One sweltering day last summer, after months of trying, I finally
met Matthew Lee. His office is in a dilapidated store front on a back street
in the South Bronx. He was working at a small laptop computer, surrounded by
piles of court filings and back issues of the paper he has helped put out: Inner
City Press. Chairs were scattered around the room. An old fan whirred in the
corner. On the wall is a sign in bold yellow letters: `We the poor have a right
to opportunity. Community On The Move.' Although there were a few desks in the
office, he was alone that afternoon. Every few minutes the phone would ring,
answered by a machine message that leaves the clear impression an insurrection
is afoot.
Before meeting Matthew, I read Inner City Press. It is about taking over abandoned
buildings, of which there are hundreds in the South Bronx and Harlem, and fixing
them up for and by the homeless. There are stories of factories, potential and
existing, that pollute the inner city: pesticide manufacturers and newsprint
de-inkers. The newspaper explores corruption -- judges, police, city relief
agencies and school boards. One story explored the cover-up of the murder of
Lillian DeJesus, an accountant who was shot in the back of the head during her
investigation into financial irregularities at PROMESA, a city-run drug treatment
center. Other stories investigate the relationships between the financial backers
of inner city politicians and the housing authorities. Many benefit from the
status quo in the inner city.
Matthew Lee is about thirty years old. He has that rare energy one sometimes
encounters among young entrepreneurs and revolutionaries. I asked him how he
got into this work: "I had been going to college for a couple of years.
It seemed abstract. I had heard about The Catholic Worker in Boston so I started
going to talks and then going down three mornings a week to help with their
soup lines. I got more and more involved. It is a place of good energy and friendship
where the homeless are welcomed in a non-judgmental way. When I decided to leave
school and leave Boston, I contacted the Catholic Worker in New York City. That
was 1985.
"Working and living with The Catholic Worker in New York was my turning
point. You don't get paid there, but you get fed and you get a place to sleep.
In addition to running a soup line, they put out a monthly publication on social
justice. I was there for two years, living in a room with twenty cots. After
a while, the lack of privacy got to me, but I had and have a lot of respect
for the people there. (Heron Dance will profile the work of Dorothy Day and
The Catholic Worker in a future issue.)
"When I left The Catholic Worker in 1987 I had no money, so I became a
homesteader. We needed a place to live and buildings were sitting empty. Myself
and two other people repaired and made livable some space in an abandoned building
on the Lower East Side. Many buildings there and in other inner city neighborhoods
sit vacant for years until they burn down and the City demolishes them.
"For the first week we hauled rubble and garbage out. Then we installed
doors. It still had electricity. We put in PVC pipes for plumbing. At the same
time, I was working day labor jobs in Brooklyn and the Bronx and writing for
The Catholic Worker. About then also, a couple of other people and myself had
the idea of starting Inner City Press. We wanted to explore why, despite a tremendous
need for housing, and many abandoned buildings, no homesteading was going on.
We wanted to let people know what they could do -- propose an alternative to:
`We are in the street, the City should provide for us.' We put out a thousand
copies on a mimeograph machine, and distributed it in the Bronx and Brooklyn.
We had thought people would read it and act -- it contained a lot of `how-to'
information. Instead, people wrote in from the shelters asking for more information
and advice. That led to a meeting. Forty people showed up, twenty or thirty
of whom were serious and wanted to work together. They wanted Inner City Press
to help them organize, which we did. A steering committee was created and we
scouted out buildings.
"In front of a park, we found a twenty-unit building that had been abandoned
for ten years. The City had no plans for it. It had been just left -- not even
sealed up. We began cleaning it out. We went to the local community board to
get building and occupancy permits. It became clear that the process would take
years. By that time, the building would probably have burned down and been demolished.
So we kept working.
"It took us about nine months to clean the building out and install windows
so that we could work in the winter. We had planned to wait until we had the
permits before moving in, but our tools and things kept getting stolen, so we
had to do something. Two people who were living in the shelter moved in as security
guards.
"About that time, the City announced that they wanted the building. They
said they wanted to fix it up. It was ridiculous. We were surrounded by two
hundred other abandoned buildings, and they decide this is the one they want
to work on. We had a stand-off. The police came with a construction crew. They
were going to rip down all our work. As it turned out, we were fortunate that
two people had been living there for six months. The captain of the precinct
showed up and said, `If you take me inside, and I am convinced that people have
lived there more than thirty days, we'll call off the dogs. We'll take you to
court and evict you -- we won't just throw you out.'
"So we took him in. He saw someone's cot, his cat, his cat food, his newspapers.
