If there’s one thing we can say for sure about Brooklyn, it’s that the last couple of decades have resulted in huge changes for the borough. Or at least that’s how it feels, right?

True, we were a bit mystified last spring when the 2010 Census told us that the Bronx grew twice as fast as Brooklyn over the past decade, with Brooklyn’s population inching upward at less than 2 percent.

The Bloomberg administration also shared our disbelief in the low counts and, given the concern over not getting a fair share of federal aid, filed a formal appeal in August 2011.

It was a prickly reminder of how important data is—the sheer counting and recording of our community’s stats—and the frustrating yet brilliant foresight our founding fathers had in building this tracking into our Constitution.

So: Had it truly been a decade of change for Brooklyn? Or were we all just too enamored with reading about the “new” Brooklyn?

A few weeks ago, our research partners at the Center for the Study of Brooklyn at Brooklyn College released a whopping 600 pages of Brooklyn-specific data on emerging trends over the last 20 years, in nine areas ranging from population to education, the economy, health and the environment.

The Brooklyn Community Foundation commissioned these reports because, as Brooklyn became center-stage for new development and commerce in the city, we wanted to quantify the changes we were seeing and make informed predictions about our communities’ futures.

The data is also broken out by our 18 community districts, to track trends not just boroughwide, but also by neighborhood. After all, it doesn’t take a native Brooklynite to be the one tell you how much Williamsburg has changed since the first time they strolled down Bedford Avenue—be it in 1972, 1992 or 2002.

And, yes, the reports do show impressive growth and change. The boroughwide report presents figures for both 1990 and 2000 as compared to today. So while we may have only grown from 2.45 million to 2.55 million since 2000, over the last 20 years, Brooklyn has gained more than 260,000 new residents—slightly less than the total current population of Newark.

The overall numbers are interesting, but ultimately, it’s the stories behind the numbers that give us the full picture. And in no place is this truer than in North Brooklyn.

Although in the past decade the population in Community District 1—encompassing Williamsburg and Greenpoint—grew by a greater percentage (7.95 percent) and a larger number of additional residents (12,745) than any other community district in Brooklyn, the Latino and Polish populations fell by an almost equal percentage.

The median household income shot up from $26,325 in 2000 to $41,646. Approximately 17 percent of households make more than $100,000. Median rents have increased a staggering 35 percent—twice the rate for Brooklyn as a whole. And while poverty in CD 1 has dropped 6 percent over the decade to 28 percent, it’s safe to assume that many of those residents didn’t increase their incomes—they left.

The story behind these numbers has everything to do with city decisions to rezone formerly manufacturing land and upzone it to create residential development opportunities along the waterfront with its spectacular views of Manhattan. A fast new East River Ferry service followed and a cool new residential enclave became a reality.

Williamsburg and Greenpoint had already been growing and changing, but at a more gradual, organic pace over the years. Artists, writers and musicians had been migrating across the bridge for more than 20 years. But the rezoning in 2005 put that change process on steroids and the result has been thousands of new residents, hundreds of new stores and restaurants, and a new waterfront skyline of high rise development.

Many visitors are charmed and amazed by the “new” Bedford Avenue and the “old” Manhattan Avenue. The Southside of Williamsburg now has both bicycle shops and bodegas. Peter Luger’s is surrounded by a new restaurant row under the Williamsburg Bridge. The Northside of Williamsburg still has the Brooklyn Brewery, but it is also dotted with hip stores like Oak, Beacon’s Closet and Peachfrog.

So behind the numbers we find stories of gain and loss, comings and goings, greediness and goodness, and a big challenge to Brooklyn not to lose its soul to a new type of fragmentation along class and economic lines.

Are there civic values that underlie our understanding of what it means to be a Brooklynite?

Brooklyn has always been a special place, both a very big and a very small hometown of 2.5 million people (or thereabouts) that has managed to be neither alienating nor artificial.

As our borough grows, and as we consider what is behind the numbers, we need to embrace those civic values which broaden participation, foster collaboration and heal community divisions. And it’s important that we do it now, rather than look back with regret.

At the Brooklyn Community Foundation, we are investors in public good, catalysts for positive change and connectors of people to causes they care about. We believe we have it in ourselves to look change in the eye, but not lose our character and soul.

So join us – and let’s do good right here, right now!

If there’s one thing we can say for sure about Brooklyn, it’s that the last couple of decades have resulted in huge changes for the borough. Or at least that’s how it feels, right?

True, we were a bit mystified last spring when the 2010 Census told us that the Bronx grew twice as fast as Brooklyn over the past decade, with Brooklyn’s population inching upward at less than 2 percent.

The Bloomberg administration also shared our disbelief in the low counts and, given the concern over not getting a fair share of federal aid, filed a formal appeal in August 2011.

It was a prickly reminder of how important data is—the sheer counting and recording of our community’s stats—and the frustrating yet brilliant foresight our founding fathers had in building this tracking into our Constitution.

So: Had it truly been a decade of change for Brooklyn? Or were we all just too enamored with reading about the “new” Brooklyn?

A few weeks ago, our research partners at the Center for the Study of Brooklyn at Brooklyn College released a whopping 600 pages of Brooklyn-specific data on emerging trends over the last 20 years, in nine areas ranging from population to education, the economy, health and the environment.

The Brooklyn Community Foundation commissioned these reports because, as Brooklyn became center-stage for new development and commerce in the city, we wanted to quantify the changes we were seeing and make informed predictions about our communities’ futures.

The data is also broken out by our 18 community districts, to track trends not just boroughwide, but also by neighborhood. After all, it doesn’t take a native Brooklynite to be the one tell you how much Williamsburg has changed since the first time they strolled down Bedford Avenue—be it in 1972, 1992 or 2002.

And, yes, the reports do show impressive growth and change. The boroughwide report presents figures for both 1990 and 2000 as compared to today. So while we may have only grown from 2.45 million to 2.55 million since 2000, over the last 20 years, Brooklyn has gained more than 260,000 new residents—slightly less than the total current population of Newark.

The overall numbers are interesting, but ultimately, it’s the stories behind the numbers that give us the full picture. And in no place is this truer than in North Brooklyn.

Although in the past decade the population in Community District 1—encompassing Williamsburg and Greenpoint—grew by a greater percentage (7.95 percent) and a larger number of additional residents (12,745) than any other community district in Brooklyn, the Latino and Polish populations fell by an almost equal percentage.

The median household income shot up from $26,325 in 2000 to $41,646. Approximately 17 percent of households make more than $100,000. Median rents have increased a staggering 35 percent—twice the rate for Brooklyn as a whole. And while poverty in CD 1 has dropped 6 percent over the decade to 28 percent, it’s safe to assume that many of those residents didn’t increase their incomes—they left.

The story behind these numbers has everything to do with city decisions to rezone formerly manufacturing land and upzone it to create residential development opportunities along the waterfront with its spectacular views of Manhattan. A fast new East River Ferry service followed and a cool new residential enclave became a reality.

Williamsburg and Greenpoint had already been growing and changing, but at a more gradual, organic pace over the years. Artists, writers and musicians had been migrating across the bridge for more than 20 years. But the rezoning in 2005 put that change process on steroids and the result has been thousands of new residents, hundreds of new stores and restaurants, and a new waterfront skyline of high rise development.

Many visitors are charmed and amazed by the “new” Bedford Avenue and the “old” Manhattan Avenue. The Southside of Williamsburg now has both bicycle shops and bodegas. Peter Luger’s is surrounded by a new restaurant row under the Williamsburg Bridge. The Northside of Williamsburg still has the Brooklyn Brewery, but it is also dotted with hip stores like Oak, Beacon’s Closet and Peachfrog.

