not accept deed filed by lender/mortgage holder until all required steps set forth in the ordinance have been completed.

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If you are a tenant or homeowner facing foreclosure, and you are looking for assistance, you may also contact the RI Bank Tenants and Homeowners Association, care of the Olneyville Neighborhood Association (at 401-228-8996) and Direct Action for Rights and Equality (at 401-351-6960).

In the RI General Assembly, Representatives Lally (Narragansett, North Kingstown, South Kingstown) and Caprio (Narragansett, South Kingstown) have introduced House Bill 6058. Click here for the full text (pdf format)

Section 8 should have its own quota and not be rolled in with other forms of affordable housing (because Section 8 housing is privately owned, waiting lists are long, vouchers and receptive landlords are scarce, and Section 8 projects are notoriously mismanaged). Section 8 may not belong in this legislation, but it is affordable housing.

What do you think?

Let’s make sure H6058 doesn’t get out of the House Municipal Government Committee to a floor vote. Please contact the members of the committee and your local State Rep. To find your State Rep, click here.

Tenant Organizer Lisa at the “Evict Bank of America” Rally. For more information if you are a tenant or homeowner facing foreclosure, or ways to support of tenants evicted by banks when their landlords are foreclosed (and homeowners, too!) contact the RI Bank Tenant and Homeowner Association at 521-1461 or 421-6458

Photo credit: Street Sights Newspaper

At Medina Village. Thanks to all who came out and showed love and support!

Tenant Association Fighting Threat of Displacement to Save Affordable Housing

PROVIDENCE- West End Tenants have put up with mixed signals, deception, and broken promises from HUD. 38 families have been put under duress by local and regional HUD officials, who have attempted to have the tenants sign a contract to move off-site, before a preservation deal is closed to guarantee tenants their right to return and their right to continued participation in the Section 8 program.

A HUD Mark to Market (M2M) preservation plan, which if implemented would bring a $6.8 Million renovation to the project, has been on the table for a year. Tenants have supported this plan as what was thought to be the quickest way to fully fund long-overdue renovations to their homes.

However, tenants have not seen documentation of the plan including many of the changes that have delayed a closing. Tenants maintain they have the right to access this information, and that they need to be a part of the process to ensure their rights are protected and their homes are preserved.

Said long-time tenant and student Ninoska Garcia, “This has gone on too long. The lack of transparency and tenant involvement that we have suffered is the opposite of what we expect from the new HUD under President Obama.”

Specifically, tenants are demanding that HUD Headquarters step in to:

*  Stop the off-site relocation plan that threatens displacement

*  Provide information and a process to involve the tenants in decision-making, including bringing the management and purchasing team to the negotiation table for a written Tenant-Management Agreement, proposed by the Tenant Association, and

• Make the M2M plan work, or commit to an alternative preservation strategy if the M2M plan fails and the property falls to foreclosure.

With a foreclosure of the project becoming more likely, coming as soon as August, tenants are fighting to save their homes with a greater sense of urgency. In April, The Tenant Association voted on a set of principles that would protect their rights, improve conditions, and ensure meaningful tenant involvement in the decisions that affect their lives. They followed by appealing to HUD Headquarters with their demands.

Some weeks later in May and with the assistance of Senator Jack Reed’s office- the RI HUD Tenant Project, as advocates for the Tenants’ Association, was granted a conference call with Janet Golrick, Deputy Assistant Secretary of HUD’s Office of Affordable Housing Preservation (OAHP) in Washington, DC. There was no solid outcome from the call, other than it became apparent to those representing the tenants that HUD is still entrenched in some of the policies that devastated HUD-assisted affordable housing under the Bush Administration, including an internal HUD policy that calls for unconditional termination of the Section 8 contract for substandard properties.

Affordable housing experts including the Director of the National Alliance of HUD tenants, Michael Kane, contend that Congress has given HUD discretion to extend Section 8 for substandard properties, to allow time and money for emergency repairs to be done on occupied units, and a preservation plan such as the M2M deal to be executed.

