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In the Public Interest

Oil Delivery
Three nonprofit housing companies facing escalating heating prices this winter are getting help from an unusual ally — the Venezuelan government. CITGO, Venezuela’s government-owned oil company, will provide eight million gallons of heavily discounted heating oil to the groups through an unusual deal brokered by Congressman José Serrano.

“CITGO is acting like a good corporate citizen and making a generous and compassionate donation to the people of the Bronx,” said Serrano in a statement last month. “I applaud their actions.”

The deal has attracted local, national and even international media attention.

The unprecedented arrangement arose unexpectedly after Serrano led Hugo Chavez, Venezuela’s president, on a tour of the Bronx this fall. Chavez met with several community groups here.

“Starting today, you known that I [have fallen] in love,” Chavez said in a speech afterward. “I have fallen in love with the Bronx and New York.”

Chavez is putting his country’s natural resources where his mouth is, providing oil to the housing companies — VIP Community Services, Mount Hope Housing Company and Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation —for 40 percent below the wholesale cost.

That’s a big break for the housing groups, who were bracing for record-high oil prices this winter.

John Reilly, Fordham Bedford Housing Corporation’s executive director, said he was even concerned two years ago when the price hit 99-cents a gallon. “Now that it was going over $2, we were very concerned with the impact on the budget.”

The high price of oil this winter could have meant that if buildings exhausted their financial reserves, they would have to forego repairs and improvements. “It starts to lead to deferred maintenance,” Reilly said.

But with the CITGO deal, Reilly said FBHC could offer its tenants portion of the money as a rent rebate to help with increased utility costs. The other part of the savings will go toward building services and maintenance.

Chavez is a burr in the saddle of the Bush administration, which disdains his anti-free-market policies. And some critics said he was opening CITGO’s spigot in the Bronx just to further annoy the White House.

But Serrano says he doesn’t care what the motivations are.

“If people think that the Venezuelan government and Chavez are trying to score points in my district, as a congressman from the district, I welcome that,” he told The New York Times. “And I welcome any other American corporation that wants to come here and score points.”

A group of 12 Democratic senators, including Hillary Clinton, wrote to American oil executives asking them to direct some of their companies’ record profits toward fuel assistance for poor households. But only CITGO responded, according to Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island.
—Jordan Moss

Ongoing Speaker Battle
The public has little say in who becomes the next City Council speaker, but that fact didn’t spare the candidates from a big and rowdy crowd of tenants who attended a debate last month. The forum, organized by the Housing Here and Now advocacy group, had contestants for the powerful position address how they would keep housing affordable and safe.

In contrast with a more genteel debate at Baruch College, the crowd made its feelings clear from start to finish. “It was very participatory,” was how Chloe Tribich, Housing Here and Now’s lead organizer, put it.

Four of the seven candidates, including Council Member Joel Rivera, were asked to pledge their support on seven housing-related issues. A scorecard rated participants on how aggressively they would advance legislation, petition the state for city control over rent regulations, and steer affordable housing dollars from the Battery Park City development.

Tribich said all the candidates promised to support the issues raised, although Council Member Christine Quinn was a bit more hesitant in her guarantees, according to Tribich. “There was no one who really emerged way ahead or way behind the others,” she said.
Meanwhile, the real drama of the speaker’s race is unfolding in the politicking among the borough party organizations and the Council members themselves, who are the only ones that get to vote on the position.

Still, a crowd of over 1,000 vocal tenants did offer some incentive to make the candidates perform. If selected, Rivera said housing would be one of his top issues. “Everyone talks about education, but a child cannot focus at school if he doesn’t have heat or hot water at home,” he said.

Rivera, who is a long shot for the position, pledged to get the bills in question — like one requiring a mandatory inspection of the most dangerous violations within a month — passed within the first three months of the legislative year. He also promised to steer more budget dollars to hiring maintenance inspectors. “We need to request 100 more inspectors for HPD,” said Rivera, referring to the city Department of Housing, Preservation and Development, which oversees code enforcement.

Rivera was one of the first Council members to sign up his district to participate for a new city program targeting selected buildings in serious disrepair for HPD scrutiny. The program shifts among Council districts roughly monthly, and with more inspectors, Rivera hopes to reduce the wait time.

With the public debates over, the wrangling now shifts behind closed doors. Council members Bill deBlasio, Melinda Katz and Quinn are generally seen to be the front-runners, and they are busily courting union and political clubhouse support. Despite Rivera’s candidacy, Bronx bigwigs have benefited from the other candidates. Katz doled out over $7,000 between last year and this year to the Bronx Democratic County and Trustees committees, which are associated with party chair Assemblyman Jose Rivera, who is Joel’s father. Katz also gave $1,000 to both Riveras’ election campaigns in May, according to city campaign finance records.

DeBlasio and Quinn gave $850 and $1,050 to the Bronx Democratic committees, respectively.

The Council will also choose the lucrative committee heads next month. Council Member Oliver Koppell, who attended both forums, is gunning to finally get a committee of his own. “I’m hoping to have a significant role to play in the new Council,” he said last month. Koppell did stop short of naming which committee he was eyeing.

“I don’t want to be disappointed,” he said.
—Heather Haddon

Housing Alarm
Local residents live in apartments with some of the highest number of code violations in the city, according to a recent report. Community District 7 logged the ninth highest number of serious building violations (out of the city’s 51 total districts) in 2003, as documented by the Furman Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy, a research group based at New York University.

District 7 did see a slight drop in the total number of violations counted between 2002 and 2003, but the total is still way above the city average. Serious maintenance deficiencies were found in over 8 percent of local units.

Gregory Jost of the University Neighborhood Housing Program, a local nonprofit, attributed these trends to the area’s rapidly aging housing stock. He also said that rising utility costs and building purchase prices prevent landlords from investing in their properties.

“Because purchase prices are so inflated, there is even more pressure on owners to squeeze services and not make repairs in Bronx buildings,” Jost said.
—Heather Haddon

Making Law
• The mayor signed legislation earlier this month to mandate the recycling of rechargeable batteries, the first bill of its kind. Council Member Oliver Koppell, who authored the bill, was thrilled to see it enacted.

“It’s another commitment to ending the throw-away society,” he said.

Under the program, retailers will accept rechargeable batteries and send them to manufacturers for recycling. Consumers will not be charged for the service.

Koppell co-sponsors many bills, but he considers this his finest legislative mark in the Council to date. “This is the first major, substantive bill that I’ve authored,” he said.

• The Council unanimously passed a bill last month that could help clean up refuse-laden lots. The legislation mandates that owners of vacant properties keep them clear of garbage and debris, or face fines from the city Department of Sanitation.
 

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