It was obvious someone was living there, so they called off the dogs. Then we
tried to convince the City that what they were doing didn't make any sense --
that we were doing something positive for the neighborhood. The City took us
to court. Our legal aid lawyers put up a great defense and won. It never actually
got to the merits. We won on points of order -- the city didn't serve the papers
properly. Meanwhile, our newspaper was growing and people were seeing the progress
on the building. More and more people that were living doubled up and homeless
wanted us to help them homestead too.
"We didn't encourage them because we were not sure how things would work
out with the City. Homeless people don't have much to lose, though. They started
working with the existing group on Saturdays, then a group of thirty-six people
started on the building next door. Then more people joined. We got lists of
all the City-owned vacant buildings. Before long, the group was fixing fourteen
buildings -- big buildings. People worked four Saturdays on one building and
then we would go to the next one.
"About that time, something clicked in the City's mind. This is now in
1990 and `91. Rather than take us to court and lose, they decided -- without
inspecting the buildings -- to declare them unsafe. They sent six bus loads
of riot police to the first two buildings we had renovated. Our legal aid lawyer
raced to court and won an injunction. The city appealed and got an automatic
stay of the injunction -- a power given to the City on the assumption that the
City won't abuse it. The City was able to remove these mostly Hispanic families.
Immigrants. Peaceful. The riot police had helmets and rifles. The injustice
of those riot police woke up something in me. It fueled a lot of work I have
done since then.
"They evicted us from two more buildings, and then we fought them to a
standstill. The City developed a plan to knock down buildings and replace each
one with two private homes. To buy these homes, you had to prove you had an
income of $46,000 a year. The median income in the South Bronx is $11,000. The
median income of the people who were working on these buildings was $7,000.
People work, but they are gypsy cab drivers, street vendors. We are not against
development -- we recognize that these houses are improvements -- but other
programs are also needed for lower income people.
"The newspaper changed. It became more sharp-edged. It had to. The City
embraces programs like Hale House, but anything that is not part of the system,
they want to crush. It is a conflict over power and resources. The City owns
most of the buildings in the South Bronx. The source of their power is buildings
that can be disposed of to developers. The fact that you are fixing up neighborhoods
doesn't matter -- they want to destroy anyone who challenges their power. But
we weren't going to go away. Out of the fourteen homesteaded buildings that
they wanted knocked down, they ended up knocking down three and the City offered
the people in the three buildings other apartments.
"We wondered if we should go along with this. It was the middle of winter
and there were a number of children involved. We decided it was no loss of face.
I mean, people did this work because they needed housing -- not to make a political
statement. Thank God, no one was hurt during the eviction, and people who had
no housing ended up with housing. Meanwhile, we were fighting back in court
and holding rallies in City Hall Park. They started to see that they were not
going to get rid of us. We offered to negotiate a solution, suggesting that
the City create a legal homesteading program. They had one a few years ago,
but people were only allowed to work in the buildings for four hours once a
week. It took years and years to renovate a building -- impractical for a family
that is homeless. A building can be repaired to a level of sufficient safety
and hygiene in four or five months, which is doable even for someone in the
shelter system. Five years is different. So our group continued -- now about
two hundred families live in these buildings. One building has been occupied
for six years. Each family has a Conn-Edison meter, all the plumbing is in,
people have installed sprinklers. It has come a long way. During this time,
the City has stopped trying to evict us. We are in a weird grey zone. We would
like them to try to evict us or to work with us to develop a solution. Instead
they ignore us.
"While all of this is going on, we began to wonder, `How did these buildings
get abandoned? Why is the City the only game in town?' People may be poor, but
they are making some money. Why can't they get a small loan to do something?
We started looking at banking in our neighborhoods. Every once in a while you
find a law that they forgot to amend. We found a law called the `Community Re-Investment
Act.'
"This law, which has been on the books since 1977, says that banks must
try to meet the credit needs of the entire community, including low and moderate
income people. They can't just take deposits from inner-city areas and not make
loans. In fact, many banks do. They define their communities however they want.
The law provides that a bank's record has to be considered when it applies to
merge with another bank or expand. Citizens can comment, and if their comment
is well-documented, multi-billion dollar mergers or expansions can be stopped.
If a bank addresses the issue, then the comment is removed.
"We wrote to the twenty banks in New York and asked them to send us their
statement and their mortgage lending data, both of which were public. You don't
have to be sophisticated to read the mortgage lending data. You get a census
track map. It becomes clear: `You lend a lot here, and nothing there. Your lending
falls entirely along racial lines. It is unfair. ' Bank after bank didn't even
include the South Bronx in their community. Since 1977 they had been closing
branches here down, and taking the position that they had no further obligation
to these areas. Whole neighborhoods were excluded from that part of the economy
that runs on checks and credit.
