Gilberto Rivera

Activist fought to save Hostos and improve housing

Gilberto Rivera, one of the co-founders of the Melrose-based housing organization Nos Quedamos, died on Nov. 25. He was 75.

Rivera, who had been president of Nos Quedamos’ board, suffered a massive stroke shortly after a board meeting at the Nos Quedamos office on Melrose Ave. on Oct. 5. He was rushed to Lincoln Hospital, then later transferred to the Veteran’s Hospital where he died.

Rivera was one of the main grassroots organizers with a group of South Bronx Latinos who helped tenants forgotten by the city’s housing bureaucracies battle for their rights against slumlords and against the city’s own plans to remove the families that remained in Melrose after the fires and abandonment that devastated the area in the 1970s in order to build highrise housing projects.

Rivera was born in 1936 in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico. He moved to the South Bronx in the 1960s and began organizing South Bronx residents in a variety of causes soon after his arrival.

Tenant advocate Maximino (Maxi) Rivera of the neighborhood advocacy group Pueblo en Marcha met Gilberto Rivera in 1976 while both men were helping Hostos Community College students and faculty fight the city’s plans to close the institution as part of the city’s belt-tightening during its fiscal crisis.

They organized a takeover of what was then the college’s lone building at East 149th Street and the Grand Concourse, resisting the city’s attempts to get them out and remaining for several months. The school was a crucial resource South Bronx Latinos could not afford to lose, they argued.

Shortly after they succeeded in convincing the city to keep Hostos open, Maxi took a job as a tenant organizer and hired Gilberto as his partner.

“We spent more time together than we spent with our families,” Maxi recalled.

Together, they visited beleaguered tenants in dilapidated buildings, negotiating with landlords and often taking them to court to force improvements.

Gilberto had savvy, not just for skillfully negotiating contracts with greedy landlords, but for understanding the nuts and bolts of how buildings are built: wiring, plumbing, the quality of construction work, Maxi recalled.

“Gilberto knew what he was talking about,” Maxi said, and, as a result, landlords couldn’t fool him.

Over the years, Rivera continued to fight for tenants’ rights on a number of projects. In the early 1990s, Melrose resident and social justice advocate Yolanda Garcia asked her friend to help her form an organization to be christened Nos Quedamos (We Stay), that would help tenants fight against the city’s efforts to displace residents and for the participation of residents in planning the neighborhood’s renewal.

Rivera’s advocacy was not confined to Mott Haven where he lived, or to Melrose where Nos Quedamos has worked for nearly 20 years.

“His door was always open to us,” said Mildred Colon, former president of the Phoenix House Tenants Association on Coster St. in Hunts Point. Colon said Rivera’s dogged advocacy in 2007 and 2008 on behalf of the tenants there helped take the property from the landlord who for years had allowed it to crumble. Under a new owner and management, extensive renovations on the buildings have been underway for two years.

“Gilberto would never say no to anybody,” Colon said.

At the December meeting of the 40th Precinct Community Council, Council President Alex Diaz paid tribute to Rivera and said the council would ask Community Board 1 to support renaming the block of Bergen Avenue where he lived Gilberto Rivera Way.

Rivera is survived by his wife, Raquel, a son in Florida and another who is a detective with NYPD, grandchildren and great grandchildren.

GrowNYC representative Ermin Siljokovic had attendees play the “recycling game” to show them how to separate materials. Photo by Elizabeth Chen

They say they have to because officials aren’t following through

Mott Haven Houses’ resident Brigitte Vincenty doesn’t want to go all the way into Manhattan to make sure her trash gets recycled. So she and her neighbors are taking on the challenge of recycling their community’s trash, which they say the New York City Housing Authority fails to do.

“NYCHA talks a lot about green roofs and retrofitting, things that haven’t been made into law yet,” said Vincenty, organizer for Mott Haven Houses’ Resident Green Committee. “But recycling is the law and they’re not even doing that.”

NYCHA officials did not return calls for comment.

Out of the five boroughs, the Bronx lags behind on recycling, according to a Department of Sanitation’s annual report. The Bronx recycles at a rate of 10.3 percent compared to Manhattan’s 19 percent. Community District 1, where Vincenty lives, has the poorest recycling rate in the Bronx―only 4.8 percent of the total trash in that neighborhood has been diverted for recycling.

