Tenants at city housing project apartment in Bed-Stuy wonder who'll stop rain?

BY Jake Pearson - NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

When Joseph Jones looks at his ceiling in his city housing project apartment, he can see the sky.
That's because there is a gaping, 3-by-4-foot hole in his top-floor apartment in the Weeksville Gardens Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

"It makes me go crazy at times," said Jones, 30, a security guard who lives in the three-bedroom apartment with two siblings. "I can't believe this; I know we need to get out of here."
Jones is one of at least a dozen tenants who live in fourth-floor Weeksville apartments with leaky ceilings at the 256-unit public housing project on Dean St. between Troy and Schenectady Aves.
The tenants said they have repeatedly complained for years as the cracks have grown larger, but it took until October before the city Housing Authority sent workers who put tarps up to cover the holes.

Tenants said the tarps don't catch all the rain water, which has damaged floors, beds and other furniture.

"It's dangerous, all that water, because you never know if one day the ceiling will just come down," said Mildred Ponder, 62, who said she complained 20 times before workers came.
After the Daily News asked about the holes in Weeksville's roofs, NYCHA spokeswoman Heidi Morales said that despite its tight budget the agency is looking to find the $3.5 million to repair the roof.

Morales also said Friday that inspectors were sent out to Weeksville to offer temporary transfers to residents who need them.

But resident Phelisa Benjamin said there's no way she would move her family - especially during the holidays.

"They should've fixed this years ago .... I don't think I need to move around at all," said Benjamin, who lives in a top-floor apartment where NYCHA workers plastered a piece of cardboard over a hole in her bedroom in October - a hole that continues to leaks.

"The plasterer who came was upset and he said, 'Why are they sending a plasterer when you need to send a contractor here to fix the roof?'" Benjamin said.

For Jones, the white tarp NYCHA workers put over the hole hasn't done much good. He said on days when it rains heavily he has filled a 30-gallon jug full of rain water at least three times.
"This is really wild," he said. "It wakes me up in the morning: The sound, the water splashing on my face, the debris."

"It's horrible," added Ponder, who said she's getting sick of repeatedly calling about her cracked ceiling. "They always say, 'Somebody will come and take care of it,' but they never do."
The tenants use pots and garbage cans to catch the dripping water.

Tenant advocate Reginald Bowman said a lack of funding was no excuse to let dangerous conditions continue at Weeksville.

"I think the Housing Authority needs to find the money to fix the problem immediately," said Bowman.

"In a situation like this where there's actually life-threatening damage to the building itself," said Bowman, "the Housing Authority should immediately find a way to get permanent repairs."

"Brooklyn 'jail' playground could be rebuilt as White House to mark one of America's historic moments,"
By Michael Daly - New York Daily News

The word "jail" has been painted over, but on close examination you can still see the letters.

And there remains the mystery of how the city allowed a jail to be part of a play set at a Brooklyn housing project for six years.

Another question is: What should be done with that playground now?

How about putting in something to mark a giant leap forward the whole country took, a leap that still seemed all but impossible when the "jail" was installed back in March of 2004?

How about replacing the city's only jail playground with its very first White House playground?

Until Barack Obama was actually elected, many people believed that an African-American could not become President.

Obama proved that America had finally become a place where anybody really can grow up to become President.

A kid-sized White House would have a perfect backdrop with the huge portraits of Martin Luther King and Malcolm X that presently adorn a handball court wall facing the playground.

And, where steps and a bridge once led to a jail cell, youngsters would be ascending to the highest office in the land, one no longer barred to a person of color.

I was lucky enough to be down in Washington on inauguration weekend and I remember watching 5-year-old Marcus Scott of Brooklyn, a descendant of slaves, doing a happy dance with an American flag.

"It's nice to be able to wave the flag and say we belong here," said his mother, Alison Scott.

I also remember seeing Elaine Cope of South Carolina point her camera between the iron bars surrounding the White House.

"How many times I've been to Washington and I've never wanted to take a picture of the White House," Cope said.

Obama remains our President even if the Tea Party nuts rail against him with such fury that you have to figure race is involved.

As the health bill was finally nearing passage last week, some of that came to the surface. A tea party protester spat the N word at Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga).

"It surprised me that people are so mean and we can't engage in a civil dialogue and debate," Lewis said afterwards.

Lewis is a civil rights champion who addressed the same rally where King gave his "I Have a Dream" speech. The modern day haters seem exasperated by the reality that part of the dream has been realized with Obama's election.

I do not include Sarah Palin in that group. She is even worse. She fans the flames to her own ends.

She is no hockey mom.

She is a hockey player and she looks to win.

But maybe she was a blessing during the election. She was such a bad candidate that whites who probably would never have voted for a candidate of color ended up going for Obama.

The right wing has grown so wild and wacky that the one-time embarrassment Palin is stepping in to help her former running mate, Sen. John McCain.

In the midst of this mad meanness, we would do well to remind youngsters of the continuing victory that preceded it.

That will becomes all the more important as the city and state budget cuts begin hitting the schools and leaving the streets more dangerous. As always, the poorer neighborhoods will feel the cuts most keenly.

Doing well in school could become even tougher. Falling into trouble could become even easier.

Just as the playground "jail" carried a bad message, a White House would carry a good one: However tough things may get, we have overcome one obstacle that was so important because it never should have been there in the first place.

In the meantime, even a city going broke can afford to replace the ragged American flag flying in front of Public School 59 across Throop Ave. from the playground.

As a playground White House would remind the kids, the flag does indeed belong to everybody, as much to them as to Sarah Palin and her Tea Party pals, or anybody else.