"There are credit-worthy people in the South Bronx, but there are stretches
of forty blocks without branches. In Manhattan there are banks on every corner.
A lot of people here don't have cars. People wait in long lines to pay phone
bills. We are not asking the banks to fly over the South Bronx and throw money
out of a helicopter. We are saying, `There are hardworking people here and legitimate
loans to be made. Market your products and lend to credit-worthy people.
"The first bank we challenged was The Bank of New York. That was 1992.
They included as their community Manhattan -- up to 96th Street, left off Harlem,
East Harlem, Washington Heights, all of the Bronx. They picked up again in Westchester.
They said that they just happened not to have any branches in those areas. We
said, `This is an outrage. A forty billion dollar bank, playing hopscotch over
the lowest income areas.' They said that they thought it was legal. We filed
our comments. We documented the credit needs. We quoted the law. Right before
the regulators were going to take action, the bank announced that they were
changing their maps to include Harlem and the South Bronx.
"Then we approached five other banks. They said they would consider our
points but nothing happened. That was 1994 and we had a kind of lull in our
homesteading. The city wasn't attacking. It seemed like a good time to address
the issue. We filed comments against all the banks that were telling us to wait.
Immediately after we filed the comments, senior people in those banks wanted
to sit down and talk.
"One of the first things they proposed was buying us off. They said, `We
don't really lend in the South Bronx, but we would like to work with community
groups there. What could we do with your group? Maybe we could support a homesteading
project.' I respect the people in our group -- they voted on it. They didn't
go for it. As it turned out, by taking the principled decision, we gained the
power to deal with other banks. Somehow the word got around. Next the banks
said, `We won't admit we violated any regulations or did anything wrong in the
past, but we will include your areas.'
"In 1994, Dime Savings and Anchor Savings were merging. Somehow both institutions
had overlooked the Bronx in their lending programs. Their only response to our
comment was: `We stand on our record.' Then the regulators said that they found
our comments to be substantial and were going to have a hearing. We got all
the papers ready but two days before the hearing the bank called and said they
wanted to talk. We were tempted to decline. It was an open and shut case. We
were ready to roll -- we had maps, we had slides -- but we met with the heads
of both banks. They said, `On further reflection, we see some merit to your
comments.' They agreed to expand their maps to include the South Bronx. They
agreed to open a branch, to lend an additional $50 million over three years.
Five million in upper Manhattan. And they did what they said they would. We
filed on a total of seven banks. Six have settled so far for a total increased
lending commitment of $88 million, two new branches, two loan production offices
and at least six freestanding ATMs. One branch opens next week. The Bank of
New York agreed to make $4 million in small business loans, half to businesses
with annual sales of less than $250,000 a year.
"We don't just get the banks to agree to do things. We set up compliance
meetings. They meet with us every quarter to report on their lending. We usually
go in groups of four or five, but if the bank will meet with us in the evening,
a lot of people show up.
"The seventh bank is Chase Manhattan. We are engaged in a long term slugfest
with them. The Chase includes the Bronx in their map, but they don't lend here.
They are one of the largest lenders in the country. We are speaking to groups
nationwide -- for instance, digging into all of the Fair Housing Act cases against
them in California. Their main business is jumbo mortgage lending -- mortgages
$350,000 and up. They are one of the biggest lenders in Los Angeles County --
Redondo Beach -- and in places like Palm Beach. They did $16 billion in mortgage
lending in 1994, less than one percent to minorities. We think that is a problem.
We think it is important to ring their corporate bell. Of five thousand home
purchase loans in 1994, 99% were to affluent whites. Nothing wrong with that
lending, but try to be fair. After the LA riots, Chase goes on the ReBuild LA
Committee. Their lending practices contributed to the inequality that led to
the riots, but now they go to the breakfasts and make speeches. We are not asking
them to give away money in South Central Los Angeles, but if you are going to
be a lender, try to lend fairly. They respond, `We don't want anyone to tell
us how to run our business.' We no longer have any lawyers, but Chase got an
approval on something that we had challenged so we are seeking legal representation
to sue them.
"Banks are saying that this is chaotic, almost like extortion. They say,
`It is outrageous that a big bank, trying to do big business, would get slowed
down by some troublemakers.' We say that the lower income community should not
always be on the defensive. Meanwhile Congress is thinking of repealing the
Community Re-Investment Act.