So behind the numbers we find stories of gain and loss, comings and goings, greediness and goodness, and a big challenge to Brooklyn not to lose its soul to a new type of fragmentation along class and economic lines.

Are there civic values that underlie our understanding of what it means to be a Brooklynite?

Brooklyn has always been a special place, both a very big and a very small hometown of 2.5 million people (or thereabouts) that has managed to be neither alienating nor artificial.

As our borough grows, and as we consider what is behind the numbers, we need to embrace those civic values which broaden participation, foster collaboration and heal community divisions. And it’s important that we do it now, rather than look back with regret.

At the Brooklyn Community Foundation, we are investors in public good, catalysts for positive change and connectors of people to causes they care about. We believe we have it in ourselves to look change in the eye, but not lose our character and soul.

So join us – and let’s do good right here, right now!

By: Jamila Pringle

Over the past 10 years, Brooklyn has been at the center of a major development spree in which Atlantic Yards was just one part. From Carroll Gardens to Greenpoint, Crown Heights to Coney Island, the borough is getting a facelift that proponents say will bring new jobs and enhance quality of life, but opponents fear will rupture communities. Although much restoration and construction has been planned, some sites are seeing more change than others, with some showing no progress at all.

Gowanus Canal

Perched between Carroll Gardens and Park Slope, the Gowanus Canal is a far cry from the bustling cargo transportation center it once was. Through the years, the push to clean up this waterway and enhance the living experience for the community surrounding it has been rocky. Heavily polluted by former industrial neighbors and overflows from the sewage system, the area nonetheless attracted development interest—the Toll Brothers, a luxury construction company, was preparing to build $5 million in high-end residential units in the area—and the Bloomberg administration planned a clean-up. But over objections from developers and City Hall, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) added the area to its Superfund National Priorities List on March 2, 2010.

Since making this list, the state of the Gowanus Canal has continued to depreciate, according to Bill Appel, executive director of the Gowanus Canal Community Development Corporation, who opposed the Superfund designation. Appel says the clean-up is complicated by where the site is situated. “We are in an urban area. There is a difference when you have environmental issues in an urban area,” he says. “I’ve always said it is a 50-acre wasteland.”

The EPA did release a study of options for cleaning up the site last month, but there’s no word on when the cleaning will start. EPA administrator Judith Enck described this as a “step toward a full-scale cleanup that will protect people’s health and revitalize this urban waterway.”

Although the canal awaits remediation, progress is visible nearby on 3rd Avenue, where a property is being transformed into a Whole Foods.

Greenpoint/ Williamsburg Waterfront

When the city rezoned the Greenpoint/ Williamsburg waterfront in 2005 to permit more residential development, residents were promised more park space. The residential development has arrived, but the parks largely have not.

“The city got in a position where even though they controlled zoning they didn’t acquire property for these parks. The rezoning is expensive and the city has no money but these parks were promised,” says Dewey Thomson, a member of Community Board 1 and co-chair of the Greenpoint Waterfront Association for Parks and Planning Committee.

According to the Parks Department, the city has acquired some 16 acres of property toward the planned 28-acre Bushwick Inlet Park, and the public will be permitted access to at least some of that territory later this year. The city points to new, privately owned open space and a soon-to-be-completed multimillion-dollar public renovation of McCarren Pool as evidence that it has kept faith with its promise to the neighborhood. (There’s also a new state park in the area.) But half the proposed waterfront park remains in private hands and beyond the reach of the cash-strapped city, at least for now.

In addition to the concerns about parks, the rezoned are has seen residential displacement and the shuttering of several industrial businesses, whose landlords opted to seek more lucrative residential rents available under the new zoning.

The Brooklyn Navy Yard

The Brooklyn Navy Yard is in the process of constructing a major supermarket. The site will also include industrial space, creating the potential for hundreds of jobs in the area. Because of these prospective amenities, “this is truly a win-win-win for the people of Brooklyn,” Senator Chuck Schumer has said. Residents can expect a 74,000 square-foot supermarket and 79,000 square feet of additional retail space. A Brooklyn Navy Yard representative said that the project will be done in a few years, but no set date has been disclosed.

The most significant part of the current site might be Admirals Row, an 8-acre set of Civil War-era buildings. The transfer of the Admirals Row site from the Army to the Brooklyn Navy Yard Corporation, which manages the Brooklyn Navy Yard on behalf of the city, has taken 25 years, but a final agreement to do so was announced in late January. Nearly 127,000 square feet of industrial space will be developed on Admirals Row, but the plan also calls for the preservation of two historical sites.

Crown Heights Armory

Crown Height’s Troop C Armory, a 150,000-square foot building, is as huge as its future is unsettled. Over the years, the armory has been used for films such as “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (featuring Nicholas Cage), housed the National Guard and served as a homeless shelter. It is now vacant. Last month, a community meeting was held at Medgar Evers College focused on questions about this site; there were few answers.

Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has said he’ll allocate $1 million to form a Bedford-Union Armory Task Force. Some believe the group may oversee the conversion of the Armory into a resource like the Park Slope Armory, renovated in 2010, which now serves as a multi-purpose athletic and educational center. Students from NYU have taken interest and are working on a report to serve as a potential guide for the armory.

“It is really in the beginning right now,” said Carlos Scissura, senior adviser in the Brooklyn Borough President’s office. “It is in state hands and will be transferred into the hands of the city within the next few months.”

Brooklyn Bridge Park

Brooklyn residents are in for greenery and clean, modern designs at the Brooklyn Bridge Park where two main sites, Pier 1 and Pier 5, are in the midst of construction.

Nearing completion is Pier 5, a former Port Authority property used for shipping until the mid-80s. A new plan evolved for this site in 2009 when the Brooklyn Bridge Park Corporation decided to start demolishing pier sheds to make way for new developments. According to Helen Ryan, Vice President of Partnership for Brooklyn Bridge Park, “Pier 5 is our first large scale recreation which will be used for multi-recreational use with BBQ pits and umbrellas for [the] public.” Residents and visitors can expect this project to be completed by the fall of this year.

Also in the works is Pier 2, which will serve as an active sports court with six basketball courts, inline skating, swings and water fountains. By this spring, Brooklyn Bridge Park Corp. will start to repair the piles underneath the pier. Athletes won’t have to wait too long to take advantage of this site because, “we expect to complete that in the summer or fall of 2013,” says Ryan.

Developers are also working on a smaller project at Squibb Park Bridge, namely a pedestrian overpass that will connect Brooklyn Heights’ residents to the park to increase access to neighboring communities.

Coney Island

Located at what was once the Steeplechase Amusement Park on W. 16th Street and W. 19th Street, Coney Island’s Steeplechase Plaza is expected to cost approximately $29.5 million and create 144 construction jobs, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

The plaza is expected to offer more retail space, as well as public performances and art. At the heart of this will be the B&B Carousel, Coney Island’s last historic carousel, to be featured on the eastern side. Additions include 50 hand-carved wooden horses, 36 jumpers and two chariots. The cost of renewal is an estimated $2 million. The plaza and B&B Carousel will open by 2013.

By: Darren Sands

Once upon a time, a developer envisioned a mixed-used real estate development designed to bring big business to downtown Brooklyn. By June 1987—Brownsville’s Pearl Washington was a star rookie for the New Jersey Nets, and they stunk—a controversial deal, backed by Mayor Ed Koch and Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden, seemed all but inevitable. But that month, at a hearing before the now-defunct New York City Board of Estimate, a group representing 250 soon-to-be displaced residents argued that, if the project gained approval, state law required that it include housing because the developer was to receive tax breaks and state government subsidies.