The Natural Resources Defense Council observed an 0.6 percent increase in trash collection in the Bronx in the past year, despite a 1.4 percent decrease city-wide, according to a Daily News article in October.

Vincenty and members of her initiative, named the InnerCity Green Team, plan to go door-to-door to collect recyclable materials. They also held an event on November 17 to educate residents about recycling and saving energy at the Mott Haven Community Center.

“This is a little helpful,” said Alfonso Dingwall, a 45-year-old resident. “We could be doing better with recycling.”

They hope their efforts will encourage NYCHA to hire public housing residents to work in maintenance, which they believe will help bring down their community’s high levels of unemployment.

But a week earlier, NYCHA representatives held a closed meeting with the residents  to hear details of their recycling program.

“They were very skeptical,” said Erica Ramos, a Resident Green Committee member. “They sounded like they wanted to help, but you could tell they were really hesitant because of they were worried about costs.”

A statement from NYCHA said that they support the efforts of the Resident Green Committees, which are groups of concerned public housing residents who work on NYCHA’s “Green Agenda” program. However, they refused to comment about the residents’ allegations about recycling in their facilities or about the closed meeting.

GrowNYC, Mothers On the Move and the state’s Public Service Commission also attended the committee’s green awareness event. These organizations distributed compact fluorescent light bulbs and recycling collection bags that colorfully explained how to separate plastic and paper materials.

“NYCHA’s green efforts mostly focus on gardening and planting trees,” said Nova Strachan of Mothers On the Move. “That’s important, but NYCHA also really needs to work on recycling.”

Now, Vincenty’s volunteers look forward to the daunting task ahead of them. Rachel Osorio, a volunteer, felt empowered by the information given at the event.

“Especially in the Bronx, we get forgotten about,” said Osorio. “This is a lot of info I didn’t know before. It makes me want to know more about how I can improve my community.”

Residents say elected officials didn't do their job telling them about this planned development on 144th St. in Mott Haven.

Group battling home for mentally ill says residents were blindsided

The developer of a controversial housing development set to break ground in Mott Haven notified local politicians of the organization’s plans nearly a year ago, according to a document he released this week.

But neighborhood residents fighting the project say they didn’t find out about the plan until early autumn, when they saw action at the construction site on 144^th Street.

Daniel Johansson, CEO of the Association for Rehabilitative Case Management and Housing (ACMH), sent a letter detailing plans to build an affordable housing facility for low-income families and people with mental illness to several local politicians in December 2010, records show.

The letter was addressed to George Rodriguez, chair of Community Board 1, and was also sent to City Council member Melissa Mark-Viverito, State Senator Jose Serrano, Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. and Assemblywoman Carmen Arroyo. Copies of FedEx receipts were included, all signed by the officials’ respective offices and dated Dec. 21, 2010.

“We did all that in December of 2010 and we have all the documentation,” said Johansson.

The politicians did not spread the word to their constituents, according to residents, who said that when they contacted their representatives, these officials claimed that they had never heard of the project.

“I called Viverito. I called Ruben Diaz’s office. I called Arroyo’s office. I called Community Board 1,” said Marian Rivas, who lives near the proposed project. “None of them knew anything about it.”

Residents were concerned that time had run out to fight the development. The Padavan law gives residents 75 days from the time of notification to challenge certain types of housing facilities. By this point, more than six months had passed.

In fact, though, the Padavan law, which is intended to strike a balance between the rights of  people with mental illness or developmental disabities and homeowners, doesn’t apply in this case, according to Leesa Rademacher of the Office of Mental Health. But she said communication with local residents is still encouraged.

The law is “for community residences from four to 14 beds. This is a single- room occupancy and more than 14 beds,” she said. “We ask providers, like ACMH, to notify the community anyway.”

If community members didn’t know, Johansson said it wasn’t for lack of effort on his part. In addition to the other documents, he also released a personal log of attempted contact with local politicians.

“It’s important that they be informed of what’s going on in the district so they can inform their constituents,” he said.

Of all the attempted contacts Johansson made, he said only Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz accepted his request to meet. He never heard back from Serrano, Arroyo or Viverito, he said.

At last month’s community board meeting, Serrano Jr. told board members that until they brought the issue to him, he hadn’t heard about it either. He, Viverito, Arroyo and Diaz did not return calls seeking comment.

Many residents and members of Voices of the People, the activist group working to stop the development, blame both Johansson’s group and the local politicians. Asked who was responsible for failing to inform the community, resident Marilyn Ramos didn’t hesitate.

