Alana Casanova-Burgess
NEW LEASE: A row of buildings on W. 135th Street, once the northernmost properties in Manhattan owned by an African-American landlord, is set to become one of the first affordable-housing blocks in the country to undergo a green overhaul.
Monday, November 23rd, 2009
Water doesn’t trickle down from the right basin of Jeanette Davis‘ sink – it pours.
Puddles have formed under the kitchen cabinet of her W. 135th St. apartment, and the 58-year-old recently used a broom to evict a live rat from her neighbor’s mailbox.
“And this is what I go through every day,” she said.
But starting this winter, her building and its nine six-story companions along a historic row between Lenox and Seventh Aves. will be among the first affordable housing blocks in the country to undergo a green overhaul.
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Monday, November 30th, 2009
New York City has more than 10,000 licensed and unlicensed street vendors. Many vendors say they are constantly fighting harassment by police as they try to eek out a living. The City Council is considering setting up an vendor advisory board as sidewalk merchants complain they are facing growing fines and even confiscation of their carts.
(A version of this story originally appeared on “219 West,” a monthly TV news magazine show broadcast on CUNY-TV)
Wednesday, November 25th, 2009
As children and their parents walked past crowded restaurants on Roosevelt Ave. in Jackson Heights recently, men yelled “Chicas!” and handed out cards with phone numbers and pictures of busty, scantily clad women.
For Kika Cerpa, a woman in her mid-30s, those cards bring back memories of her harrowing ordeal as one of those “chicas.”
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