June Leadership Training

crowd

Originally uploaded by sunvacants

James Mumm, the director of organizing for National People’s Action, helped facilitate our Leadership Training on organizing and recruiting on June 29th at the Brady Faith Center. 19 leaders, from all four of SUN’s neighborhood groups, role played how to doorknock a potential SUN membership recruit,. In addition, the leaders focused on how to craft a message on what SUN is and how organizing can help neighborhoods.

This was no boring lecture–there was learning, laughter and sub sandwiches all around.

Stay tuned for our next Leadership session!

June Leadership Training

crowd

Originally uploaded by sunvacants

James Mumm, the director of organizing for National People’s Action, helped facilitate our Leadership Training on organizing and recruiting on June 29th at the Brady Faith Center. 19 leaders, from all four of SUN’s neighborhood groups, role played how to doorknock a potential SUN membership recruit,. In addition, the leaders focused on how to craft a message on what SUN is and how organizing can help neighborhoods.

This was no boring lecture–there was learning, laughter and sub sandwiches all around.

Stay tuned for our next Leadership session!

SUN Leadership Training

Syracuse United Neighbors trains neighborhood people to become neighborhood leaders.

Come to our next Leadership Training on Monday June 29th at
6:00 PM at the Brady Faith Center 404 South Ave. across the street from the Southwest Community Center.

Dinner will be served YOU MUST RSVP to SUN at 476-7475

Special Guest:
James Mumm–Director of Organizing, National People’s Action

Topics:
How organizing improves neighborhoods.

How our neighborhoods can work with others across the country to improve all our lives.

N.P.A. 2009–Together We Rise

Wow. We’re exhausted. Many of us have blisters on our feet and hoarse voices . . . but the smile just will not leave our faces. Yep, SUN is back from another power-packed National People’s Action conference in Washington, DC with 600 of our organizing brothers and sisters, from 24 neighborhood groups from across the country.

NPA was created to fight the redlining of home mortgages by financial institutions, aided and abetted by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. NPA has expanded over the years to include issues such as education, immigration and access to health care–the issues that residents of poor neighborhoods face every day.

The conference is equal parts leadership training, strategic planning, accountability meetings, legislative briefings and direct action protest. No time for sightseeing, the work starts when you sign in at 4 PM on Friday and isn’t over until you pull out of DC at 4 PM on Monday (although there is a party on Sunday night.)

This year, a leadership team of residents met with Ben Bernanke and the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve. Last year we protested at his home and office. This year we were at the table. He agreed to a series of meetings in our cities to discuss plans to ease the burden of mortgage foreclosures. We’ll let you know when he comes to Syracuse!

NPA also released a report on the discriminatory lending practices of Wells Fargo, a company that targets African-Americans for high interest, high fee loans. For example, 41% of African-American borrowers in Syracuse who received a loan from Wells Fargo received one of these sub-prime loans.

The direct action protests were high energy and always a highlight of the trip. Check out some footage taken by SUN member (and chair of our Board) Dick Breland. These videos were in the lobby of the building housing Wells Fargo’s top DC lobbyist, Ted Doremus. The firm agreed to receive a copy of the NPA report on Wells Fargo’s lending discrimination. We are still working to get a meeting with top Wells Fargo officials–this was just the first step.

Then we moved on to the American Banking Association and its president Edward Yingling. The A.B.A. is lobbying furiously to gut all the programs proposed by President Obama to help rescue families in danger of foreclosure, while pushing for ever increasing amounts of money for bailouts of bankers. As The Hill newspaper reported on its website, NPA’s protest forced a lockdown of the entire office building housing their offices. A leadership team met with top officials and are working to schedule a formal negotiation meeting in the near future.

After the actions on Monday, we went up to Capitol Hill to participate in meetings with agency and Congressional staff. SUN member Amanda Pascall was a part of the leadership team that met with the chief advisor to the new HUD secretary to discuss both mortgage foreclosure prevention and more funding for programs such as the Community Development Block Grant. SUN member Maria Johnson was part of the team that briefed Congressional staff about a proposed bill that would fund a pilot program for rust-belt cities with populations under 150,000 struggling with economic decline and increases in vacant housing.