“If anything the developer, because he didn’t let us know anything. And also the politicians in the area- they are doing nothing to stop it. It’s just going through,” she said, “like our opinions don’t matter.”

New Yorkers Against Gun Violence brought a giant puppet to the 40th Precinct, where they joined with Occupy the Bronx to protest the arrests at Morning Glory Garden. Photo by Elizabeth Chen

Five arrested at Morning Glory Community Garden site

Police arrested five people at the Occupy the Bronx general assembly in Mott Haven Saturday, preempting the organization’s plans to hold a rally and “festival” in a community garden fenced-off by the city in mid-November.

“Of the general assemblies I’ve attended, this is the first that I’ve seen this kind of police presence,” said Carl Lundgren, a member of Bronx Greens, a local environmental advocacy group.

The group had publicized plans for a “day of festivities” at Morning Glory Garden a vacant lot on Southern Boulevard and East 147th Street, where gardeners, many of whom are also among the most active people in Occupy the Bronx, had grown flowers and vegetable for the last two years.

The city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development kicked the community group out out and tore up the garden, where it plans to build housing.

In protest, participants in Occupy the Bronx had briefly occupied the offices of Community Board 1, demanding that the board support its efforts to meet with the city housing department.

According to Elliott Liu, both a gardener and a member of the Occupy the Bronx facilitation working group, police ordered the protesters to “keep moving,” saying their meeting was blocking the sidewalk. Although the group did move, Liu said, the police arbitrarily singled-out people to be arrested.

According to NYPD spokesman Mike Wysokowski, the five people were arrested for “blocking pedestrian traffic.”

A video taken by a member of the organization seems to confirm the protesters’ claim that they did not block the sidewalks. It shows the general assembly moving to the fence around the garden, leaving ample room for others—including police officers—to walk by.

In the video police are shown interrogating a News 12 reporter and arresting a freelance journalist, Carla Murphy.

In weekly meetings since mid-October, including one at the Hub on Nov. 17, police stood by while the group held its general assembly, and even provided free entrance to the subway on Oct. 15, when protesters marched from Fordham Plaza to head downtown to Zuccotti Park, headquarters of Occupy Wall Street.

“I’ve been doing this type of work for 15 years and this was the most quiet, peaceful convening I’d ever seen,” said Lisa Ortega, a mainstay of Occupy the Bronx and a leader of the Hunts Point-based organization Rights For Imprisoned People with Psychiatric Disabilities. Ortega’s husband, Carlos Sabater, was one of those arrested. “NYPD was already very hostile and aggressive when we got there,” she said.

After the arrests, the general assembly, swelled by marchers from New Yorkers Against Gun Violence who had been protesting violence in the community and by others made aware of the arrests via messages on Facebook, moved to a street corner directly across from the 40th Precinct on Alexander Avenue and demanded the release of those arrested.

“Let them go!” the crowd chanted at the precinct, while holding up a giant, dancing Statue of Liberty puppet draped in the Puerto Rican flag.

The protesters were released from the precinct’s holding cell in the afternoon after being detained for about three hours. They were given summonses to appear in court.

Alex Kahn, a 25-year-old software developer was among those arrested . This was his first time attending an Occupy the Bronx general assembly.

“It was a little scary, but I was with people who I felt safe with,” said Kahn. “It’s the kind of experience that makes it clear that what the role of the police is in society. If their job was to protect the community, they wouldn’t be arresting people for having a meeting.”

After celebrating the release of their comrades, the general assembly joined the anti-violence march.

Occupy the Bronx members say they plan to continue to defy orders to stay away from Morning Glory Garden. Next Saturday, they say, they will meet at the corner of 149th St. and Third Ave. in Mott Haven to rally again.

They are also asking supporters to attend the 40th Precinct Community Council meeting on Wednesday, where they plan to interrogate officials about the arrests of their members.

“We’re community residents who’ve been oppressed for a long time and we don’t intend to back down by any means,” said Ortega. “And if it means that tons of us will continue to be arrested, we’re willing to do so. We’re not afraid.”

Activists invaded Community Board 1’s office on Monday, using Occupy Wall Street tactics to protest the city’s eviction of the Morning Glory Community Garden at Southern Boulevard and Union Avenue.