The company was Forest City Ratner, and was owned by the family of a young lawyer who had recently resigned from his post as City Consumer Affairs Commissioner. His name was Bruce Ratner.

The project was MetroTech. At completion, it featured only commercial properties eventually leased by companies like Chase, J.P. Morgan and a host of several city and state agencies. The last building, 12 Metrotech Center, was completed in 2004.

But even if that group of residents and activists failed in getting MetroTech’s developer to offer broader benefits in exchange for subsidies, the episode foreshadowed a changing political landscape for builders in New York: Getting permission to construct a project was going to be easier if developers paid attention to a broad set of community desires.

This shift had two major implications. It meant, on the one hand, that developers had to figure out ways to make money beyond mere commercial development. But on the other hand, it suggested that developers had a fair amount of leverage. They could promise more than brick-and-mortar success. They could offer to create communities.

Over the following years, this trend would take firm hold at projects from Riverside South on the Hudson River to Melrose Commons in the South Bronx. But none approached the ambition of Ratner’s 2003 follow-up to MetroTech: Atlantic Yards, a 16-building complex featuring commercial and office space, thousands of apartments and an arena for the NBA’s nets.

It would earn Forest City Ratner an estimated $1 billion in profits. It would also displace over 400 families. In exchange, Ratner promised a slew of community benefits. The centerpiece was housing.

Historic promises

The real wonder of Atlantic Yards’ housing component as it was proposed was that it matched the project’s Frank Gehry-designed arena in both scale and ambition. It promised some 6,400 apartments, 2250 of which were reserved for low- to moderate-income families. The ratio of market-rate apartments to affordable units was 50-50. Of the affordable units, about half were promised to be “larger” two or three bedroom apartments.

Not only was the proportion of affordable housing unprecedented, the structure of the deal pioneered a new way of targeting subsidized housing. Traditionally, affordable housing ended up priced to best serve families with incomes close to 60 percent of Area Median Income, because that was the maximum level at which a development might use Low-Income Housing Tax Credits. But this practice left families below and just above that income level out of luck.

Atlantic Yards offered something different: Three tiers of non-market rate housing to serve distinct income groups.

Critics noted that because the income tiers were based—as federal affordable housing subsidies dictate—on regional measures of income, most of the “affordable” units at Atlantic Yards would be beyond the reach of many Brooklyn families. However, the sophistication of the deal impressed even some naysayers.

Delivery Delayed

But none of the promised housing development will be in place when the Nets tip off at the Arena next fall. Commonly known as B2, the first residential tower has not yet broken ground; Forest City Ratner asserts that construction will begin early this year.

But according to a fact sheet for B2, 88 percent of the units in the 350-unit building are either studios (130) or one-bedroom units (180). The other 40 units, or 12 percent, will be two-bedrooms. Critics are opposed to the plan because it threatens to set a precedent of perpetual transience.

“You have a significant number of families with children in our community,” says City Councilwoman Leticia James, a staunch opponent of the project since the beginning. “And if you build studios and one-bedrooms, that’s geared toward single adults, not families. What we need is stability and families that will have a nexus to the community.”

Plans for the remainder of the proposed residential buildings remain murky. Opponents to the project predict that an agreement between the New York City Economic Development Corporation and the Empire State Development Corporation could yield just 300 affordable units by 2020.

Still behind the deal

Supporters of the project seem resigned to the fact that the housing will be dramatically different from what was initially promised. Rather than cast aspersions on the community benefits agreement, former ACORN head Bertha Lewis blames economic conditions and litigation for reshaping the Atlantic Yards deal.

Lewis, now president of The Black Institute, which seeks to frame and promote underreported issues affecting African-Americans, headed ACORN when it controversially backed the Atlantic Yards deal in 2005.

“What we should have done is allow those in power to negotiate for us and pat us on our heads,” said Lewis. “Deal after deal, one agreement after another, if you don’t have someone overlooking that, things happen.”

Lewis has remained steadfast in her support of the project, even saying she’ll be “the most popular girl” when it’s completed.

While she understands the frustration of the project’s opponents who lament its broken promises, she says looking forward is the only way now.

“Looking back now, sure, it creates a different frame of mind. If the [arena] is going up in a different way than we all were told, wouldn’t it stand to reason that the housing piece would look different as well?”

A proposal for modular construction for the B2 tower remains a point of contention. It would save Ratner millions in construction costs, but all but assure smaller apartments. Forest City Ratner has invested in research, but no modular building of this scale has ever been executed. Lewis says she views this not as an obstacle, but as a challenge.

“When was the last time someone talked about manufacturing that could revolutionize how we do affordable housing? Not just housing, but how we build buildings? Not to mention construction sites are cleaner and greener.”

Lewis says she speaks with Ratner two or three times a month. She sometimes frames the housing issue in racial terms, claiming that some who opposed the Community Benefits Agreement privately lambasted the idea of having a “high-rise ghetto.”
She remains convinced the project will live up to its billing.
“You will see the first building go into the ground this year. We build housing, we don’t build arenas. If I didn’t believe [in this project] and to put faith with works, then what’s the point? No, I’m a true believer, so that’s why I’ve got to dig in every month.”
Mixed feelings

As it concerns modifications the housing component of the initial Atlantic Yards plan, sentiment among residents of the area is split; to some, the broken promises seemed an inevitable result of the recession and mounting lawsuits against Ratner and his company. To others fed up with the lack of progress, blaming the economy isn’t a valid excuse.

Alece Oxendine, 25, and a resident of Prospect Heights, knew there was something awry with the planning of the residential buildings when, during her walks to work over several months last year, the arena soared while the other proposed buildings never broke ground.

“My opinion is that we can’t protest it going up because, well, it’s up,” she says. “But what we can do is not being afraid to hold them accountable for what they promised. Accountability is key. Just writing out a plan for what they plan to do for the community isn’t going to work any longer.”

The New Jersey Nets recently coined the slogan, “Jersey Strong, Brooklyn Ready” on the eve of their big move. The organization’s lack of success (the team is 8-19 as of Feb. 9) in its last season in New Jersey remains an ironic, if not sad, footnote to the continuing saga over jobs, traffic and the economy at Atlantic Yards:

If its roster is still in flux, the Nets at least appear a have a home—more than anyone who’d hoped to live at Atlantic Yards will be able to say, at least in the near future.

By: Candace Amos

Though the hardwood in the Barclays Center Arena should be sparkling in time for Brooklyn Nets opening day in September 2012, that is more than can be said for the rest of the Atlantic Yards project. Forest City Ratner’s original proposal included 15,000 construction jobs, 10,000 permanent jobs, 8 acres of open space and 2,250 units of affordable housing, all to be completed over a 10-year span. Due to the rising cost of the project, developer Bruce Ratner has downsized the plan and introduced a new 25-year timetable.

As the opening approaches and the plan evolves, opponents of the project are claiming vindication. Business owners hold out hope for a silver lining amid what they say are mounting problems related to construction and traffic. And supporters or the project are curiously silent. BUILD (Brooklyn United for Innovative Local Development), a group which initially supported the project and accepted funding for job training from Forest City Ratner, did not return phone calls or emails seeking comment. Once billed as a linchpin of community support for the Ratner plan, hasn’t posted a new press released to its website since 2004. Chief Atlantic Yards booster Bertha Lewis has kept a lower profile since the dissolution of the group she led, Acorn (but did talk to Brooklyn Bureau’s Darren Sands.)