Our intrepid band of SUN folks are back home, energized to continue our mission of improving our neighborhoods.

SUN And The New Media

SUN gets social . . . social media that is.

Check out videos taken at the most recent National People’s Action conference by our Board Chair Dick Breland at our
YouTube users page

Also, you can follow us on Twitter and check out information about upcoming meetings, articles and videos of interest and all kinds of stuff.

SUN Testimony at Common Council Hearing on CDBG Budget

My name is Maria Johnson and I am a member of the Board of Directors of Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN). SUN’s members are families living on the south, southwest and near-west sides of Syracuse. SUN’s concern is for our neighborhoods, for the crisis in housing that everyone sees when they look out their doors: the increasing number of abandoned houses, the fact that few of these vacant houses are ever rehabbed and the near impossibility for low and moderate income families to receive financial assistance to repair their own homes. These are the struggles the CDBG program was created to address.

We are at a crossroads in this country–the economy and credit markets have collapsed and the government has had to step in and provide the capital needed to keep our economy from grinding to a halt. Our new administration is asking us to believe again–to have hope. But it is also asking us to be accountable, to use the money the government provides in as efficient a manner as possible.

Let’s face it. This budget that you are approving today doesn’t meet the high standards set by the Obama administration. $2.8 million out of the $6 million of CDBG entitlement funds given to the city by HUD is going right into the pockets of City Hall bean-counters. Why should homeowners give up the chance at a home improvement loan to fund a Department of Economic Development that does nothing while the only grocery store on the Southside disappears? Why should neighbors give up hope of dangerous vacant houses being demolished because the city wants to create a slush fund called Special Housing programs that it refuses to describe in any detail whatsoever? Why should low-income neighborhoods plan for rehabilitation of vacant houses for new owner-occupants? The money will instead go to the administrative costs that eat up 46% of the CDBG budget–despite the fact that these costs are supposed to be capped at 20%.

We will be back here shortly to discuss how to use an additional $1.6 million in CDBG funds added to the budget in the Obama stimulus package. Administrative costs for that money is limited to 1%–or $16,000. SUN urges the Council to demand that the city take not one dime out of this additional money for overhead and apply the entire amount to actual housing projects–like the demolition of 170 W. Brighton and repurposing of the land to benefit the adjoining Cannon St. community center. But we’ll be back to talk about that.

SUN has three recommendations: for the current budget:

1) City departments must release detailed budgets and program descriptions for all money it receives from the CDBG budget–just like everyone else.

2) Eliminate all technical service lines, using the money to fund housing programs.

3) Create a program to help displaced renters and homeowners find new housing.

Update: A Victory On 133 South Ave.

On Monday March 16th, the Syracuse Common Council voted unanimously NOT to declare 133 South Ave. a historic house, overturning the recommendations of the city’s Preservation Board and its Planning Commission. At two prior hearings, neither board would allow SUN to discuss the conditions of the house that plagues the neighborhood: physical deterioration of the house, trash, drug dealing etc. In fact, the Preservation Board threatened to have SUN’s director arrested.

As you may recall, SUN staged a protest at the law office of the absentee landlord of the property, Mr. James Medcraf. The owner, has kept the property vacant for 17 years and ignored a State Supreme Court order to demolish the property since 2006. SUN’s protest prompted the city to pressure Mr. Medcraf to apply for a demolition permit. The two city boards put a hold on the demolition, citing the historic nature of the house. But Mr. Medcraf can no longer hide behind the city’s arcane historic property regulations. Pony up Mr. Medcraf. 133 South is comin’ down. Stay Tuned!

A Grocery Store For Valley Plaza

Kathleen Joy, the chairperson of the Common Council’s Economic Development committee was one of our guests at the February 9th meeting of SUN’s Southside Coalition. SUN’s leaders got a commitment from her to call an early spring meeting of the committee to focus the city’s efforts on getting a grocery store to replace the P & C store leaving Valley Plaza.