They demanded to speak to District Manager Cedric Loftin, and when they were told he wasn’t there refused to leave. Instead, they recited their grievances and telephoned board members, producing the video that accompanies this story as the office receptionist Annie Rojas ordered them to stop.

The demonstrators, who have been active in Occupy the Bronx, say the community board has failed to listen to them. It took the part of the city’s Dept. of Housing Preservation and Development, which destroyed the garden, and canceled the November meeting at which they had signed up to speak.

When board member Freddy Perez showed up, they repeated their demand that the board set up a meeting with HPD before the city agency filed plans to develop the lot.

When they finally left, they chanted, “We’ll be back.”

Elliott Liu, one of Morning Glory’s founders, said the group doesn’t have definite plans to revisit Board 1’s office but will keep asking for support.

“Our understanding is that the Board won’t pay attention to you unless you’re a local business or someone with a lot of connections in government,” said Liu.

“They’re more focused on serving developers’ interests than serving as a forum for the community.”

District Manager Loftin did not respond to requests for comment on the protest.

Photo by Alex Robinson Mott Havenites are considering ways to spend $1 million on local projects, such as fixing recreation areas like the basketball courts at St. Mary's Park.

Councilmember Melissa Mark-Viverito slapped an imaginary $1 million on the table and asked her constituents what it should be spent on.

“Restoring the parks that are here, basketball courts, and sidewalks in the street need to be fixed,” responded Alice Cerezo, 45, a Mott Haven resident.

“I put in for exercise equipment for senior citizens, and movies. I definitely want senior citizens to have somewhere they can come to watch old movies and enjoy themselves,” said 73-year-old retiree Kenneth Moore, who has lived in the neighborhood for 35 years.

Mark-Viverito is one of four City Council members who have turned to the public to decide how the district’s discretionary budget should be distributed this year. The process, known as participatory budgeting, is new to New York City politics.

About 40 local residents split into groups at the Millbrook Community Center in October to exchange ideas about how $1 million in discretionary funding should be spent. Park renovations, new sports equipment for youth programs, and a community space for barbecuing were among the ideas raised.

Funding the entire wish-list would cost far more than the councilwoman has at her disposal, and Mott Haven occupies only a small part of her district, most of which is in East Harlem. Constituents from her East Harlem catchment have held six budget-brainstorming meetings of their own.

Anyone who lives or works in the district can volunteer to serve as a budget delegate, to select from the ideas presented at the brainstorming sessions and put them to a final pubic vote in March.

Mott Haven resident Carmen Aquino said she is worried so many of the budget delegates are from Manhattan.

“How is it going to be fair for us to propose projects? How many of those projects that we are going to propose are really going to get funding?” Aquino said.

Mark-Viverito said uneven distribution of funds is a concern, but she is confident Mott Haven will get its fair share.

“All aspects of the district are kept in mind,” Mark-Viverito said, adding “it’s reflected in what the projects are.”

Last year, Mark-Viverito had $4 million in discretionary funds to disperse. She says she won’t know how much she has at her disposal this year until the city budget process begins, but she has promised $1 million of that amount for the participatory initiative. She declined to say how much of last year’s discretionary budget was spent in her Mott Haven district.

Donna Kerchheimer, a political science professor at Lehman College, said community boards already fulfill a participatory budgeting role in the existing system, through public hearings and by providing funding requests for their districts.

“Wouldn’t you call that participatory budgeting of a certain type?” she asked.

Mark-Viverito said the advantage of participatory budgeting over the traditional process is that anyone can be directly involved.

“The process is very engaging. I really love it because I think it is going to give people a real sense of hope that they can be agents of change in their community,” she said.

Chicago is the only other major city in the country that has implemented participatory budgeting, although more than 1,200 cities worldwide have experimented with the process, according to the Participatory Budgeting Process’ website.

A Chicago alderman last year recounted to New York City Council members how the process has worked in the windy city so far, but only four of the 51 members have chosen to implement it.

Mark-Viverito said the initiative has been a hard sell among Council members because the process chews up time and resources. She added that she and the others who are experimenting with it will create a template by next year to make it less complicated to use.

She hopes that will be enough to encourage more council members to bring it to their own constituents.

Photo by Elizabeth Chen. Elliott Liu and Rafael Mutis removed plants from the lot the city plans to build on at Union Ave. and Southern Boulevard.

The grassy lot at the corner of Southern Blvd and Union Ave has been a green oasis for some local residents, but as they recently found out, the city has other plans.

