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Community Anti-Poverty Corporations: TheBY PETER HALEYWhile the war against Communism was growing thousands of miles away in Vietnam, the official war against poverty at home began in the mid-sixties as part of President Lyndon Johnson%u2019s plans for the %u201cGreat Society.%u201d In Asia, Vietnam was being divided up into Corp I, Corp II, Corp III, and Corp IV sections to better administer the various %u201cpacification%u201d programs of bullets and bombs. At home, the war on poverty began as an effort to win the hearts and minds of American people, particularly among those poor people who had been conducting their own wars in riots from Watts to Harlem.In 1966, a new breed of corporate America, the non-profit, antipoverty community corporation was formed to administer the poverty war.The anti-poverty program emphasis was on community control of so-called ghetto or poverty neighborhoods. It was hoped that with a heavy bombardment of federal funds, poverty would retreat from these areas and that the serious social problems that accompany poverty would drop and die.Now, 12 years after it started, the War on Poverty is viewed by many as no more effective than what America did in Vietnam, and an indication of this inefficiency is that the exact count of the financial firepower spent fighting poverty here in New York is missing in action. Some records of past budgets and allocations %u201c just aren%u2019t th ere,\spokesman for the Community Development Agency, the city department responsible for most of the poverty funding, and the exact account of the several hundreds of millions spent to vanquish poverty and to employ thousands is not not available.Here in Brooklyn, the Fort Greene Community Corporation and the South Brooklyn Community Corporation together accounted for an estimated $40 million during that 12 year history. Between 1966%u2014when the Fort Greene Com %u00admunity Corporation and the South Brooklyn Community Corporation%u2019s combined budgets equaled little over $1 million%u2014until now when their present level is $3 million, the Corporations%u2019 funds have gone for corporation headquarters and smaller satellite agencies and manpower agencies, budgetted separately under the city%u2019s Department of Employment.Today, even though public attention toward the anti-poverty program has faded and the spotlight has shifted to other problems and other solutions, the same old-style War on Poverty in still continuing here in Brooklyn, while under new scrutiny and perhaps what will soon be new centralized control from City Hall.In Fort Greene, armed with $1.6 million this year, 157 employees are still at the job, working through their Corporation office and its 13 delegate agencies. In South Brooklyn, strengthened with $1.46 million and 144 employees, the anti-poverty campaign is waged from the Corporation headquarters and 12 agencies.FOUGHT IN SKIRMISHESThe corporations continue to fight their war much the same as they have done for over the past decade. Even though the gusto is gone, the daily war against poverty is fought primarily in small, one-to-one skirmishes over social security and-----%u00bbr---------1 1%u2014 c------ - i f ______m w u h i v v u v v k j i v t n v t x u i v u t v u i v t a )the elderly, and the disabled or in scattered forays to handle tenant complaints and job referral for the unemployed. Job training, education, recreation, and rehabilitation programs are part of the povertyprogram, but for the most part they, too, have minimal effect in the larger battles for greater employment and economic development.Rather than fighting the poverty war, the corporations have become for the most part service organizations that treat the war's refugees. Indeed, the anti-establishment sound and fury which unleashed the poverty program has diminished among the program and its participants until today the corporation resembles a middleman operating between the poor and the middle-%u2018When I camehere as an aide,the job programmeant takingthe newspaperand looking atthe helpwanted ads.%u2019class oriented, civil service operating city agencies.While spending these years in the %u201c middle,%u201d the anti-poverty corporations failed to provide the necessary leadership to fight the war. What the millions of dollars spent on anti-poverty work have pur chased is a proprietory system that serves the poor much in the same way that the comer grocery store or barbershop does. If you need it, you can use it. In-house politics, poor management that allowed poorly and evenly negatively evaluated programs to continue, and corruption%u2014like the thousands of dollars ripped off in Bedford-Stuyvesant%u2019s Youth-in-Action program and elsewhere%u2014have tarnished the dreams of the %u201c Great Society%u2019%u201d s anti-poverty campaign. Today, on the verge of entering the nineteeneighties, the local anti-poverty corporations have few victories behind them.Beset by budget cuts, what their employees see as low salaries which have not increased in four years, and a general drought of funding for anything other than staff salaries and operational costs, the principal fight among the community corporations