PEP, January 2008: Trapped

By DIANE S. WILLIAMS

Eugene Williams lives in a cramped studio apartment with his sons, ages 12 and 21. Gentrification of his South Bronx neighborhood will soon push rents beyond his ability to pay on a $29,000 civil servant’s annual salary. Eventually he will be forced out, but where will his family go?

When he landed a Clerical Associate job at Lincoln Hospital in 1999, Williams believed he could relocate to Ossining in Westchester County, rent for a while and eventually buy a home.

“That was my dream until a shop steward told me it was not an option,” Williams said. To keep his city job, he must comply with a residency law that requires him to live amid the luxury housing building boom and skyrocketing rents of the five boroughs. Williams believes his Big Apple hometown is becoming a city only for the rich that shuts out middle-class and working families like his.

“I can’t afford to live in the city I work for,” Williams said. To make ends meet he sacrifices. “I have to pick whether to pay my rent, which takes food out of my children’s mouths, or a doctor’s visit.” He wanted a quieter, better environment, but couldn’t move and keep his job and pension. He said, “I should not have to choose between my job and where I live. I feel trapped.”

Intro. 452 needed
“I am not the only one in this bubble,” Williams said. His mother, also a long-time city employee and DC 37 member, lives under the same residency restriction as 45,000 other District Council 37 members.

Demanding that City Council pass Intro. 452 and lift the onerous residency rule, DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, union leaders and more than 300 supporters dressed in union green demonstrated at City Hall on Oct. 30, Nov. 28 and Dec. 11, lobbying for support from City Council members.

“As a result of the action at the City Council, the majority of the council’s 51 members are now co-sponsoring Intro. 452, the legislation to lift the residency requirement,” said Political Director Wanda Williams.

Intro. 452 would implement the contract provision that allows members to live outside the city in six surrounding counties and keep their jobs. The bill would giveDC 37 members the same freedoms Sanitation, Teachers and Police Officers have enjoyed for years: the right to live where they choose to make a better life for themselves and their families without jeopardizing their livelihoods.

“This issue is not a secret,” said Eugene Williams. “Council members know what’s going on,” he said. “Are they waiting to see the how bad it gets before they take action?” For the last three decades, lawmakers have ignored the city’s growing housing crisis and failed to launch any major affordable housing initiatives.

“We pay our taxes and should be free to live wherever we like,” said Elizabeth Thompson, a North Central Bronx Hospital employee. “Elsewhere in America, people work and live where they please. It is unfair to deny city workers opportunities to live more comfortably with better schools and safer neighborhoods.” Some 15,000 city employees live in dilapidated public housing.

“I want my children to have a better chance and live in a more diverse community. But because my income is low and I have to stay in the city to keep my job, the only housing alternatives are in worse neighborhoods,” said Far Rockaway resident Regina Abdullah of Local 1549.

DC 37 is using lobbying, letter writing, phone banks and more to press the City Council to adopt Intro. 452. The union has support from the New York State Conference of NAACP branches, the Greater Harlem Chamber of Commerce, the Civil Service Bar Association, the AFL-CIO, the Municipal Labor Committee, the Uniformed Firefighters Association, the United Federation of Teachers and Mayor Mike Bloomberg.

“The residency law favors some city employees over others,” said Marie Adams, a Clerical Associate 3 at an alcoholic treatment center in Brooklyn. “Sanitation workers, Police Officers and Teachers all work for city agencies too, but they don’t have these requirements. Why us?”