For the past two years, residents have planted vegetables and held social gatherings in the lot, referring to  it as the Morning Glory Community Garden. They say the space was abandoned until people like Elliot Liu cleaned it and furnished it with tables and chairs. Teenagers have worked on the impromptu garden, mainly students from nearby Samuel J. Gompers High School.“This should be a public space,” said Aazam Otero, a Gompers graduate.

Earlier in the fall, they planned to expand the garden to provide fresh produce for the neighborhood. But city contractors turned their garden beds into piles of wood in early November.

In response, Liu, 29, and a handful of other gardeners blocked the gate to keep the city out, while holding protest signs.

“The first notice we got was when there was suddenly a gate with a lock on it and ‘no trespassing” signs up,” said Liu. “It wasn’t like we were hard to contact. We had a bulletin board with contact information. And we’re in there many days of the week working so we’re very approachable.”

Contractors arrived and tore down part of the fence to gain entrance and clear the lot, despite the presence of a few protesters. A representative for the city’s department of Housing Preservation  and Development told Liu that if he or the others trespassed they would be arrested.

HPD spokesman Eric Bederman said in an email that had the gardeners been registered with the city’s GreenThumb program, as community garden users are urged to do, they would have had access to information that the the city plans to build approximately 430 apartments for low- to- moderate- income tenants and a school for disabled children on the lot.

“The people who recently unlawfully entered this City-owned site did not seek permission to through the City’s GreenThumb Program,” Bederman wrote in his e-mail, “nor did they inquire whether it was slated for development.”

The gardeners are petitioning for support from Community Board 1, but district manager Cedric Loftin said the residents who have congregated and grown vegetables on it have done so improperly.

“It’s not a community garden because it’s not a GreenThumb garden,” said Loftin, adding that the residents “went somewhere where they have no right to be.”

Residents who have used the space say their battle with the city to create more green areas is not over.

“This neighborhood needs more community gardens,” said Isidro Campus, a superintendent from across the street. “We need to attack these developers.”

Now a multinational company owned by some of the wealthiest investment houses on Wall Street wants millions in taxpayer subsidies so it can build new incinerators. If the company succeeds, you can be certain that its smokestack will tower over a poor community, and the South Bronx will be in the bullseye.

Will an incinerator like this on in Hempstead rise in the South Bronx?

But an incinerator is not a solar panel. Burning at high temperatures concentrates toxic substances, including cancer-causing dioxins, lead, arsenic and mercury. Some of this rises in minute particles from the smokestack, and later lodges in the lungs.

Despite the claims of the industry that filtering systems minimize the impact of burning on air quality, sulfur from incinerators contributes to acid rain, and nitrogen oxides cause breathing problems and trigger asthma attacks.

The more efficient the filters, the more toxic the ash left after burning, which must be transported to landfills, where its poison may leach into the water supply.

Moreover, to be profitable, incinerators need a large and continuous supply of garbage, so they become competitors for the metal, glass, paper, wood and plastic targeted by recycling programs. Since recycling holds the promise of green jobs for residents of communities like ours, inflicting an incinerator on our neighborhoods would do double injury.

When millions of dollars in government subsidies and contracts are at stake, political payoffs are inevitable. The Hempstead incinerator that Covanta points to as a model of what it hopes to build in the city was born in cronyism, its path to approval greased by Senator Alfonse D’Amato and his Republican machine after the developer hired the senator’s brother Armand as a lobbyist.

So it’s important to let elected officials and regulatory agencies know that we’re watching them, and we expect them to safeguard us, not the profits of Sam Zell, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs and the other big stockholders in Covanta.

The New York City Environmental Justice Alliance, an umbrella organization that includes Nos Quedamos, The Point Community Development Corp., and Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice, has already spoken out. Its efforts deserve widespread support.

The lesson of the South Bronx incinerator is that when ordinary residents come together and stick together, they can change things. But the work is hard and long. So it would be best to start now.

Sen. Ruben Diaz Sr.

“In matters involving intimacy and human sexuality, parents have the right and the responsibility to be the primary educators,” the senator, who is also a Pentecostal minister, said in a statement. “Many parents teach their children that these are private topics not to be discussed casually or in group settings.”

His position puts him at odds with his son Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz Jr., who told the staff of The Hunts Point Express that he was a strong supporter of sex education in the schools, said he wished his parents had been more open about sexual issues and said he had made a point of teaching his two sons about safe sex and birth control.