Ratner’s chief opponent in the debate over Atlantic Yards was Don’t Destroy Develop Brooklyn (DDDB) co-founder Daniel Goldstein. A resident of one of the properties Ratner wished to claim by eminent domain, Goldstein fought against the project from the beginning. In April 2010, after a lengthy court fight, Goldstein agreed to sell his apartment to Ratner for $3 million. But he’s still opposed to the development, and is not surprised that the reality of Atlantic Yards is failing to match earlier promises. “I never thought the proposed plan was ever feasible,” Goldstein says. “By allowing Ratner to get control of 22 acres of land, he won’t build unless it’s financially feasible to him.”

Indeed, many community dwellers tell City Limits they feel left in the dark by the lack of communication with Forest City Ratner. Community groups continue to push for answers to fill in the gaps. Relations between the developer and the neighborhood have been poor , according to Dean Street Block Association President Peter Krashes. “Ratner is not interested in engaging with the community. They won’t respond to invitations to meetings,” he says. “We don’t know the routes of traffic, the parking situation or how trash will be picked up. The area will be worse than anticipated.”

Forest City Ratner has shared bits and pieces of information with the community regarding the expected timeline and result of the $5 billion project –but most details remain to be seen. With new traffic patterns, noise and a possible heavy influx of foot traffic in the offing, reaction to the project has gone from excitement to dismay for some.

Christian Whitted, 43, owner of New York Chess & Games, at 192 Flatbush Avenue, is ambivalent. “Of course, eventually, it would be great for commerce, but there is a concern of noise pollution, crime and traffic. In fact, they’ve changed the traffic patterns to be less convenient,” he says. “This is now ‘No-Parkslope.’”

Forest City Ratner’s Transportation Demand Management Plan has been pushed back twice and is now set to be revealed in May, which is only four months before the opening of the sporting arena.

“By then it will be too late to change anything,” says Gib Veconi, treasurer of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council.

The plan’s goal is to discourage visitors from driving. But Forest City is only required to reduce the number of cars in a half-mile radius of the arena, critics say, which means the congestion problem could get pushed further out.

“This is a huge problem for the busiest traffic intersection in Brooklyn,” says Danae Oratowski, chair of the Prospect Heights Neighborhood Development Council. Nor is traffic the only concern. “The promises on open space for the community have not materialized,” she adds. “People have gotten really angry. As we get closer to the arena I know there is going to be a big outcry.”

Still, some harbor optimism. Quiana Di Bari, 36, owner of Va Beh’ at 446 Dean Street, says the stench of construction work is a concern to her Italian eatery. “I think it is uncomfortable, but I am hoping that in the long run the project will be great,” she says.”The smell of the construction work and the noise has been an issue. It’s not appetizing when your customers are trying to have dinner.”
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By: Julie Turkewitz

Inside a squat, unmarked red brick building in Sunset Park, it looks like fists are about to fly. Expletives, liquor bottles and two metal chairs soar across a mirrored room crowded with bodies.

“You are not gay!” bellows one young man, swinging the bottle. “You are a heterosexual man! This is not how I raised you!”

Welcome to Tuesday night rehearsal at the Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, a nonprofit organization that encourages communities on the margin to create and tour theatrical work based on real-life struggles. All of the actors here are LGBT youth. All of them ran away from home or were thrown out by family, or some combination of the two. And all of them are acting out scenes they’ve actually lived through, in many cases taking on the roles of the parents, principals and peers who spurned them.
“The entire point of the Theatre of the Oppressed is to change the meaning of the word ‘Oppressed’ in ‘Theatre of the Oppressed,’ says Avathar St. Vincent, 19. “It’s given me a place to take action on behalf of my community.”

Ava was the first to show up for rehearsal when the director of Oppressed, Katy Rubin, put out a call for participants in the fall. He is a transgender male—born female, he identities as a man—and the emotional tenor of his story is similar to that of his fellow actors.

But in many ways, Ava is different than the rest of the Oppressed troupe, making him something of an outcast among outcasts. Bespeckled, with a mop of auburn hair, he is more reserved than the others. He totes around a thick novel and hangs back when new folks enter the room. While most of the group has urban roots, he comes from a small religious community of 3,000 in Western Ohio.

A year ago, he was just another drummer in the high school band, taking advanced courses at the local college. At the time, he identified as female. There were no openly gay or transgender people in the area–when rumors began that a student at a nearby Christian university was homosexual, that student hung himself.

It was in that environment that Ava’s deeply religious parents began to suspect he fell outside of their heterosexual ideal. Soon, they began threatening conversion therapy, hospital time, even arrest. Daily life became excrutiating. And so Ava graduated, hopped on a Greyhound bus, and joined the sea of homeless kids navigating the New York social services system. He also changed his name, and began to identify as a man.

When he arrived, Ava found the basics–food, transient shelter. What he hadn’t prepared for was the infighting among homeless youth. “I didn’t expect the animosity that I found in the community,” he says. “I expected more people like me, that are just sort of assed-out because of their family situations, but there’s also a lot of drug issues. And sometimes I feel that it’s just sort of me.”

And so the Oppressed troupe has provided him both an outlet and a refuge while he waits to hear back from NYU, where he hopes to begin studying forensic psychology in the fall.

On Feb. 9, Ava and the troupe will perform their play at the Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center on the Lower East Side, allowing the audience a window into their most intimate challenges. After the performance, actors will invite audience members to the stage to take on the roles of various characters and offer new solutions.

Rubin, the director and “Lead Joker,” of Theatre of the Oppressed NYC, calls this audience participation the “most crucial element of the show.” She started the organization just 14 months ago, inspired by a model developed in the 1950s and 1960s by a Brazilian theatre director. Already she has four active troupes, and she conducts shorter workshops with groups that include African refugees and victims of sex trafficking. Pending funding, she aims to kickstart another regular troupe by the fall.

“I wouldn’t want my parents to see this play,” says Ava. “For people that are truly that far on one side of the line, nothing is really going to change their mind. But for people that are in the middle, or already understand us a bit, it’s going to give them a more clarified sense of what’s going on, and you know, a chance to see what they can do to help.”

Attend the play, “Performing Gender Pronouns”
Thursday, Feb. 9, 7 p.m.
Celemente Soto Vélez Community Center
107 Suffolk Street,
New York, NY 10002
Free
www.theatreoftheoppressednyc.org

By: Paul Bufano and An Phung

The storm was not supposed to happen. Instead of a leafy autumn in New York, with beautiful foliage shading children out for Halloween trick or treating, the city was pummeled by an unusually early snowstorm.

The cost of that damage reached untold millions of dollars, and was made worse by something as simple as an autumn leaf.

Instead of a typical winter scene where snow falls amid bare branches, the city’s trees were filled with leaves. Experts, including the National Weather Service, says that foliage was like having countless tiny baskets catching the unusually wet and heavy snow. The added weight sheared off many more limbs than might otherwise have fallen.

On a larger level, the storm was a stark example of a looming dilemma facing New York City. It is a problem entangled with good intentions –from beautifying the city to lowering the high asthma levels that plague poor neighborhoods. It is exacerbated by older trees that are now iconic to the city, yet were virtually unknown in New York a century ago. And this problem comes with a growing price tag the Bloomberg administration is finding difficult to pay.

More trees, less money

For the past five years, the Bloomberg administration has been rapidly planting more trees in New York City. The Parks Department is the leading agency for the effort, borrowing money to help pay for the program, and it has attracted private groups to join.

