Bronx

Tenants & Pols Protest Handling of Housing Vouchers

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It’s been six months since the New York City Housing Authority went back on a promise to help 2,600 low-income New Yorkers pay the rent. In that time 27 families that left the city’s shelters for homes of their own have returned to the shelters, homeless again, according to Judith Goldiner of the Legal Aid Society. And thousands who thought they had a life line are still waiting for help.Nilsa Melendez is one of them. The 44-year-old receptionist fled an abusive marriage and has been living in a shelter with her 14-year-old daughter since November 2008. In August 2009 she finally got a Section 8 rental assistance voucher.

Bronx

Immigrant's Choice: Family Separation Or Child Mutilation

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People on the street in Saint Louis, Senegal. The U.S. State Department says femal genital mutilation is widely practiced in Senegal. Photo by: Alexandra Pugachevsky

Some deportees must choose whether to leave their citizen children behind or bring them back to the ancestral land. That choice is even harder when genital mutilation is a threat. By: Kateryna Stupnevich

After undergoing female genital mutilation as a child in Senegal, Fatoumata thought that her days of hardship were behind her once she settled in the United States.

Bronx

Life in the Towers: 'I'm Tired Of Ducking Bullets'

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Ebone Ryals, a resident at the Towers for many decades, helps Janey and Letitia plant. Photo by: Hannah Rappleye

A day at River Park Towers reveals a lot about what low-income New Yorkers face from government, management and each other. By: Hannah Rappleye

When it opened in 1974, River Park Towers in Morris Heights, the Bronx, was lauded as the first modern high-rise for the poor. Much has changed since then. City Limits spent a day with some of the residents.

ARTS and CULTURE

Pot Smoke, Dead Elevators & Killer Paint: Life in the Towers

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On a warm Saturday morning a few weeks ago, a group of older tenants at the River Park Towers in Morris Heights, a neighborhood in the South Bronx, set up a plastic table across from their building. A handful of women stacked small, store-bought cakes wrapped in plastic on top of it and sat down to wait for customers.Someone wheeled in a PA system and a steady stream of 90s hip-hop tunes began to draw neighbors out of their apartments. Soon, a crowd of tenants and their children were sitting outside, enjoying the sunshine and talking about the conditions of the place where they live.”This is about taking back our building, ya’ll,” one woman shouted into the microphone. The story of New York City is often understood as a neat movement from peak to gutter and back up again. The city suffered in the seventies, muddled through the eighties, endured crisis in the early nineties and, at least until the recent recession, has enjoyed a steady ascent colored by declining crime and increasing real estate investments.The problems the city has, meanwhile, are discussed and dissected in isolation.

Bronx

Poll: New Yorkers Fear Becoming Homeless

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A study released today by the Institute for Children and Poverty, a research and advocacy organization, finds homelessness is a major factor in the lives of New Yorkers. A third of New Yorkers think about homelessness everyday; 15 percent have hosted someone who might otherwise have been homeless in the past six months; and 20 percent of poll respondents “perceived themselves as being at risk for homelessness,” with black and Latino respondents and Bronx residents more likely to fear losing their homes. The study is the result of a random telephone survey of 1,000 people conducted in January, according to ICP. It has a margin of error of 3.1 percent. According to the survey, New Yorkers felt city government needed to do more, with sevenof ten rating the job as poor or fair.