Residents learn about recycling, conservation at annual festival

For the fifth straight year, Bronxites gathered at St. Mary’s Park to celebrate Earth Fest, sharing ideas for innovative ways to green the planet.

Representatives from businesses, community organizations, and city agencies combined on April 21st to promote environmental initiatives, through information kiosks, activities for kids and assorted giveaways at Mott Haven’s biggest park.

Julia Wilson, 6, circled a flagpole several times while trying to decide where to tie a bright orange ribbon, to give flight to a sail made of recycled materials. She settled on a spot she could reach at the bottom of the pole.

“Recycling means cleaning the earth and not leaving garbage around,” she said, standing back to admire the plastic bags and ribbons tethered to it that blew in the wind.

“There’s a lot to learn here,” said Levell Peterkin, 40, who was visiting family in the area. “I was over there and talked to Con Ed, who told me you can change all the light bulbs in your house to these things,” he said, holding up a compact fluorescent light bulb. “I could cut my electricity bill by 40 percent.”

With bright green papers in hand, festival-goers like Peterkin strolled from one table to another listening to vendors peddle their wares. The product vendors stamped the papers, allowing participants to collect prizes based on the number of stamps they’d accumulated.

“It’s fun and free, but you have to work to get the free stuff,” said Rachel Amar, the event’s founder. “It’s a way to incentivize green behavior.”

A crowd swarmed the table that was covered with prizes for most of the afternoon. One volunteer yelled, “Hardcover books, three points. Softcover books, two points. All brand new books, come and get them.” Other prizes included t-shirts, healthy snacks and bottles of lotion.

Nearby, a group of kids played a round of Recycling Olympics, the newest addition to Earth Fest. They competed in a recycling toss, where they had to decide whether an item of garbage went in a blue plastics bin, a green paper pin or a black trash bin.

After playing the game, Natasha Perez, 8, reflected on what she learned.

“Plastic should not go in the paper, because later you can’t recycle,” she said.Across from the games, Jayla Garris, 11, stood on stage singing her rendition of Adele’s “Someone Like You,” as part of the youth talent show that featured spoken-word and musical and dance performances. She said it was her first time at Earth Fest.

“It’s nice of people to throw an event because people don’t usually celebrate the Earth,” she said.

Anna Vincenty, a long-time neighborhood activist who worked for many years for housing advocacy group Nos Quedamos and now works as Congressman Jose E. Serrano’s community liaison, was honored with a 2012 GetGreen Environmental Leadership award.

“There is nothing more important than making sure that today you take advantage of everything that you’re learning,” said Vincenty. “We’ve got to make sure we leave our children and our grandchildren a better place than what we found.”

Superhero Global Man Eco-Avenger also accepted an award for promoting green education to children.

“One of the things I want everybody in this community to understand is we believe in you,” he said. “We are committed to making sure the Bronx gets cleaner and cleaner.”

Kellie Terry-Sepulveda of The Point CDC, protesting the mayor's waste-to-energy plans in Manhattan on April 9th. Photo by Adi Talwar/City Limits

Advocates say trash would be burned in poor neighborhoods

Bronx community groups took to the streets of Manhattan on April 9th to protest Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s plans to test new garbage disposal technology they fear will end up hurting the South Bronx.

Representatives from The Point CDC, Nos Quedamos, Youth Ministries for Peace and Justice and other community organizations teamed up outside the city’s Economic Development Corporation headquarters downtown to voice their concern over the mayor’s plans to to sign contracts with private businesses to convert trash into energy in newly built incinerators.

The opponents say the incinerators needed for the conversion process would almost certainly be built in industrially-zoned neighborhoods like Hunts Point and Port Morris, adding to existing pollution problems.

“At the end of the day, we know where this is going to end up,” said Kellie Terry-Sepulveda, executive director of The Point CDC. “We’re against anything that will further burden the neighborhoods.”

Terry-Sepulveda and other opponents say the technology risks creating more problems than it may solve, by polluting the air in areas around the plant.

“They’re not looking at the science of this,” she said.

Terry-Sepulveda pointed out the example of the New York Organic Fertilizer Company, which opened in Hunts Point in 1994 and blanketed the area with foul odors that sickened residents for over a decade before closing last year. The plant converted sewage sludge into fertilizer pellets that were later shipped to citrus farms in other states. Although the process was promoted as environmentally friendly because it recycled sludge rather than burying it in landfills, residents and environmentalists condemned it because of its harmful local impact.