The mayor and others promote this ambitious plan not simply for framing an urban jungle with tinges of nature. Trees, by reducing carbon pollution from cars and elsewhere, have emerged as a key tool for New York City to combat its high levels of asthma, particularly among children in poorer neighborhoods. Trees also cut the levels of the city’s damage to the earth’s atmosphere.

This arbor upsurge comes with a catchy title that encapsulates its goal, MillionTreesNYC. Residents can have the cost of planting trees in their yard paid by the city. Private partners like Con Edison have joined the effort. In the end, the city hopes three of every 10 trees planted under the program are on private land. The majority will be in city parks and along streets.

The effort is promoted countless ways. Boy scouts are encouraged to help with forestation. And publicity even recently included comedian Jerry Stiller, in a city park, reciting a classic Joyce Kilmer poem that begins, “I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree.”

Just weeks before the October snowstorm savaged the city’s trees, the city held a ceremony in Harlem celebrating a milestone. It planted its 500,000th tree, and it reached that halfway point toward reaching its goal a year ahead of schedule.

But underneath the publicity is a growing budget gap. The program’s budget has been cut every year since 2009. The forecasted reduction for 2012, compared with a prior year, is a cut that exceeds 20 percent.

Maintenance cuts hurt

After the trees are planted, they must be cared for. And for all trees in the city, maintenance is a burden borne by the Parks Department, which faces an overall 12 percent budget cut this year. City officials declined repeated requests to specify exactly how much will be reduced in tree maintenance, but they did acknowledge it, too, will be affected.

Budget cuts have included a hiring freeze for just about every city agency. For the Parks Department, less staff means fewer workers to prune trees. Trimming trees not only includes removing diseased and damaged branches, it also stimulates tree growth.

Up until three years ago, city trees were pruned every seven years. That excluded emergency cutting. Now the pruning cycle is longer. Trees get trimmed only once every 10 years. With the next round of funding cuts, according to Andrew Newman, project coordinator at MillionTreesNYC, the city may well make it even longer, with a 15-year pruning cycle. A Parks Department spokeswoman says a 15-year cycle is possible, but no decision will be made until the impact of budget cuts becomes clear.

Along with less money and fewer workers, there is a shortage of key equipment. For instance, the city only owns two stump removers. This is heavy machinery that handles the difficult task of removing the remnants of trees from the ground. That includes extruding trees killed by storms. The job is more than just about removing stumps, according to Newman. The city needs to get rid of those stumps to clear land for planting new trees.

The Parks Department spokeswoman, Tara Kiernan, says the shortage of stump removers is not an issue because most of the stump removal is contracted out. The department maintains they do not have “declining maintenance abilities,” rather they have been asked “to do more with less.”

“MillionTrees has dealt with maintenance from its inception,” says Morgan Monaco, Parks’ Director of MillionTreesNYC. “We have a competitive bidding for the contracting of trees that includes planting and maintenance for two years, which are the most vulnerable years for trees. This means if there is anything wrong with a tree, or if it dies, the contractors are responsible for it. It’s cheaper than doing it internally.”

A symbol ages

One of the challenges facing the city’s tree maintainers has nothing to do with the budget, and dates to well before the Bloomberg administration. Its imprint is on the city Parks Department, a well-known logo on signs throughout landmarks like Central Park, and emblazoned even on t-shirts sold by the city. It’s a full, five- pointed leaf—the leaf of the London Plane.

The London plane, according to a city historian, is not a tree native to New York. In fact, the London plane was scarcely known to the region a century ago, and traces its lineage to European cities. In the 1930s, Robert Moses, the controversial city planner, began expanding city parks and favored the London plane. It is now the most common tree in the city, and also the most common on city land. While exact figures are difficult to determine, a 2005 census found about 15 percent of the city’s trees are London planes.

The London plane tree is just about everything you want in an urban tree: it strongly resists harm from pests, pollution and urban conditions.

The problem with London planes is that they are getting old. Trees continue to grow as they age, and older trees are more difficult to prune. Even worse, London planes create expansive canopies, so their long branches have a greater tendency to shear off in storms. In the October snowstorm, this was evident particularly in Central Park, as huge limbs shattered on the ground from the weight of the heavy snow.

“The danger with so many London Planes having been planted during the Moses era was that it created a monoculture,” says Monaco. “A single invasive species could take out many trees at once.”

The city now undertakes a meticulous process for determining which mix of trees is most appropriate for the city.

But even as new trees are added, London planes are still the most common tree in the city, and will continue to pose problems as they continue to get older.

Mother Nature’s role

A little more than a year before the Halloween snowstorm, on Sept. 16, 2010, a tornado – an event so unusual that one news outlet’s incredulous headline was “A New York Tornado?” – tore through Queens, Staten Island, Brooklyn and Manhattan. Little noticed in coverage of the damage was the role played by city-owned trees, savaged by winds that exceeded a hundred miles per hour. In 417 claims, residents reported that uprooted trees and broken branches fell on houses, tore off power lines and crushed cars.

Documents obtained by CUNY under the state’s Freedom of Information Law show the city faced claims for more than $2.5 million to pay for injuries and damage. Some claims do not specify the dollar amount of the damages, so the extent of the toll claimed by residents may be far greater.

Some of those filing claims alleged the city is negligent in the way it maintains its trees. They charged the city poorly maintained those trees, allowing large diseased and rotted branches and trees to loom without being trimmed away.

One case alleged permanent injury after one branch of a diseased, city-owned tree sheared off by the tornado left a Forest Hills resident with broken ribs, leg, foot and clavicle and a collapsed lung. The case, seeking unspecified damages, claimed the victim has suffered permanent damage.

What remains unclear is what the actual bill will be for the city. More than a year after the tornado, only five claims totaling $8,098.12 have been paid. A little more than half of the claims were rejected by the city, but those complaints could move to local courts. The rest remain open.

For the October 2011 snowstorm, the city’s bill stemming from tree damage is harder to determine. The Bloomberg administration declined to project a price tag, but 31 claims were made, none of which have been settled. MillionTreesNYC coordinator Nathan says a lack of resources has kept the city from quantifying the overall cost of the damage.

In addition to damage to homes and cars, city reports show the Parks Department got 552 work orders for hanging tree limbs and 1,272 work orders for downed limbs after the storm. But that may well not be the final tally. Four days after the storm, the city no longer logged resident storm-related requests because it faced growing duplicate requests.

The Parks Department says it’s working hard to address the danger that severe weather, which some believe will increase in frequency and intensity as the globe warms, poses to city trees and the people, cars and houses that happen to be under them. The department prunes upwards of 35,000 trees a year through its block pruning program, according to Kiernan. And the damage caused by recent storms, she contends, says more about the ferocity of the weather than the vulnerability of the city’s trees.

“Even the healthiest of trees and limbs could have sustained severe damage,” she says.

The city says it has taken measures to ensure that trees are planted to withstand worsening weather conditions. Tree pits are now dug deeper to allow sufficient space for roots to grow, and some trees are planted with an eye to protecting telephone wires. Tree species are selected based on landscape conditions, with heartier trees (Oaks, Japanese Zelkova, Ginkgo, Sweetgum and Japanese Pagoda Trees among them) being planted on city streets to resist engine exhaust, poor soil quality, urban heat island effects, drought and salt content.

“Even in the last few hurricanes and snow storms we’ve experienced, less than 1 percent of trees uprooted were planted within the last four years through MillionTreesNYC, which is a testament to the success of our revised planting methods,” Kiernan says.

Benefits as well as costs

While tress can have a costly impact, the need for them is strong. Moses brought in London planes for beautification. The Bloomberg administration, armed with health and environmental data, points to more immediate and practical concerns in its push for more tree cover.