The meeting will be held at the plaza, outdoors if weather permits, and will have officials of the city’s Economic Development department and representatives of the plaza’s owners, Ellicott Development of Buffalo.

You’ll be seeing a lot more publicity about this meeting over the next couple of months.

SUN Testifies At Landmark Preservation Board

10 SUN leaders honored the memory of Martin Luther King, Jr. by braving single digit temperatures and the 8:00 A.M. start time to testify at a hearing of the city’s Landmark Preservation Board on January 15th, King’s birthday. At issue, SUN’s demand that the owner demolish 133 South Ave., an abandoned house that has been vacant since 1992. The house is an eyesore and a magnet for loitering, trash dumping and drug use.

The Preservation Board allowed Sabrina Rautio, co-chair of SUN’s Southwest Action Council to make a statement about the effect that the house has had on the neighborhood, but threatened to kick SUN Executive Director Rich Puchalski out of the hearing when he tried to make a statement about the need to demolish the building, an action ordered in 2006 by State Supreme Court. (check out the video!)

No decision was made on the status of the house. If the property is declared historic, SUN will follow the process up the ladder–next stop, the city’s Planning Commission.

SUN Testimony At PSC Hearing On National Grid Rate Hike

Syracuse United Neighbors (SUN) is a neighborhood organization whose members are residents of low income neighborhoods on the south, southwest and near west sides of the city of Syracuse, N.Y. For over 30 years, SUN has fought to improve our neighborhoods and helped residents with issues such as safe and affordable housing, reducing street crime and maintaining quality city services.

National Grid is requesting an increase in the rates they may charge for gas delivery. In the support documents the utility submitted in this case, the company projects an increase of revenue per customer of 27% between what they received in 2007 and what they will receive in 2010. In return, they propose a limited discount of $5/month for low income customers. Even with this discount, the increase customers will see is 22%.

The end result of these increases will be unbearable for the poorest of New Yorkers, as incomes for low income families are only increasing by 1% a year. The result will be an even poorer community, as families juggle heat, housing, food, medicine and health care bills–all of which are increasing rapidly. SUN sees more and more people in our neighborhoods that cannot afford the basic necessities of life–forced to make decisions about cutting back on medicines, not paying their mortgage, eating less or paying their heat bill.

National Grid has a history of abusive relations with customers and should not be rewarded with any increase at all. National Grid, in this filing, announces to the world that it intends to increase the number of field/collection/shutoff visits by 19% in the next two years. It is clear that National Grid is using the threat of shutoffs as a bill collection measure–in direct violation of the spirit of the Home Energy Fair Practices Act (HEFPA) New York utility consumers’ “bill of rights.” Passed in 1981, HEFPA sets the goal for utilities of continual service to customers, working to prevent shut offs.

Instead, National Grid bumps customers off budget plans and its Affordability program for seniors after one missed payment, immediately presenting bills for two to three thousand dollars, the balance of the year’s payments. National Grid uses the drama of threatened and actual shut offs as a means to compel payment. They are no better than the loan shark that busts kneecaps.

National Grid’s local customer service is swamped with calls and heaven forbid the one consumer advocate for the several county area around Syracuse is out sick or at a meeting. The only alternative for customers is to call the utility’s 1-800 number where the negotiation is always the same–pay your bill in full or we will cut you off.

The Public Service Commission is asleep at the switch on these customer abuse issues, but vigilant and proactive when dealing with the financial well-being of the the utilities.

We request the PSC to do the following:

1) Deny the rate increase to National Grid.

2) Require National Grid to offer its upstate NY customers the same sort of low income discount it offers to its customers in metropolitan Boston–an annual discount of 26%. Or perhaps extend the same sort of innovative case management and arrearage forgiveness program (On Track) it continues to run for its former Key Span customers in Brooklyn, parts of Long Island and Massachusetts.

3) Create a financial incentive program for utilities when they reduce the incidences of shut offs to customers, similar to the program that rewards utilities for reducing lost utility service due to mechanical failures. Something like this is required in a state that has seen incomes plummet, prices skyrocket and the Associated Press is reporting that utility shut offs statewide have increased by 17% this year.