Boosters of the new thermal processing technology say it burns cleaner than outdated garbage incinerators, but some environmental advocates disagree, and say it will negatively impact the health of nearby residents as badly as the old trash burning methods.

According to the New York Public Interest Research Group, a liberal advocacy organization, studies show the new incinerator technologies emit comparable levels of toxic emissions” to conventional incinerators, and that they also emit “particulate matter contributing to heart & respiratory disease.”

NYPIRG went on to say in a statement that there have been “malfunctions, explosions and shutdowns” in the implementation of the technology in other countries, including Germany, and that “experimenting with these new technologies in a densely populated area such as New York City is unnecessary and risky.”

“Given NYC’s zoning laws, most of the locations where an incinerator could be sited in NYC are in, or adjacent, to low-income communities of color that are already disproportionately burdened by pollution,” the statement warned.

Opponents of company’s move to Mott Haven seek broad support for boycott

Over a dozen South Bronx activists took their protest against FreshDirect to the Upper West Side on March 21st, urging Manhattanites to join them in a citywide boycott of the online grocer. 

The activists, representing a group called South Bronx Unite, gathered at Verdi Square on W. 72nd St. to rally support. They argue the food delivery company’s planned move to Mott Haven will add extensive truck traffic to a neighborhood whose residents are already among the city’s most asthma-plagued.

FreshDirect announced in February it will move from its Queens facility to the South Bronx, after the city offered it $130 million in loans and incentives to keep it from moving to New Jersey.

“We want everyone in the city to know that this is a very serious issue that doesn’t just impact the South Bronx,”said Harry Bubbins, director of the Mott Haven group Friends of Brook Park.

“FreshDirect customers are around here, and their customer base needs to be aware of the impact that they are having on us,”said Daniel Wallace, a Mott Haven resident.

Asthma hospitalization rates are higher in the South Bronx than anywhere else in the city, according to a 2008 study conducted by the city’s Department of Health, but Community Board 1 member Mychal Johnson said the tony Upper West Side is equally affected by noise and pollution from Fresh Direct’s vehicles.

“We just want to let Manhattan residents know it’s not just a Bronx issue,” he said.

Ivelyse Andino, who has lived in Mott Haven her whole life, said she suffers from asthma and is worried about pollution from the trucks.

“I’m tired of seeing the city polluting our neighborhoods, doing back-room deals with public money and not considering the community,” she said.

Brian Chidester, who recently moved to Port Morris from Virginia, said he had open-heart surgery in October.

“I don’t want to be breathing the kind of toxins that are going to be coming out of the trucks coming through our area every single day,” he said.

Members of South Bronx Unite protested FreshDirect's move to Mott Haven on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Photo by Alex Robinson

FreshDirect officials have said the company will transition gradually to a fleet of electric trucks, including ten when it opens. In addition, they vow to create up to 1,000 jobs over five years.

Protesters said they are skeptical the company will keep its word. They alluded to an audit released by City Comptroller John Liu’s office on March 19th, which revealed that over 300 companies that received similar tax breaks in 2009 failed to create or retain the jobs they had promised to.

“This is a company that wants to move to our neighborhood without offering any benefit.  We’re going to bear only costs and people elsewhere are going to get all the benefits,” Wallace said.

Opponents argue that adding insult to injury, FreshDirect does not deliver to the South Bronx, but the company has promised that will change.

A representative for FreshDirect handed out promotional flyers for the company at the protest, but he declined to comment.

“Today’s rally against FreshDirect’s decision to expand in New York ignores the positive impact of our public-private partnership with the city,”the flyer read.

Audio slideshow produced by Tom DiChristopher and Alex Robinson

Bienvenido Hernandez, dean at Village Prep HS in Mott Haven, tries to help students make wise decisions about sex.

Mott Haven’s rate is the highest in city, study finds

As the city has started to introduce a new sex education program for middle and high schools, Mott Haven has emerged as the neighborhood with the highest teen pregnancy rate in the five boroughs.

Even though the neighborhood rate has been going down for years, it hasn’t shrunk as fast as the rest of the city, according to a new report.

“The statistics are scary,” said Bienvenido Hernandez, dean at the Mott Haven Village Prep High School on St. Ann’s Avenue, adding there were seven or eight pregnant teens at the school last year. “We try everything we can to bring these numbers down.”

About one out of every seven women in Mott Haven who gave birth between 2007 and 2009 was a teenager, according to the study, released in November by New York University’s Silver School of Social Work. That was the highest rate in the city. Morrisania and Hunts Point both ranked fourth.