New York has an asthma rate that exceeds national levels, and it is worse in low-income neighborhoods. Trees absorb many pollutants linked to asthma. MillionTreesNYC targeted six neighborhoods with exceptionally high asthma rates, one being East Harlem. The neighborhood ranked in the top five for both asthma-related emergency room visits and hospitalization rates for the entire city in the last three years. Cuts in city tree spending sparked concerns at a recent public hearing in East Harlem.

In a tightly packed room on Park Avenue, where Community Board 11 of East Harlem holds their monthly Parks and Recreation meeting, 44 year-old Raymond Figueroa voiced his frustration about tree planting and maintenance.

“Trees add to the sense of community,” says Figueroa. “But when you don’t have access to greenery and life that trees represent in dense areas of poverty, you’re just warehousing people.”

He wants more trees. Figueroa remembers a childhood at Johnson Public Housing on Lexington Avenue where seeing trees was a rare site. But thanks to the Bloomberg program, he now sees more trees than ever before when he steps out of his apartment near 127th St. near 7th Ave.

Local resident Richard Toussaint, 67, counts himself among the supporters.

“Any increase of trees in Harlem is good thing because of the high asthma rates here,” he says. “Asthma is always a concern and should always be a concern.”

Local trees, global cause

In addition to curtailing pollutants that contribute to asthma, the Bloomberg tree program is also aimed at cutting the city’s carbon footprint.

New York City’s urban forests absorb 1.35 million tons of carbon, according to a research report by the United States Department of Agriculture. The monetary value associated with carbon storage is based on the estimated social costs of carbon dioxide emissions. For New York City, this translates to $24.9 million.

Certain trees—especially big trees—are known to better combat ozone (which contributes to smog) and particle pollution, according to David Nowak, researcher at the United States Department of Agriculture.

“Trees can directly remove ozone from the atmosphere,” says Nowak. “So when you have big trees that exchange a lot of gases, they tend to remove more ozone.”

There is also a secondary benefit from trees. They absorb rainwater from the ground, which moves through the tree and evaporates into the atmosphere. That helps cools the air, which also cuts down on ozone, he says.

“They basically act as pumps through this evaporation process to move the water from the soil to the atmosphere,” says Nowak. “They keep this water cycle moving, which is huge for air temperatures.”

There is also a secondary benefit from trees. They channel more water into the atmosphere and keep moisture in the ground. THIS IS UNCLEAR—HOW CAN THEY DO BOTH? That helps cools the air, which also cuts down on ozone, he says.

Of the trees favored by the Bloomberg administration for plantings, Nowak identifies a few that are on the USDA’s list of top tier trees for combating ozone. These include the Norway Maple and the Silver Maple, which rank among the more common trees in the city.

Elm and conifer trees, which are trees that produce cones, are good for absorbing particle pollution because their leaves are rough and small. Rough leaves catch and store more particulate matter from the atmosphere.

“Think of it like a coat,” says Nowak. “If I got out on a dirty day, my jacket is going to be dirtier, especially if it has wool fibers, so you can see it accumulate when your jacket turns brown.”

A million trees, a lot more caretakers?

As the Bloomberg administration pushes to plant the second half of its million trees, it may well be relying more on others to care for them.

“We have been giving free training to teach New Yorkers how to properly care for trees,” says Monaco. “In doing so everyone can pitch in and help their local trees.”

According to Kiernan, there are over 10,000 trained citizen pruners across New York City.

Neighborhood non-profit groups like Trees New York have helped to partially offset shortfalls in city spending by motivating community residents to volunteer their time to care for their local parks and trees. “We’ve been working to educate the community about the importance of trees, especially in East Harlem with the high prevalence of asthma,” says Samuel Bishop, education director at Trees New York.

Trees New York teaches residents about proper watering, mulching, planting and basic maintenance. It also conducts educational programs with schools, teaching children to work hands on with plants.

“There has always been more need for tree care than need for funds to plant them,” says Bishop. “There are more people in New York than trees, so if everyone helped out a little bit there shouldn’t be much of a problem.”

By: Aparna Narayana

Javaid Syed knows about the vicissitudes of business ownership.

An immigrant from Pakistan, he transformed a small hotel business in upstate New York into Syed Enterprises Inc., a franchise group with 22 city-wide Burger King and Popeyes locations and close to 1,000 employees.

Over the course of 40 years, some ventures went belly up; others needed to be diversified. These he describes as the inevitable risks of entrepreneurship. But a more recent challenge has him crying foul: the proliferation of mobile food vendors in Bay Ridge, where his business is based, over the past two to three years.

It’s small business versus even-smaller business in this southern Brooklyn community, as owners of both chain fast-food joints and smaller independent restaurants complain that food carts are siphoning off customers. Already hard hit by the recession since 2008—more than 30 storefronts are estimated to be vacant here—brick-and-mortar merchants charge mobile vendors with cannibalizing sales while operating under more favorable conditions that give them an edge.

In recent years, Syed partially shut down his Burger King restaurant in Bay Ridge and laid off staff—moves that he attributes in “big part” to two falafel carts at the intersection of 86th Street and Fifth Avenue, down the block from his fast-food business.

“Ever since they came in, I have lost 30 percent of my revenues,” said Syed, during an interview conducted at his offices on the Burger King’s third floor; below, the first floor bustled with diners, but the tables stood empty in the second floor. “They have 20 items on the menu. They’re carrying full restaurants in that little hut.”

Broader complaints

The scale of operations of the new food vendors—as opposed to the traditional hot-dog seller or pretzel man—is stoking resentment among local businesses, the local community board reports.

The large mobile carts—replete with grills, propane tanks, generators and illuminated signs—have also riled residents and local preservationists, who complain about damage to sidewalks, encroachment into public spaces, and unauthorized changes to streetscape, according to Josephine Beckmann, district manager of Board 10.

“Our property owners and business owners are frustrated and upset,” she said, adding that the food carts’ elaborate menus and multiple staff make them, in effect, “restaurants on wheels.”

The controversy extends beyond the size and scale of their vending operations. Brick-and-mortar merchants, who pay rent, taxes and insurance costs that mobile food vendors do not, resent this “unfair competitive distinction,” Beckmann explained.

In addition, merchants in Bay Ridge pay additional fees to the area’s two business improvement districts, or BIDs, for supplemental sanitation services, streetscape enhancements and marketing efforts—a cost of doing business that food carts don’t share, according to Patrick Condren, executive director of the 86th Street and Fifth Avenue BIDs. This makes the issue of mobile food vending especially fraught, local officials said.

Syed and other local merchants contrasted their “six-figure” annual rents plus other costs—including worker’s compensation, general liability, and property and disability insurance—to the nominal license and permit fees paid by food cart vendors. A city food vending license costs $50 and food cart permit costs $200, renewable every two years.

“This guy pays no rent, has no liabilities, but is allowed to plop down in front of us,” charged Syed.

A different set of costs

But David Weber, president of the New York City Food Truck Association, disputed the contention that mobile food vendors pay no rent. Their “rent,” he explained, takes the form of costs for required parking at a Department of Health-approved commissary — which mobile food operators in Bay Ridge peg at $1,000 a month.

Weber pointed out that this cost was significant to mobile food vendors: “A food truck never does the revenue that a restaurant does.” Nor are they exempt from related costs, such as disability insurance and workers’ compensation, he added.

“It’s the same if you’re a restaurant or a temporary food establishment or a mobile food vending operation,” he said. “The city has the same requirements from a legal standpoint.”