Citing precedents of similar HUD projects around the country, Kane adds, “There is no statuatory basis for HUD to pull the plug on this and move the tenants out… In either scenario (M2M or foreclosure), there are resources available to HUD, state agencies, and the City (of Providence) for shovel-ready projects that can be used to prepare plans and specs for the rehab, and to pay for emergency repairs in the mean time.”

Another HUD project comes to mind when we look at what’s happening and more importantly- what could happen with Medina Village. Grove Parc in Chicago recieved a lot of press for the connections between its developers and the Obama campaign. Grove Parc boasts 504 units of affordable family housing to Medina Village’s 83. But like Medina Village, Grove Parc had an extremely high vacancy rate and an extremely low REAC inspection score- an 11 on a scale of 100, compared to a 16, the lowest in New England for Medina Village.

When HUD threatened forclosure and displacement for some 400 families, Grove Parc tenants fought back to save their homes. Together they organized, sought the support of the community and elected officials, and secure a new developer for the project that agreed to work with the tenants input and demands.

Medina Village, like Grove Parc, is a battleground of national significance in defending and demanding the human right to housing- as the pressures build on low-income communities from gentrification,privitizing public housing, voucherization by HUD,
criminilization, and the economic crisis.

Tenants warn that if Medina Village is not preserved, 83 units of affordable family housing will be lost, and more people will end up on the street. “When people don’t have a place to live, they sometimes have to turn to the streets to provide for their families, feeding the cycle of criminalization that has plagued the City. It makes more sense to invest in housing than in prisons,” said tenant Sandra Marrow.

In this time of economic crisis, tenants are demanding the long overdue reinvestment promised to stabilize their neighborhood and community. By renovating Medina Village, 45 additional families on the lengthy, closed Section 8 waiting list could receive affordable, decent housing- helping not only the neighborhood but the City and State.

The annual National Alliance of HUD Tenants (NAHT) conference will take place from June 20-23 in Washington, DC. The conference will include informative workshops for HUD tenant leaders on developing and sustaining a tenant association, crafting campaigns to preserve affordability at the building level, national policy issues facing HUD tenants around the country, and more.

NAHT has invited HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan to the conference this year as a special guest. Confirmed to be attending is Carol Galante, newly appointed as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Multifamily Housing Programs at HUD. This is an opportunity to meet and restore a direct dialogue for accountability between HUD officials and HUD tenants.

Most importantly this is a chance for RI tenants to meet other tenant leaders from around the country that have resisted displacement, stopped Section 8 terminations, won repairs and new ownership/management through collective bargaining, and more.

This is a chance for us to build the national movement of HUD tenants, and to carry our concerns directly to Washington and our elected officials. See the NAHT’s website at www.saveourhomes.org for details on this year’s activities.

If you’d like to attend this year’s conference, or want more information, please reach out to Michael@rihudtenant.org or Lisa@rihudtenant.org by Friday, May 29 or call us at the office: 401-270-1105

Some scholarships are available, please contact us for more info.

Photos of RI HUD Tenants at the NAHT Conference:

By Mike Scarlatti
Staff Writer- Street Sights – May 2009

Two residents of Grace Church Apartments on Washington Street in Providence are waging a campaign for better living conditions at the building, starting with access by all residents to bathrooms on the ground floor that are locked and off-limits to some tenants after 4:30 P.M. weekdays and all weekend. Two officers of the building’s tenants association took their complaints to the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights and the Providence office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) about one year ago. They say they believe the building manager, Laurel Boulanger, has retaliated in subtle ways against them and five other tenants who testified in front of the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights in support of their complaints. A request by Street Sights to the management for its views on the allegations went unanswered.

Grace Church Apartments is a HUD rent-subsidized, privately owned building. For people who live there, answering nature’s call in a timely manner as they arrive in the building can be difficult. In fact, it can take as long as seven minutes for en elevator to get to the eighth floor of the building According to a summary of the situation given to Street Sights by Ed Ellis and Marta Morrogh-Bernard, the vice president and president of the Grace Church Apartments Tenants Association, respectively, the first-floor bathrooms “were built with the main building and were to provide a service to the tenants when they were doing laundry [across the hall].”