“They want somebody to love them,” said Deandra Plummer, 15, participant in the Changing the Odds program at the Morris Heights Health Center, where teens learn about community issues and sexual health. Right now, there are no program participants who are pregnant.

Dr. Vincent Guilamo-Ramos, who runs the NYU doctoral program and presented the new report at the Morris Heights Health Center after its release, said local young people have long needed a new health curriculum.

“Mott Haven needs an evidence-based and science-informed health education program,” he said.

In his fifth-floor office at Village Prep, Hernandez offers students information on sex, and provides condoms to those whose parents have not pulled them out of the program. He says the majority of kids who come to see him simply want to talk.

“Most of them don’t come to actually get condoms,” Hernandez said.

But family pressures often keep young people from seeking his advice. Seventeen names were on the opt-out list that hung next to Hernandez’ desk, out of the 62 students in the program.

On one of his office walls, Hernandez pinned a poster that informs visitors about sexually transmitted diseases. He said many parents are uninformed about the diseases their kids can get from unprotected sex.

About 70 percent of Hernandez’ students are from conservative, often Catholic families. The parents are hesitant to talk to their kids about sexual safety.

“It’s a taboo for certain folks,” said Hernandez.

Instead, parents rely on the media, he said.

But the media doesn’t do a good job either. In reality-TV-shows such as “Teen Mom”, teenage girls become protagonists and are shown in their daily lives with their babies, said Hernandez.

Almost twice as many teenage girls in the Bronx give birth as Manhattan or Queens girls, according to the NYU report. Brooklyn has the city’s second highest rate with about 30 percent, Staten Island the lowest with about 20 percent, according to the city’s Department of Health.

About one in ten girls between 15 and 19 in the Bronx is pregnant, down from 1.5 out of ten a decade ago.

Still, the rate is unacceptably high, said Dr. Guilamo-Ramos.

The NYU report named a lack of access to health care and mental health services in the Bronx as a key problem.

About 300 students are taking part in the Changing the Odds program, which has been implemented at 12 Bronx schools this year, according to program director Estelle Raboni. Raboni says building self-esteem is crucial for Bronx teenagers.

“Young people in the Bronx unfortunately see themselves not able to affect change,” she said.

Francine J. Rojas, a social worker at Village Prep, said longer hours during the school day give students less opportunity to engage in sexual activity. She said teens often use the window of time between leaving school and their parents’ return home from work to get sexually active.

For that reason, Rojas says, after-school programs could be a valuable support for teens.

School attendance is also a key element in lowering teenage pregnancy rates.

“A lot of girls are just cutting school and hanging out with their boyfriends,” Rojas said.

A new gourmet supermarket is planned in Melrose.

Owner says shoppers will pay more, but will eat healthier

An entrepreneur is set to bring a gourmet market to Melrose, hoping to take a bite out of fast food culture with healthier alternatives.

Developer DeVon Prioleau says the Fresca Gourmet Market he is planning to open in the new Boricua Village complex on E. 161^st St. and Third Ave. will help provide the community with the same access to high-quality food more affluent parts of the city have long enjoyed.

“The Bronx can ill afford another liquor store or sneaker store,” Prioleau said.  “I want to give people other options.”

Prioleau, 29, said the  supermarket will be “reminiscent of a Fifth Avenue store rather than a Third Avenue deli.”

In 2008 the Department of City Planning conducted a citywide “Supermarket Shortage” study, in which it identified the South Bronx as one of four underserved high-density population centers severely lacking in fresh food venues. Over a quarter of all adults said they don’t eat any fruits or vegetables on any given day, according to a follow-up study released in November.

That report – called “FoodWorks” and issued by City Council Speaker Christine Quinn – cited the lack of healthy options, coupled with rising prices for nutritious foods and steadily low prices for unhealthy alternatives, as factors contributing to soaring rates of diabetes and other diseases caused by poor eating habits.

The report recommends increasing financial and zoning incentives for grocery stores that open in underserved communities, as part of the city’s Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH) project.

Over 13 percent of South Bronx residents suffered from diabetes in 2009, and 70 percent of its adults were considered overweight or obese, according to a report released by the city’s Department of Health. But according to a report issued that same year by the Bronx District Public Health Office, 40 percent of respondents said it was difficult to find fresh and affordable produce in the area.

