The local paper for the Upper East Side
WEEK OF OCTOBER - NOVEMBER WEAVING METAPHORS ◄ P.12
26-1 2017
State Senator Liz Krueger (first row, center, speaking) and City Council Member Ben Kallos (standing behind her, second row center) at a press conference in March announcing new supportive housing for families on East 91st Street between First and Second Avenues. The two East Side elected officials hold different views about whether residents should give money to homeless panhandlers or offer help in other ways or both. Photo: Courtesy of state Senator Liz Krueger’s office
MV4NY’s Inaugural Environmental Stewardship Day was a family affair, engaging children of all ages. Photo: Carson Kessler
RESTORING RUPPERT PARK CITY SPACES How a group of Muslim volunteers helped efforts to eliminate rats and beautify the UES spot BY CARSON KESSLER
Just three years ago, Ruppert Park was better known as the Upper East Side’s “Rat Park,” an uninviting oneacre park on Second Avenue between 90th and 91st Streets, plagued by hundreds of rat colonies. Now 99 percent rat-free, Ruppert Park is on its way to becoming a
safe and welcoming neighborhood space at the hands of the Muslim Volunteers for New York (MV4NY) and former president of the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce, Nancy Ploeger. For two years, Ploeger worked tirelessly to eliminate the rat population and rehabilitate the promising park. Her determined attitude to beautify a neighborhood space soon attracted the Muslim Volunteers for New York, a community-based service organization designed to engage Muslim-Americans with the greater
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TO GIVE OR NOT TO GIVE? NEIGHBORHOOD That is the question on the East Side as winter nears. Is it nobler to give money to the homeless? Or help in other ways? A tweet from a neighborhood group last week thrust the debate into the open BY DOUGLAS FEIDEN
A couple of times a month, a homeless person will show up on the doorstep of the Church of the Epiphany, and as the Reverend Jennifer Reddall tells the story, make a simple if blunt request: “Hey, I want cash!” They don’t get any money. But they don’t leave the Episcopal church at York Avenue and 74th Street emptyhanded either. “We never give out cash,” the rector will explain. But
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then she adds, “I will always buy you a meal.” Succor comes in many different forms: “If someone’s hungry, you just feed them,” Reddall says. So she’ll take them to a deli across the street for a sandwich, or to the Rainbow store on First Avenue for toiletries and underwear, and to “make them feel like human beings again.” There is no one response to that perennial New York question: When a panhandler solicits you for cash, do you give, or do you figure out another means to help? Belied by an Indian summer, the approach of winter will soon refocus attention on the plight of the homeless. Their ranks and visibility have mushroomed in recent years, and they’ve become, in effect, a part of our streetscape. The daily shelter census as of October 18 stood at 60,305 people, includ-
ing 23,123 children, according to data from the city’s Department of Homeless Services. When Mayor Bill de Blasio took office in 2014, pledging to combat the problem, the official city count was 50,689. That’s a steep 18 percent increase in the shelter population, and it has haunted his reelection campaign. Nicole Malliotakis, the Republican mayoral hopeful, cites it as proof of “administrative incompetence.” But absent de Blasio’s programs to find
CONTINUED ON PAGE 7 Jewish women and girls light up the world by lighting the Shabbat candles every Friday evening 18 minutes before sunset. Friday, October 27 – 5:40 pm. For more information visit www.chabaduppereastside.com
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