Weber, who himself co-owns both restaurants and food trucks under the Rickshaw Dumpling brand, prefers to see them as complementary business models that bring choice to the marketplace.

“Every customer will be served best by the business meeting most of their needs,” he explained. “A food truck is great when it’s a sunny day and it’s convenient for people to grab something on the go. On a rainy day, it’s not so great.”

He also refuted the allegation that food vendors dump their garbage into city trash receptacles. “There’s good operators and bad operators; it’s not the standard for our industry,” he said.

The city responds

Meanwhile, the city Department of Health contested claims that restaurants are always open and subject to food safety inspection, while food carts face neither on-site spot checks nor sanitation grading.

“Department inspectors perform operational inspections in areas where mobile food vendors are located,” a spokesperson said by email. “These inspections check for virtually the same food safety requirements as those required of restaurants, and carts and trucks are issued violations for not meeting regulations.”

But a letter-grading system for sanitary violations was not yet in place for mobile food vendors, because the city would “have to consider a way to afford mobile food vendors the opportunity for due process, as is done for restaurants,” the email added.

For Mahmoud Musleh, manager of one of the falafel carts that has Syed all riled up, the complaints from local businesses boil down to a simple fact—professional rivalry.

“We sell for a fair price, and we make a lot of business,” said Musleh, a Palestinian immigrant. “The problem (for restaurant owners) is the economy is going down. No one wants to pay more than five, six dollars for lunch or dinner.”

Bay Ridge, with its multitude of vibrant commercial corridors, may be the borough’s epicenter of protests over food vending, but complaints are spreading even to neighborhoods with less powerful merchants’ associations.

According to Shawn Campbell, district manager of Board 14, which includes Kensington and Midwood, local businesses were “chagrined” when a food cart appeared on a sidewalk off Cortelyou Road, a heavily trafficked “zero visibility” street where merchants are not allowed to display wares or set up tables on sidewalk space beyond their property line.

Marnee Elias-Pavia, district manager of Board 11, which includes Bensonhurst and Bath Beach, similarly reported concern from business owners about the appearance of food carts on streets where general vending is restricted.

Questions about regulation

At a Brooklyn Borough Hall meeting in December, officials from three of the city agencies that regulate mobile food vendors—the Departments of Health, Police and Consumer Affairs—explained to a gathering of district managers the challenges behind vendor enforcement.

The multiplicity and complexity of vending rules—general versus food versus veterans—as well as conflicting regulations among the different agencies make enforcement difficult, according to these district managers. Traffic rules, for example, forbid vending on sidewalks, but mobile food vending rules permit it, they explained.

According to Beckmann, city officials at the December meeting acknowledged the problem created by confusing rules and discussed steps for improvement.

“We’re trying to problem solve this, but how to fix it we don’t know,” she said. “That’s the next step.”

In June 2009, Bay Ridge officials requested the city to add food vending restrictions to the 86th Street BID area, where general vending is already restricted. In June of 2010, they extended the request to the Fifth Avenue BID.

In its response, the city wrote that it “continues to believe that a comprehensive review of street vending regulations is warranted” and that “agency efforts have been focused on that purpose.” But no further action has been taken on the requests since then, Beckmann added.

Weber disagreed with calls for enhanced vendor enforcement, arguing that food trucks and brick-and-mortar restaurants serve different customer needs and compete fairly under existing rules.

“I don’t think it’s the place for a municipality to intervene and regulate competition between these different business models,” he said.

By: Jarrett Murphy

It’s always been moving to see Brooklynites move. In a poem called “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” Walt Whitman could barely contain himself: “Crowds of men and women attired in the usual costumes! how curious you are to me! On the ferry-boats, the hundreds and hundreds that cross, returning home, are more curious to me than you suppose.”

Straphangers shoe-horning themselves onto a packed L train or waiting endlessly for the B41 bus might sometimes find Brooklyn’s commuting crowds more contemptible than curious. But a new report from Brooklyn College’s Center for the Study of Brooklyn, finds that despite rising fares and crowded platforms, more Brooklynites are using mass transit—even in outlying areas where taking the train takes a lot of time.

The percentage of Brooklynites who use mass transit increased from 56 percent in the 2000 Census to 60 percent in the 2007-2009 American Community Survey, also put out by the Census Bureau. The share that drove slipped from 32 percent to 26 percent.

Brooklyn uses the MTA slightly more than people citywide—55 percent use mass transit to get to work—and drives slightly less than the whole city, where 30 percent take their cars to work.

But compared to the rest of the state and the country, the reliance on mass transit is stunning. Only 27 percent of Empire State residents take public transportation to their jobs; some 62 percent drive. Nationally, a mere 5 percent of commuters use mass transit, while 87 percent take their cars to work.

A look inside the trends

Those facts and hundreds of others are documented in a set of Neighborhood Reports the Center for the Study of Brooklyn released on Thursday. The 19 reports cover Brooklyn at-large and its 18 community boards, examining demographics, jobs, poverty, crime, health, the environment, housing and more.

As City Limits detailed last year, few urban areas in America have the kind of cachet Brooklyn boasts, and in the past decade New York’s largest borough has only become more of a destination. But the broad-brush picture of Brooklyn as the epicenter of cool masks important details.

“Many of the basic indicators for the borough as a whole show that we’re doing relatively well compared with ten and twenty years ago,” Gretchen Maneval, director of the Center for the Study of Brooklyn, told City Limits. “However, as a subtext to this prosperity, immense disparities emerge when we look at data on the neighborhood level,” she added. “In other words, while we celebrate and build upon our recent successes, there is still change to be made.”

The Center was launched in 2005 with funding from the organization now known as the Brooklyn Community Foundation (which also helps fund the Brooklyn Bureau). It began in mid-2009 to conduct extensive research on social indicators in Brooklyn.

The statistical reports released Thursday are a prelude to a comprehensive narrative report looking at key issues in the borough, called the Brooklyn Trends Report, that is due out later this year. The Center plans for public forums to discuss the findings of both reports.

Change, progress, concerns

Some of the findings in the Neighborhood Reports include:

• Demographics: Brooklyn’s population is less Asian and Latino and more black than the city as a whole. Asians, for instance, make up 9.4 percent of the borough and 11.8 percent of the city. Latinos are under 20 percent of Brooklyn and more than 27 percent citywide. Less than a quarter of New York City is black but roughly a third of Brooklyn is. But while Asians are a small presence in Brooklyn, their footprint is growing fastest, increasing by nearly two percentage points from 2000 to 2009.
• Language: Language reflects the demographic change. English and Spanish are still spoken in most households, but their combined share has slipped from 78 percent in 1990 to 71 percent in 2007/2009. In 1990, more Brooklynites spoke Italian and Yiddish at home than Chinese. Now, Chinese, Russian and Yiddish round out the top 5 tongues.
• Poverty: Poverty decreased borough-wide from 2000 to 2009, but was still higher than outside Brooklyn: 21.2 percent of Brooklynites were living in poverty in the most recent set of data, compared to 18.3 percent citywide and 13.7 percent across New York State.
• Housing: Forty-four percent of Brooklyn homeowners spend more than 30 percent of their income on housing and 24 percent devoted half their income to paying a mortgage. But if the picture on the ownership side is distressing, it is downright grim for renters: 52 percent of renters in Brooklyn spend more than the recommended 30 percent of their income on rent and nearly 29 percent spend more than half their money on housing.
• Education: 2010-2011 graduation and college-readiness rates in Brooklyn lagged behind the citywide averages, but Brooklyn is generally better educated now than in 2000, with the share of people without a diploma or GED shrinking from 31 percent to 22 percent and the number with at least a bachelor’s degree shooting from 22 percent to 29 percent.