May May Leung, who teaches public health at Hunter College, said chronic illnesses like diabetes and obesity can be reduced by making nutritious food affordable and easily accessible for the city’s lower-income residents.

“Modifying the environment is an important component” to help people change their eating habits, she said.

Prioleau, a Bronx native, says he saw a business opportunity in his “untapped and unexposed” home borough, combined with financial incentives for increasing the availability of fresh, nutritious food through the FRESH program.

He says he has secured nearly a million dollars already, through loans from private sources, as well as from the city.

The young entrepreneur says South Bronx residents regularly put up with “ghetto fabulous supermarkets with bread that’s a day old and food that’s expiring,” and adds that while the neighborhood will benefit from higher-quality food, he has no choice but to pass higher costs on to customers. He said prices will be 50 cents to a dollar per item higher than what local shoppers are accustomed to paying.

Mercy Cruz, 41, has lived in the neighborhood for 22 years.  “Food here is spoiled and old.  It’s just not good,” she said.   Cruz would welcome the new supermarket in Melrose, but said she worried low-income families “might have a problem with higher prices,” then added, “sometimes you have to pay a little extra to get better quality.”

Raymond Arias, 50, who has been selling fruits and vegetables from a nearby stand for the last five years, doesn’t think his small operation will be impacted by the new gourmet market. “Maybe I can go work for them,” he said, laughing.

Prioleau says he is going through the certification process so the market can accept food stamps, and added the store will carry over 4,000 products that reflect the tastes of the area’s diverse ethnic groups. In addition, he says other services, such as cooking classes, will be offered.

Fresca Gourmet Market is slated to open its doors later this year,  and Prioleau would like to see three more stores open in the next five years.

“The wheels are in motion,” he said.

Magician David Blaine holds 2-year-old Aziyah Hopper. Young people from the unit looking on are Janiyah Jeffrey, Amber Marrero, Natalie Morales, David Richardson and Daniel Murray.

Children meet world-famous performer

Internationally renowned magician David Blaine performed magic and card tricks for children at Lincoln Hospital’s pediatric unit during the holiday season.

A modern-day Houdini, Blaine has built his reputation on such achievements as freeing himself from handcuffs while holding his breath under water.

Every year, Blaine travels around the country performing magic for children’s hospital wards, burn units and juvenile detention centers.

From December through April, those who subscribe to the farm share program will get monthly deliveries, making Corbin Hill the first year-round supplier of local produce with a specific emphasis on low-income neighborhoods in New York City.

Full price for a winter share is $240 for the five-month season. Corbin Hill also offers a special subsidized price of $150 for the Winter Farm Share to those eligible for SNAP benefits.

Each month the program will deliver 15-20 pounds of root vegetables and hearty greens that do not need to be refrigerated to local drop-off points.

The produce comes from Corbin Hill Road Farm and several others in Schoharie County, 40 miles west of Albany.

This summer more than 500 participants in the South Bronx and Harlem received weekly deliveries of fruit and vegetables.

In addition to providing fresh, wholesome food, the project is also dedicated to fostering a relationship between rural farming communities and urban neighborhoods. In August, when Hurricane Irene devastated farms and towns in upstate New York, Corbin Hill shareholders collected donations for storm victims.

In the future, Corbin Hill plans to create an upstate-downstate exchange program for young people.

Applications may be picked up and filled out at WHEDco, 50 E. 168th Street or The Point Community Development Corp., 940 Garrison Avenue or be submitted by visiting http://www.corbinhillfarm.com/join.html.

Photo by Gwen McClure Local residents have united to oppose development of this site on E. 144th St. into a mental health and social service facility.

A group of Mott Haven residents has organized to protest a proposed housing development for the mentally ill, saying the neighborhood already has far more than its fair share of social service agencies.

The group, called Voices of the People, is frustrated with the influx of social service programs, and adds they were given no advance notice that plans for still another were underway.

“We have so many shelters and programs and they are all crowded. We are hyper-saturated,”said resident Marcelino Sanchez. “I think it is a crime.”

The publicly funded 60-unit doorman facility on E. 144^th Street between Brook and Willis Ave. will include 18 units dedicated to general low-income housing. Another 42 will be for adults and young adults with mental illness. The low-income housing will include studios and one- and two-bedrooms for tenants and will have a minimum income requirement. For those living with mental illness, there will be on-site support including case management and mental-health counselors.

At a community board meeting in October, residents expressed concern that the development would bring back problems their community faced in previous decades.

