"Every tenant's nightmare: No heat, hot water for months in Brooklyn apartment that's in foreclosure,"
BY JAKE PEARSON - New York Daily News

Their Bedford-Stuyvesant apartment building is in foreclosure - and these tenants are feeling forsaken.

Tenants at 874 Greene Ave. have suffered for months without heat or hot water even though a court-appointed receiver hired a managing company to make repairs and collect rents.

"The only way I get heat is to turn the stove on," said Paulette Walker, 36, who lives in her freezing fourth-floor apartment with her husband and 13-year-old son, Jacob.

"I boil water for the steam, turn on the grill and let the burners go."

The eight-unit building has been without heat or hot water since the boiler, which has broken countless times, failed again, tenants said.

Even their original landlord had a better track record than BPC Management when it came to making repairs, they added.

The tenants charge that BPC Management has ignored complaints about the broken boiler, roach infestations and even a leaking roof.

"They don't listen; they don't care," said Natasha Favorite, 25, who is eight months pregnant and lives on the second floor with her 3-year-old son, Adonis. "I'm sick of being in this house with no heat and no hot water."

Favorite said she has complained to BPC at least 10 times over the past year.

Angry tenants in the building have lodged 65 complaints with the Housing Preservation and Development Department since last February.

They are working with organizers from Pratt Area Community Council, who are trying to negotiate a timeline for improvements and repairs.

"This is the complication of foreclosures," said PACC organizing director Elana Shneyer.

"The tenants haven't done anything [wrong], but they get caught in the middle ... without basic services."

A BPC Management spokesperson declined to comment.

"We can't even bathe the way we want to bathe," said Walker, an unemployed security guard who dumps six big cooking pots full of boiling water into the tub and adds cold water to take a bath.

"We really shouldn't have to live this way."

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."