Other juicy stats abound: Asthma rates have slipped slightly, but so has recycling. Most Brooklynites say they’re in “good” or “very good” health, but more believe their health is “fair or poor” than “excellent.” Violent crime is down, but the cost of incarcerating the Brooklyn adults who went to prison in 2009 will be more than $300 million over the course of their sentences. Spending per capita on culture in Brooklyn is around half what Manhattan boasts. More of Brooklyn is registered to vote than in the city at large, but less actually did so in the 2008 presidential election.

Data with limits and potential

Statistics, of course, reflect a moment in time and the phrasing of a question. The Brooklyn report reports a decrease (from 15 percent in 2000 to 13 percent in 2007/2009)in the number of “disconnected youth”—people aged 16 to 24 who are neither in school nor working—that runs counter to what one would expect given that unemployment rates for that group hit 19 percent nationally in 2009.

“Data about a particular topic should not be viewed as the definitive truth when being used to inform policy, funding or programming decisions,” Maneval warns. “It’s imperative that in addition to considering the data, we also hear from those who live and work in a community about their experiences, and their perspectives.”

Meanwhile, the differences between overall Brooklyn trends and reality in particular neighborhoods can be striking.

In Community Board 1, which covers Greenpoint and Williamsburg, median income rose 27 percent from 2000 to 2007/2009. About five miles away, in Community Board 5, encompassing City Line and East New York, income rose a mere 3 percent. The foreclosure rate in CB1 was 9.4 per 1,000 properties; in CB5, it was 56.4 percent. There was twice as much violent crime, and there were twice as many stop-and-frisk encounters in CB5. The high-school graduation rate was 38 percent higher in CB1.

Yet, for all their differences, both districts had a poverty rate of about 28 percent – substantially above the borough average.

For Marilyn Gelber, the president of the Brooklyn Community Foundation, getting data that paints such a complex picture fulfills the hope that accompanied the creation of community boards in the mid-1970s. At the time, Gelber was a young city planner.

“Our goal was to bring government closer to the community and provide residents with useful data about what local government was doing, and what it was spending in their neighborhoods,” Gelber says. “In some ways, this project represents to me coming back full circle to reflect on change in Brooklyn—looking on a community by community basis, seeing what’s changed and what hasn’t, the waves of new residents, the lasting loyalty of Brooklyn lifers, and the excitement of imagining what the future might be.”

Brooklyn underground (and on the bus)

In Community Board 5, it can take an hour and 15 minutes to ride mass transit to Manhattan, and only 30 minutes driving. Still, the share of residents there taking mass transit to work rose from 54 percent in 2000 to 63 percent in 2009, while drivers slipped from 38 percent to 29 percent of the population.

Of course, not all Brooklyn residents work on the west side of the East River. If going to Manhattan, “I would take the train because I would much rather be stuck in the train then stuck in traffic,” says area resident Joseph Saez, 24, “but for the most part I stay Brooklyn-bound, I only head to Manhattan when I go see my girlfriend.”

The ride into central Manhattan is only slightly shorter in parts of Community Board 15, which covers neighborhoods like Sheepshead Bay. Yet there, too, transit use edged up.

The same is true in Community Board 10, which encompasses Bay Ridge. There, 17-year-old freelance musician Corey Harkins says mass transit offers both aesthetic and practical advantages. “I like taking the train because you are out in the open, experiencing the city more. Plus you always meet new people and a chance of interacting with them,” he says. What’s more, “there are bus stop and trains almost everywhere.”

Even in Community Board 18, which covers a swath of coastal Brooklyn from Canarsie to Marine Park and is the rare area where more people drive than ride mass transit, public transit use grew and driving shrank over the past decade.

That’s not always by choice: People who can’t afford cars might drive if they could. “My neighborhood is really isolated from the subway system,” says Mike O’Brien, 27, who works at Bloomingdale’s. “You have to take a bus to the train and there is no rhyme or reason to the bus schedule so when I had my car I would drive to a nearby train stop and leave it there.”

But having a car wouldn’t change some commuters’ approach. Jamie Christian, 23, a substitute teacher, was asked if he’d ever consider driving to work. “No, because driving in the city sucks,” he said, “especially finding parking. It’s impossible.”

By: Catherine M. Abate

It’s one of parents’ biggest fears. A teenage son or daughter succumbs to peer pressure, making a life-altering decision simply to fit in with a group. Implicit in this fear is parents’ acknowledgement that teens have a uniquely powerful influence over one another.

Research supports what most of us know from experience: messages have a higher likelihood of getting through – and changing attitudes and behaviors – when recipients believe that the messengers are similar to themselves. This phenomenon is especially prevalent among teens, whose still-developing brains respond strongly to social rewards.

While many fear the effects of peer influence on teens, others see it as a tool that, when harnessed properly, can be used for positive outcomes. That’s the philosophy behind the peer education programs of Community Healthcare Network’s Teens P.A.C.T. (Positive Actions and Choices for Teens). Peer education is based on the premise that young people are more likely to change their behavior if peers they like and trust advocate change. To be effective, it requires careful understanding of the context in which young people live.

Teens P.A.C.T. trains selected “Peer Leaders” in communication and community action project development, and educates them about relationships, STIs and contraceptives. After eight weeks of training, they are entrusted with the task of empowering young New Yorkers to make healthy life choices. As part of this mission, Teens P.A.C.T. launched “More Than Just Sex,” a unique initiative in which Peer Leaders write, direct, produce and act in a series of PSAs that address sexuality, teen pregnancy, prevention of STIs and HIV and unhealthy relationships.

Click here to view the “More Than Just Sex” PSAs.

Designed to grab the attention of inner-city youths by reflecting their realities, the PSAs shed light on truths that some adults find concerning. In particular, some have criticized the words that the teens use to discuss sex. Such critics either don’t realize how teens talk today, or don’t understand the importance of using true-to-life language to get through to young people.

The beauty of the PSAs is that they combine language and situations teens can relate to, with scientifically proven tactics of persuasion. The program used to guide the Peer Leaders, MyMediaLife, teaches the basics of behavior science, reducing complex theories into easy-to-understand concepts. All the youth who go through the program are required to develop their videos with these in mind.

The PSA that received the most critique, titled “The Importance of Condoms,” was based on a sound Behavioral Science Theory called the Health Belief Model.   The theory says that a person’s readiness to change their health behavior is based on the perceived threat and the net benefits of the change. Allowing young people to weigh the pros and cons of condoms, and ultimately consider the severe consequences of not using them, makes them more likely to adopt the optimal health behavior. What’s more, it promotes critical thinking and empowers teens to make important decisions for themselves.

The Theory of Reasoned Action informs another one of the PSAs in an effort to alter subjective norms surrounding HIV testing, and to modify viewers’ attitudes about testing by linking it to other things they value. The Social Learning Theory asserts that people are more likely to adopt a behavior if they are aware of the potential outcomes and associate those outcomes with things they value. The HIV testing video depicts things that teens struggle with and reminds them that pushing through their fears is more often than not, well worth it.

Community Healthcare Network serves some of New York City’s poorest neighborhoods, where high STI and pregnancy rates have a devastating cost on individuals and communities. Traditional methods of teaching youth about sexual health aren’t doing a good enough job of penetrating the psyche of adolescents in these communities. “More Than Just Sex” is a carefully considered initiative, backed by science, to use the power of peer influence for positive outcomes.

It’s no surprise that teens respond positively to the videos.