Dr. Marian Rivas, whose family has owned a home on 144^th St. since 1949, recalled neighborhood safety problems of the 1960s and ’70s. Since then she has seen the area steadily improve, until several years ago when she started to notice increased drug use and loitering, some of which she and other frustrated residents say stems from unsupervised clients from the area’s many social service facilities.

“It looked like Berlin after the war,” Rivas recalled. “We are survivors through the worst. Why should we have to go through it again?”

According to Carlos Garcia, director of residential programs for The Association for Rehabilitative Case Management and Housing, the non-profit that plans to open the site, this isn’t the first time his organization has received resistance from a community based on concerns about the impact.

He said applicants are screened thoroughly for histories of violence and sex offenses and that only graduates of ACMH programs will be housed.

“Typically we are faced with the ‘not-in-my-backyard’ kind of thing,” Garcia said.

He said that stories of people defecating in the streets and exposing themselves were not based in reality. “It’s just like in any neighborhood,” Garcia said. “If you see that kind of stuff, you call the police.”

But homeowners argue that rather than provide housing for deserving low-income residents from the neighborhood, the developments draw people from elsewhere looking for better access to services. Some residents expressed concerns about the safety of their children, fearing the development will draw a dangerous clientele to a neighborhood filled with schools. Others were concerned about decreasing property values.

“Much of their wealth is tied up in their homes,” Rivas said of her neighbors, adding they will urge elected officials to help stymy the project by cutting off the developers’ funding.

State Senator Jose M. Serrano attended the meeting to discuss other matters, but soon found himself fending off criticism from the group directed towards him and other elected officials for not defending residents’ rights.

“When you have an over-concentration of social services in one community, you have to ask why,” Serrano responded, admitting he knew nothing of the project before hearing the group complain at the October meeting.

“So why don’t we have these facilities on 72^nd and Park Avenue?” he said, adding, “these services can be spread out.”

Community Board 1 district manager Cedric Loftin said the number of units for low-income residents is too small to offset changes he believes will occur in the neighborhood such as an increased police presence and an increased feeling of insecurity. He said the community board will work with the governor’s office and other elected officials to try to get funding reallocated to a project elsewhere.

“The location is bad and it needs to be looked at from the perspective of the community that’s going to be impacted,” said Loftin.

The citizens group has met with elected officials who have vowed to help them fight the project, including Assemblywoman Carmen E. Arroyo.

Daniel Johansson, CEO of the site developer, cited a study done by the Furman Center at NYU in 2008, which found that property values actually increased when supportive housing was developed in the area. He said the area was chosen because of a partnership with Lincoln Hospital and a need for supportive and low-income housing in the area.

“There are so many folks that end up being re-hospitalized in the Bronx who have a mental health issue,” he said. “Once you have a roof over your head it’s so much easier to get your life together.”

]]> http://motthavenherald.com/2011/11/03/residents-rail-against-new-social-service-development/feed/ 2 http://motthavenherald.com/2011/10/18/somethings-bubbling-at-mott-haven-school/ http://motthavenherald.com/2011/10/18/somethings-bubbling-at-mott-haven-school/#comments Tue, 18 Oct 2011 12:52:40 +0000 By Elizabeth Chen http://motthavenherald.com/?p=4219

Photo by Elizabeth Chen Students at Mott Haven Academy learn about growing nutritious food.

Focus is on food in Haven Academy wellness program

Sayda Arriola was stunned when her son Adam, a Mott Haven 3^rd grader, told her that a visitor named “Chef James” baked rhubarb pie for his class.

“I remembered thinking, ‘Rhubarb pie? What in the name of Jesus is that?’” she said. Arriola wanted to know who “Chef James” was and learned he was a food education instructor who visits the school.

Chef James’ cooking sessions don’t take place at a posh private school—he’s whipping up pies at Mott Haven Academy, the three-year-old charter school near E. 136^th St. and Brook Ave.

In March, a survey conducted by the Food Research and Action Center revealed that one of three residents in the local school district were not able to afford enough food. Two-thirds of Mott Haven Academy’s student body are in foster care or receiving public assistance, according to principal Jessica Nauiokas.

Despite this socioeconomic reality, the school has been running nutrition and fitness education programs for the past year, with help from the Bubble Foundation, a non-profit group that provides free wellness programs to underserved charter schools. Bubble was founded in early 2010 by Jessica Nauiokas’ sister, Amy Nauiokas, and her business partner and ex-husband James Connolly, “Chef James.”