The elder Diaz criticized the Department of Education for reinstating required sex education classes in all middle schools and high schools. “There is no formal arena for formal parental input. There is no opportunity for public hearings. There are no requirements that these regulations be open to public review and comment,” he said. “No accountability to the public, to the parents, and certainly not the children.”

An iphone displays a four-way view of the Mott Haven Houses lobby that security cameras keep monitored.

Public housing tenants around the city are feeling nervous about their safety, surveys show, and two new initiatives being pioneered in the South Bronx are aimed at helping them feel safer.

But while both initiatives call for security cameras inside NYCHA buildings to help protect residents, housing officials support one, while rejecting a method tenant leaders say would watch out not only for criminals, but for abusive housing workers and heavy-handed police officers.

There are security cameras in roughly a fifth of NYCHA’s 2,602 buildings around the city, to help police protect residents according to the Housing Authority, but tenants remain on edge about crime.

Three of four residents in public housing complexes are “fearful of crime in their development,” according to a NYCHA survey conducted earlier this year. More worryingly, “55% of respondents reported that they do not leave their apartments due to fear of crime,” according to the report.

Some tenant associations have formed patrol programs, with tenants guarding lobbies in some buildings.But these unarmed guards are vulnerable when they try to deny access to people who can’t prove they live in the buildings.

“When they do get in, they may be belligerent,” said John Johnson, president of the Mott Haven Houses Tenant Association.

To address these worries, City Council member Maria del Carmen Arroyo, who serves Mott Haven, is pushing to have security systems installed in all the public housing complexes in her district, and not just cameras.

Arroyo has allocated $3.2 million through 2012 to install comprehensive security systems, at the Jackson, Mitchell, Moore, Mott Haven, and Patterson developments in Mott Haven and Melrose, according to her office.

Mott Haven Houses will get a $250,000 federal grant from the department of Housing and Urban Development, to install what NYCHA calls a “layered access control system,” with new intercoms, electronic keys, and mechanical door locks for all building entrances. It would also allow tenants to easily replace or cancel lost keys, and provide remote monitoring city authorities can use to detect any damage to cameras or doors.

“Securing building entrances is essential to improving the security of our developments,” said a NYCHA representative in an email.

The system will operate on fiberoptics rather than phone lines, so tenants would no longer need a landline connection to use the intercoms in their apartments.

Johnson expects the system to be installed in the Mott Haven Houses by early next year.

But some tenant associations say residents should have a greater say in their own safety, and in choosing the security system that works best for them. They are taking matters into their own hands.

Both the Mott Haven and Moore developments have had security cameras installed through an organization called the Digital Divide Partnership, a collaboration between non-profit and for-profit businesses and the New York State Office for Technology. Using this system, cameras stream live video feeds anyone, including residents, can access over the internet.

In addition to increased safety and oversight, the systems installed by Digital Divide Partnership provide free wifi access to building residents, and are solar powered to conserve energy.

The tenant-monitored system would provide more protection than the NYCHA cameras, which are only consulted after police suspect a crime has occurred, its proponents insist.

NYCHA officials disapprove of the initiative.

“As these systems do not meet our security standards, they are not part of the recommendations for future installations,” a NYCHA official wrote in an email,

Yet tenant leaders insist they are within their rights, citing a statute from the HUD Code of Federal Regulations, which states that “HUD promotes resident participation and the active involvement of residents in all aspects of a housing authority’s overall mission and operation.”

“We want a virtual tenant patrol,” said Lou Torres, president of the Moore Houses Tenant Association. Rotating shifts of residents would monitor cameras from their apartments, and call 911 when an incident occurs, he said.

The tenant-monitored system would allow tenants to watch not only for criminal activity, but for abusive treatment of NYCHA residents by police and housing workers, activists add, addressing what they say is a common complaint of public housing tenants around the city.

“We have police here harassing tenants all the time,” said Torres.

Johnson, who serves on a board of NYCHA tenant leaders, was arrested last September while attending a memorial service in the Mott Haven Houses where he lives. He said he fields complaints from Torres about tenants being harassed nearly every week.

“It’s unfortunate that this has to be part of the conversation,” said Councilwoman Arroyo.

“Why not have both?” says Johnson. Using both the NYCHA security systems and tenant monitoring, “It would be more layers of security,” he said.