is to maintain their %u201c adminstrative%u201d existence against a Koch adminstration intent on restructuring the program in the city.RESTRUCTURING ATTEMPTSThe city%u2019s plans to restructure the city%u2019s anti-poverty corporations, which together account for $39 million annually in New York%u2019s 24 designated neighborhood poverty areas, began during the Beame administration. In June, 1977, the federal Community Services Agency applied pressure for new board elections for 22 corporations because their members had served longer than the three year tenure limitations. The argument waxed and waned during the 1977 mayoral race and transition period. After the Koch administration took over, a June 26, 1978 deadline for board elections was set. If corporations failed to comply, the ultimatum was this: the community---------------- z ! ---------------------t i %u00ab%u2014 ____i . j w ij^ v ia u u u a n v u iu u v u v t u u u v uand their delegate agencies funded directly by the city%u2019s Community Development Agency (CDA).The board shake-up is the least of it, though. The word is out that the Koch-version of CDA intends to%u201c free-up%u201d some monies out of the largely fixed anti-poverty budget and as a result, CDA officials are taking a %u201c fresh look\programs (easily done since many officials are newcomers) to judge which ones are worthwhile. Value judgements such as these are something new for a New York mayor, at least according to one CDA insider.%u201c Lindsay%u2019s attitude about the anti-poverty program was to bail out and stay away from it and let them (CDA and community corporation officials) take the heat,\staff member. %u201c Beame followed in this tradition, but now Koch is shaking the anti-poverty program up in an effort to get mayoral control.%u201dThe %u201c shake-up%u201d involves both, the creation of new boards and a re-examination of the migration of the poor and the spread of poverty%u2014with a re-examination of the corresponding financial allocation systems for 26 corporations, currently based on outdated 1960 and 1965 censuses. City CDA officials have declined to say what this will mean for the Fort Greene and South Brooklyn Corporations specifically, but say that intensive evaluation of all current community corporation programs is now underway.Part of the Koch regim e%u2019s evaluation have meant putting Morrisania in the Bronx into receivership because of mismanagement and funding the delegate agencies while the central corporation itself comes into line with CDA guidelines. In other cases, such as Hunts Point and Bedford-Stuyvesant, it has meant outright defunding due to financial abuses. These corporations have disappeared and now there are only 24 corporations in the city,In making its case for what may be the new platoons of community corporations, the code word is %u201c credibility%u201d according to Robert Gersony, assistant to CDA Commissioner Haskell Ward.%u201cThe program lacked credibility in terms of its performance. Certain individuals abused the anti-poverty program and this affected credibility,%u201d said Gersony. %u201c The city wants no substitute for general community participation in decision making, that is one reason for the deterioration of the community corporations. Poor people were not involved directly and the corporations haven%u2019t been communicating with the poor.%u201dThe inheritance of the poverty program has been %u201c mismanagement%u201d in both operations and fiscal programs, according to Gersony. But establishing credibility both within government and within the community were deemed by him to be thejprincipal %u201c missions%u201d of the new administrations CDA team.NO FORM YETGersony stressed that as yet there is \the city%u2019s community corporation restructuring would take, but the reassessment of current programs and %u201c poverty demographics,%u201d the creation of new funding mechanisms, and the dissolution of the old boards of directors indicate that a change is imminent. One doesn%u2019t have to be a cynic to realize that the campaign to convince both'the poor and the general public that the new anti-poverty corporations will work is a necessary step if Koch%u2019s CDA is to successfully wrest control from those who have been in these programs for years and aliow the poor and anyone else greaterp ut U V ipullO u .In terms of %u201c credibility,%u201d the two local corporations themselves are already limited believers, at least inasmuch as they grudgingly went along with CDA%u2019s mandate for board dissolution. Appointed members sit on their new %u201ctoken%u201d boards%u2014six for Fort Greene and eight for South Brooklyn replace the former' 51 member boards. And both corporation heads%u2014Fort Greene%u2019s executive director Pat Dougal and South Brooklyn%u2019s executive director Thelma Martin%u2014 agree that change is not necessarily a bad thing.Dougal, who was working for the Corporation at its inception in 1966, returned in 1976 after sojourns as an adminstrator for both the city%u2019s Department of Employment and Cumberland Hospital. He admits that some of the programs have not done well. %u201c When I returned it was obvious that some programs weren%u2019t working because with the continuous funding provided, a lot of people sat down arid did nothing,%u201d he said.