“When our 7-year-old started attending school in the city, James and I were really concerned with the lack of nutrition and fitness education in urban schools,” said Amy Nauiokas.

She thought it made sense to use the school where her sister was principal as Bubble’s pilot school. Amy Nauiokas’ idea is to adopt a school for two years, bring in wellness programs and guide the school toward sustaining the programs independently.

“We value wellness and to be able to achieve that is really hard to do on our budget,” said Jessica Nauiokas.

Bubble is funded by a number of private corporate donations and charity dinners held for Soho and TriBeCa families, Amy Nauiokas said. Upscale Manhattan food suppliers have donated to Bubble’s nutrition program, BubbleEATS—which consists of a weekly class to teach students about food and trips to the community garden next door, the Wanaqua Family Garden. Students and instructors engage in monthly “family-style” meals in which they serve themselves from communal bowls.

“They get so excited to see the vegetables they recognize,” said Bianca Colbath, one of three full-time volunteer instructors at Haven Academy. “Teaching these kids where their food comes from will allow them to demand healthy food as they get older.”

Bubble plans on withdrawing from Haven Academy next year, as they pursue other schools in the city, including the Dream Academy in Harlem. Nevertheless, Jessica Nauiokas is confident that the programs will last after their departure.

Local education activist Ray Figueroa is skeptical. The interactive aspects of Bubble’s program sound promising, he said, but children’s nutritional health depends mainly on the ability of individual families to afford healthy food.

“Wellness programs can fall flat unless they emphasize the structural needs of families,” said Figueroa. “The economics of poverty discourages healthy eating. We have the highest childhood obesity rates in the city. ”

But Arriola couldn’t be happier with Bubble’s involvement with her children, who now ask her to give them Chef James’ recipes.

“As a concerned mother, I feel there should be no shortage of healthy food for my children,” she said.

Photo by Gwen McClure Peer worker Gina Villacis helps participants sign up for lunch, one of the services offered at CitiWide Harm Reduction.

A Mott Haven health-care agency has embarked on a major expansion which will bring a full array of services to the neighborhood’s population of homeless and at-risk drug users.

CitiWide Harm Reduction, a 16-year-old program housed near a bodega and a diner on 144th Street, will begin construction on the new $400,000 Wellness Center this month.

The new center will be staffed with doctors, psychiatrists and nurses to help recovering and current drug users deal with problems ranging from homelessness to AIDS.

“It’s going to be very walk-in oriented,” said Robert Cordero, the executive director. “They can literally walk in and see a provider, and that’s critical when you’re talking about people who are experiencing homelessness and who are using drugs.”

CitiWide already offers its participants a variety of programs and services including needle exchange, basic diagnostic and preventive care, and support groups.

Founded in 1995 by Brian Weil, a photographer and drug user, the agency estimates that it has served 10,000 clients since its foundation. It currently serves over 2,500 clients in an area that remains one of the highest in HIV infection in the nation.

Upstairs on a recent Wednesday people were cleaning and clearing the second floor so that construction could begin.

In the midst of the activity, Randee Phillips stood behind a man seated in a chair with small acupuncture needles protruding from around his ear, a treatment for addiction-related cravings.

“It’s kind of a forgotten population and they feel safe here. It’s really important,” the acupuncturist said. “I see people turn their lives around. I love working here.”

Participant John McDuffie echoed this feeling of comfort. He moved to the Bronx in 2005 in hopes that he would find better services than he had in Long Island and spoke candidly about his struggles with addiction and his mental and physical health.

“For the mental health service, I don’t have to go outside for the clinics,” he said. “It would be much better because I don’t like the buses or trains, I can come right here- at home.”

McDuffie now works in peer outreach, acting as a mentor.

HELP/Project Samaritan, an organization that works to make healthcare more widely accessible, will partner with CitiWide to run the center. Cordero expects the partnership to play a big part in its success.

“In addition to hepatitis, HIV and drug use, they’re struggling, a lot of them, with diabetes and high blood pressure and things that are related to diet,” he said. “So you’ve got this kind of synergy of plagues in the South Bronx that we have an opportunity to make a dent in it. No one agency is going to be able to do it.”

Cordero also said the new center will reduce the cost of healthcare for the government. “The goal here is to create a home for them, a health home,” he said. “They can receive ongoing preventive and primary care so they don’t wind up getting their primary care in the emergency room.”

“It’s very good,” McDuffie said, smiling. “It’s going to help a lot of people.”