A few years ago, the Cookie Place Café, a restaurant, opened on the ground floor of the building. Grace Church Apartments later refurbished the bathrooms to make them accessible to handicapped people as required by the building code. Customers of the restaurant use the bathrooms. In July 2007, according to Morrogh-Bernard’s notes, the first-floor handicapped bathrooms were being locked at all times except 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. on weekdays. Her notes say the building manager alleged that the tenants who used the bathrooms were too messy, and that they stole the toilet paper and paper towels. If a tenant needs to use the bathroom during hours when the bathrooms are locked, the tenant must use the elevator on the way to their apartments.

Ellis and Morrogh-Bernard took their complaints about the locked bathrooms and other matters to HUD’s Providence office and the Rhode Island Commission for Human Rights. The Providence HUD office wanted nothing to do with the matter at hand, according to Ellis and Morrogh-Bernard, but the commission listened to them. However, they said the commission took no action on the complaints.

Ellis and Morrogh-Bernard took their fight to the HUD office in Boston and their concerns were heard. The HUD office in Boston responded by saying the Commission for Human Rights in Rhode Island should investigate their complaints. Ellis and Morrogh-Bernard note that the R.I. Commission for Human Rights is the same government body that did nothing with the case for over one year. Also, they say, one of its lawyers, Cynthia Hyatt, now has to represent the tenants association. Ellis said Hyatt is the same person who told Ellis and Morrogh- Bernard to hire a lawyer, even through the commission has a contractual obligation to investigate the matter for HUD. Rhode Island Legal Services also stated the commission should represent the tenants association in matters of housing discrimination.

Grace Church Apartments is owned by Grace Church Housing Corporation to provide subsidized housing for the elderly and disabled. Its president is Kenneth R. Burnett, of Bank Rhode Island, and its director is the Rev. Robert Brooks.

Part 2 of this story will be published in the June issue www.streetsights.org

Thanks to Street Sights for being on top of this one, and publishing their monthly newspaper with the pulse on issues affecting homeless and low-income Rhode Islanders.

If you live in a HUD-assisted building and feel you are being discriminated against by the management, please call the RI HUD Tenant Project. We are here to help you build or strengthen a Tenant Association where you live to fight for better conditions, better treatment, and build tenants power to participate in the decisions that affect your homes.

The RI HUD Tenant Project is convening a “Bed Bug Task Force” to combat this growing epidemic in the state of RI. The Task Force, which brings affected Tenant Leaders together with Public Health officials, Researchers, Exterminators, Landlords, and other interested parties to work on solutions to this problem, had their first meeting on March 31.

Bed Bugs, or Chinches, are a problem that can affect anyone- regardless of economic status or housing type. However it is a problem that particularly affects high-density and high-rise housing, which includes apartment buildings, hotels, hospitals, dormitories, and homeless shelters.

As Lisa Reels, a Tenant Organizer at the project, points out- “One of the major barriers to combating this issue is the social stigma attached to having bed bugs.” She continues, ” There needs to be more information and resources out there to help tenants and landlords identify, treat, and prevent this problem from spreading- especially in low-income housing.”

One of the primary goals of the Task Force is to raise the profile of this public health issue, and to propose and advocate for solutions. To that end, organizers are looking to other cities that have implemented policies and programs aimed at eradicating bed bugs. They found such a model in New York City, where the City Council recently passed amendments to the city’s Administrative Code to:

• Establish an official Cimex lectularius Task Force


• Ban the sale of re-conditioned mattresses


• Regulate the disposal of bed-bug infested mattresses and furniture

Proposed amendments are currently on the table to:

• Require the Department of Health to establish training programs for landlords and exterminators to teach proper techniques to identify, prevent the spread of infestation, and eliminate bed bugs.


• Require the the department to make information available regarding bed bug awareness, infestation, and control.


• Make a toll-free hotline number, such as “2-1-1” available for people to receive bed bug information, a list of trained exterminators, and provide a centralized way to report infestations.

For more information on bed bugs, please refer to the links posted above.

Stay tuned to hear more about the activities of the Bed Bug Task Force, RI legislation, and how you can get involved in fighting these parasites- and fighting for the health and dignity of tenants affected by the problem.