New York Daily News - http://www.nydailynews.com
They need Salvation from Army
By JUAN GONZALEZ
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITER
Friday, January 19th, 2007
The Salvation Army, the second-largest charity in America, is quietly
evicting nearly 200 women, many of them elderly and low-income, from
a pair of 18-story Manhattan buildings.
Tenant leaders at the two single-room occupancy hotels, the Ten Eyck-
Troughton Residence on E. 39th St. and the Parkside Evangeline at
Gramercy Park, say officials from the charity have been harassing
them for months and have already frightened many long-term residents
into moving out.
On Tuesday, lawyers for the charity hand-delivered 30-day eviction
notices as a prelude to selling the buildings.
State Sen. Liz Krueger (D-Manhattan), a former tenant advocate, says
the Salvation Army is callously trying to cash in on Manhattan's
sizzling real estate market. She claims the group is taking advantage
of the charity's exemption from rent-stabilization laws. Those laws
would normally give tenants certain protections from eviction in a
building sale.
The clear implication is that the Salvation Army is being downright
greedy.
"That's a very negative way of looking at a service organization,"
said Laura DeBuys, director of communications for the Salvation Army
of Greater New York. "We're going to redeploy our assets and move
them to where they can do the most good."
The 276-unit Gramercy Park building could go for more than $100
million, while the larger Ten Eyck building is expected to fetch a
slightly lower price.
The buildings were originally donated to the Salvation Army decades
ago specifically to provide housing for women of modest income. Many
of the residents are working women who pay between $1,000 and $1,200
a month for a room, with tenants sharing common bathrooms for each
floor.
"We're all being harassed," said Princess Usanga, president of the
tenants association at the Parkside. "Some of these women have been
here for 20 and 30 years. Where will they go?"
You would think the charity had enough money, considering they got a
$1.5 billion grant a few years ago from Joan Kroc, widow of
McDonald's magnate Ray Kroc. The money was earmarked to build 25
community centers around the country, DeBuys said.
But now the Salvation Army says it must raise more money to operate
those centers, one of which will be on Staten Island.
New York is notorious for having some ruthless landlords, but several
housing advocates said this week they have rarely seen the kind of
tactics used by the Salvation Army.
About 8 p.m. Wednesday, for example, Ellie Van Savage heard a loud
knock at the door of her tiny rented room in the Ten Eyck Residence
for Women.
Van Savage opened the door to find the building's manager and four
total strangers standing in her doorway.
One of the strangers - a Salvation Army lawyer - handed her a 30-day
eviction notice. Another stranger who was carrying a video camera
then proceeded, without uttering a word, to film Van Savage receiving
the notice.
"I was totally shocked and shaken by the whole thing," Savage said
yesterday.
The same day, nearly 200 other women at the Ten Eyck and the Parkside
Evangeline Residence were confronted with the same knock on the door,
the same 30-day eviction notice, and the same Fellini-like stranger
with a video camera.
Michelle Leone also got a nighttime visit. She's a U.S. Navy veteran
battling cancer.
"I was sick most of last year so the Salvation Army wouldn't accept
me in any of its other residences without any income," she said last
night. "I can't sleep worrying about being homeless."
The charity relocated some of the oldest residents to another SRO it
owns on the upper West Side, but has offered no relocation assistance
to most of the women.
"We're dealing with each resident on an individual basis," DeBuys
said, but she refused to explain what kind of help the charity was
offering.
"They fund-raise at Christmastime to prevent people from being
evicted from their homes, and here they are evicting all these women
themselves," Krueger said yesterday.
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