"Fed-up tenants sue, demand city fix nightmare Bedford-Stuyvesant apartments,"
By Jeff Wilkins - New York Times

A city housing project in Bedford-Stuyvesant has been a horror for residents who have lived with rats and mice, lack of heat, water damage and mold for years.

Tenants of the Bed-Stuy Rehabs, a three-building complex on Willoughby and Throop Aves., filed a lawsuit against the city Housing Authority in December after living with the conditions since the 1980s.

"We're tired of being treated like NYCHA's foster children," said Cassandra Harrell, president of the Bed-Stuy Rehabs Tenant Association, who said years of living in her mold-filled apartment left her stricken with asthma. "We want our apartments fixed."

The three small buildings with 81 apartments were originally part of Woodhull Hospital, and were converted into public housing in 1983.

Right from the start, said longtime tenants, their apartments had problems. They said Housing Authority officials promised fixes that were never made.

If the work is done, they added, it's shoddy or takes a long time to get scheduled.

In one case, a tenant at 281 Throop Ave. said workers showed up as late as 9 p.m. to repair a collapsed ceiling.

"Every time they say they're going to fix something, they don't do anything," said Luisa Figueroa, 33, pointing to a hole in her wall that isn't scheduled to be repaired until June. "It's just talk, talk, talk."

Retired postal worker Kathleen Green, who has lived at 675 Willoughby Ave. since 1983, has gone without heat three or four days at a time for years.

"It gets really cold in here in the winter, like you're living outside," she said. "I wake up and turn my oven on at 6 a.m. just to get some heat."

Green said she has phoned in countless complaints. Workers have come and looked at her radiators, promised to send someone to make repairs - and rarely do.

"Ten years ago, I gave them a list of all my problems," said Green. "Ten years later, they're still not fixed."

Housing Authority spokeswoman Sheila Stainback denied the agency had neglected the buildings, and said they have repeatedly responded to tenants' requests for repairs.

"NYCHA staff has addressed and worked on the repairs needed for Bedford-Stuyvesant Rehabs and will continue to do so," Stainback said in a statement.

Residents of 281 Throop Ave. used a lawsuit to force the Housing Authority to repair the building's leaky roof in 2005.

BED STUY AFTER SCHOOL PROGRAM PROVIDES SHELTER & COMFORT TO GROWING POPULATION OF HOMELESS CHILDREN

BY Meredith Kolodner - NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Budget cuts forced many schools to ax after-school programs, but almost every child at one Brooklyn school is dancing, cooking, fencing or building robots until 6 p.m.

Parents at Public School 636, where one in five kids is homeless and living at one of 10 area shelters, say the after-school program has transformed their lives.

"This is the best thing that could have happened to us," said Lakisha Samuels, whose third-grade daughter, Jolissann, and first- and fifth-grade sons, Kevin and Ludlow, attend the school.

The year-old after-school program is funded mainly through a federal grant, enabling PS 636 to maintain the extra programming other schools have been forced to trim because of budget cuts.
Hallways once filled with fistfights are now calm, and test scores are rising.

When the Bedford-Stuyvesant school replaced the failing PS 304 last year, only about a third of fourth-graders were reading at grade level. Now, 44% of the fourth-graders at PS 636 are reading at grade level.

Unlike many after-school programs, however, academics is not the central focus.
"I just knew that the kids did not have successful experiences academically," said Principal Danika Lacroix.

"They needed to feel good about being at school," added Lacroix, who took over last year.
Still, the after-school workers try to link enrichment activities to what's going on in the classroom.

In one after-school cooking class, the instructor reinforced a reading sequencing lesson by having the kids photograph the steps of making guacamole and arranging the images in correct order.

"When we first started, the kids were extremely aggressive,," said Tameeka Ford-Norville, director of the after-school program at University Settlement, a social service organization that runs PS 636's after-school program.

"Enrichment allows for team-building and respect, and that helps them work in the classroom together."

The school holds biweekly town hall meetings and monthly social gatherings attended by about 60 families. Parents and teachers play volleyball at those gatherings, or watch their children play basketball or perform in the cheerleading squad.

The shift toward a "community school" has changed parents' relationships to the school.
"We have families who come in who need shelter," said Lacroix. "We have mothers who come in and say, 'My husband's beating on me.'

"We make sure they get help."

The after-school program costs $1,700 a year per student, most of which is covered by a federal grant from the After-School Corp. PS 636 also chips in about 10% of the program's costs.

Marilyn Medina had searched for a school for her mildly autistic fourth-grade daughter, Naydene, for two years before she came to PS 636.

"Since she's been here her self-esteem has grown," said Medina. "She's reading at a third-grade level. She's dying to be a cheerleader. I'm at peace."