%u2018 %u2018Community control, %u2019 %u2019 according to Dougal, means an increasingly smaller community. Dougal said that only five of the thirteen Fort Greene delegate agency boards actually meet. %u201c The delegate agency staff will tell us they don%u2019t, but directors sit down, write the minutes and pass them on to us and then CDA,%u201d he said.But Dougal insisted that these %u201c disrepairs%u201d should not mean the wholesale slaughter of the $355,000 Corporation and its 13 delegate agencies, budgeted at $817,000. \needs revamping,%u201d he said, %u201cbut what we are saying is, do it the right way.%u201dMORE EXPERTISESouth Brooklyn%u2019s Director, Thelma Martin, says that the right way to restructure means more technical expertise. %u201cThe programs need a drastic revision in both spirit and substance,%u201d said Martin, %u201c and the greatest need is for more technical staff.%u201dThe lack of success in economic development and reconstruction in the official %u201c poverty area%u201d administered by the city%u2019s 24 community corporations doesn%u2019t surprise Martin, executive director for the South Brooklyn Community Corporation.%u201cThe poverty program was dedirector%u2019s assistant, she joined the Neighborhood Youth Corps later and rose from a crew chief for a summer program to field supervisor counselor, director of the Youth Corps for South Brooklyn, until finally she became director of the Corporation itself.Martin insisted that her response that the anti-poverty program was designed for failure does not mean that leaders such as herself should be exempt from program responsibility, but rather that %u201cthe callous official neglect%u201d and the same official misunderstanding of the poverty program%u2019s %u201c significance%u201d were the principal ingredients that prevented success.%u201c The crux of the situation is, where was CDA with technical assistance once local leadership was in the community corporation adm inistration?\%u201c There were no guidelines from CDA and people didn%u2019t follow through.%u201cOnce you build a house, then you decide what you are going to put in it,%u201d continued Martin. %u201c But the poverty program was content just to build the house. So you have situations where there is a corporation economic specialist without any money to begin any economic development.%u201dWhat an economic specialist does without money is to develop proposals that will provide income beyond funding and hope for %u201c start-up%u201d funds to get it going. According to Jeah Campbell, South Brooklyn%u2019s econbmic specialist, a proposal to recycle garbage for metals (and thus dollars) and the creation of a public relations firm %u201c selling%u201d the South Brooklyn area to industrial and commercial clients, are two recent proposals that have no takers.%u201c Without the initial funds, you can%u2019t develop new programs,%u201d said Campbell, who did admit that credit unions were one possible step which South Brooklyn itself hasn%u2019t %u201cfully looked into.%u201dDELEGATES SHOW WEAKNESSThe lack of a developmental strategy is most evident in the delegate agencies, the various%u2018Theory tells you one thingexperience tells you another.We%u2019ve always been givenguidelines on how to operate a *program on theory, but all ofthat has to come from withih.'signed to be a failure,%u201d declared Martin while signing diplomas for day-care children in the Corporation%u2019s tenth floor administrative offices at 250 Livingston Street. %u201cIf you have people, blacks and Puerto Ricans, who have never administered anything in their lives and then you throw them some money just to keep them quiet, you can%u2019t expect success automatically.%u201d Ironically, Martin personally represents the kind of success story the anti-poverty campaign makers in Washington originally had in mind when they drafted millions of dollars to fight poverty in South Brooklyn and across the nation. A self-described expert on poverty>n<4<* %u00ab<-> %u00ab a m r m o *y />Martin was one of ten children and worked as a figure clerk for a merchandising firm before coming to work for the Corporation in 1966 as a worker in a Medicaid outreach program. First as an aide, then asstorefront %u201c branches%u201d of the community corporation in the community itself. The delegate agencies, with small, 4 to 10 member staffs and each with its own independent board of directors, were designed to provide direct local service%u2014such as housing, education, youth programs, and economic development%u2014to the community; and at the same time to allow for community control.A typical example of one delegate agency is South Brooklyn%u2019s Gowanus Center, on Fourth Avenue between Dean and Bergen Streets. The center has a staff of eight and is designated a housing agency. During the month of May, Gowanus1 A O T%u00ab,4.a L.ais the bureaucratic expression for the variety of problems and people who walk through Gowanus%u2019 doors, talk on its phones, or otherwise come into contact with agencies for assistance. Of May%u2019s 108 cases, 49Page 6, TH E PHOENIX, August 3,1978