"We found that the approach of talking and waiting didn't work, whether
we were dealing with the City or the banks. They only take you seriously if
you force them to. If you go in on bended knee you get nothing. If you file
a one page comment saying you don't like them, nothing happens. But if you document
the facts and they are true, the regulators get embarrassed. They are supposed
to watch these banks. The question becomes, `How did this happen?'
"One regulatory agency we work with is the Civil Rights Division of the
Justice Department. There are some committed people there. They know that the
real trends are set by the large banks. They work hard, but their hands are
often tied. They have brought some great cases against smaller banks. These
have set precedents that the larger banks pay attention to, but with the current
Congress, they are hard-pressed to bring a Fair Lending case against a bank
the size of Chase Manhattan. Regulators have said to us: `Those people really
litigate.' That is fine. We will do it. That is why it is great to be independent
-- we can do what we think is right. I don't envy people on the inside who care
about fairness. I prefer to not be in the grey zone. It is not that it is more
moral on the outside, I just think it gets tricky on the inside. When something
is wrong, you need to challenge it. You can't go through life on your knees...."
Matthew is married and has two daughters. I asked him how he supports his family.
"I am a janitor. I get a free apartment for mopping the building, taking
out the garbage. That and the money I get from Inner City Press are enough to
live on. I have a car someone gave me. I have a scholarship, so that I can go
to law school at night. I have one more year, then maybe the bar exam. I end
up writing a lot of the bank challenges.
"It is important to take the initiative. It is important to look at the
operations of these banks. Examine their records. One thing leads to another.
We file a hundred pages and the Chase files four hundred." Matthew pointed
to a sagging table in the corner on top of which rested several feet of documents.
"They are willing and able to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in
legal fees. The games are all rigged -- its not a conspiracy, but power works
to help those in power. Who writes the laws? Its not the people in the South
Bronx. The laws are not intended to give a voice to the people on the bottom.
Still, it is a better country than most. At least there are laws and you can
vote. I don't like the people who get elected, but I don't think they play with
the numbers. We don't want to be too negative. I don't know what to say. It
is just sort of fun.
"We have found an area where work shows results. The timing is right. The
homesteading is running itself now. We still meet every Saturday and the people
in the buildings help organize new buildings. I just try to co-ordinate it.
That leaves time for these banking issues.
"Sometimes something is so bad that you have to sit in front of the bulldozer,
but in this case we have found a way to address some long-term problems in the
inner city that is not just `pissing in the wind.' In some ways it is good for
the banks. Things get out of touch. One banker said to us, `We will do something,
but not in that bottom part of the South Bronx. It is just a moonscape.' So
we asked him when he was last there. In the seventies. It's absurd. Our comments
can help banks that lose touch.
I asked Matthew how their work is funded. "Our budget is about $50,000
a year. Banks would give us data on magnetic tape, but we have no way to read
it. Our photocopier isn't working, so we send everything by fax. We need some
basic infrastructure. With another $20,000 we could get what we need. Instead,
we just keep juggling. We had thought that the larger foundations, after seeing
what we accomplished, would fund some staff, but most foundations won't go near
anything controversial, no matter how much you help communities that they supposedly
care about. We would prefer to avoid controversy too -- reason with the City
and the banks -- but it never works. Everything is power. You cause them a problem,
they listen. If that is the only way to get things done, you have to hold your
nose and let 'er rip. The issue is doing what is right, regardless of where
the money is. We will take on controversial issues without their money. We have
found a few small, progressive foundations. Subscribers to the newspaper have
also helped support our work in the past." (At least temporarily, the paper
is no longer being published in order that time can be devoted to other work).
"For me, this work is a release for some `do the right thing' energies.
Investigating banks satisfies my urge to be curious. I like to see things that
are wrong taken on. We are all called to do the right thing. It is important
to have something in your life that is right. Something that is an integral
part of your life.
"Some people are discouraged by the number of things that need to be done.
Some people think, `I see a problem. I am busy. What can I do to turn the problem
around tomorrow?' You can't accomplish anything tomorrow, so they don't do anything.
That is bullshit. Find something of concern and start. From that time forward,
everything you learn will help. As you learn more, you see how you can do more.
And don't shirk from a good fight, if what you are working for is right.
"Spiritual power is unlimited. Somehow that power is related to knowing
you are doing the right thing. You don't develop the power on your own. It is
in the air. I don't want to pontificate on it, but I believe there is a wellspring.
I don't belong to any particular religion. There is some force for good out
there, but I have also known good people that were killed for no apparent reason.
Still, there is power behind rightness.
