Talk:Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty

Criminal charges

Extensive coverage at The Forward --Nbauman (talk) 21:48, 21 March 2014 (UTC)

Section "Criminal charges", Seward Park Urban Renewal Area paragraph

This paragraph says:

In 1967, New York City leveled 20 acres, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, on the southern side of Delancey Street, and removed more than 1,800 low-income largely Puerto Rican families, with a promise that they would return to new low-income apartments when they were built, but went undeveloped for decades afterward. According to the Times, Silver and Rapfogel were promoting specific plans for favored developers, which would maintain the area's Jewish identity, at the expense of other communities. They opposed affordable housing, which would have brought more Chinese and Hispanic residents to the neighborhood. Silver instead proposed a shopping center with no housing for the site. Later, they proposed a big-box store like Costco, to be built by the developer Bruce Ratner. Ratner hired Rapfogel's eldest son, Michael, in 2007. Ratner also helped raise $1 million for Met Council. However, Silver and Rapfogel promoted specific plans for the project, opposed affordable housing, and proposed a store in the area. As of 2014 the land is still an undeveloped lot that would become the Essex Crossing.

However, this can be summarized in a sentence. This is explained in similar wording at the Essex Crossing article. This goes against being concise. How about instead:

In 1967, New York City leveled 20 acres, the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, on the southern side of Delancey Street, and removed more than 1,800 low-income largely Puerto Rican families, with a promise that they would return to new low-income apartments when they were built. However, Silver and Rapfogel promoted specific plans for the project, opposed affordable housing for mainly Chinese and Hispanic residents, and proposed a big box retailer store in the area built by developer Bruce Ratner – who raised $1 million for the Met Council – so that Jewish residents of the area could continue to live there. As of 2015 the land is being developed for the Essex Crossing project.

In the proposed paragraph, very little info is lost, besides the fact that Ratner hired Michael Rapfogel in 2007, which is basically irrelevant. Epicgenius (talk) 16:36, 22 January 2015 (UTC)

I think this condensation does eliminate significant information.

First, the fact that Ratner hired Rapfogel's son is important. In many of Silver's dealings, he was accused of doing favors for people by hiring their relatives. For example, Rapfogel's wife Judy is Silver's chief of staff. In the asbestos litigation case http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/25/nyregion/sheldon-silvers-link-to-a-bonanza-and-a-cancer.html Silver got a job for Taub's son at another Jewish organization which was supposed to be a charity. The people involved say that it was just a coincidence, that they hired the best person for the job, etc. but the Times story is clearly skeptical. We should give people the information they need to decide for themselves.

I think it's important to make it clear, as the Times did, that the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area destroyed affordable housing for low-income people with the promise that they could return to new housing that would be built at the site, but the housing was never built, and Silver and Rapfogel didn't want them to be built. This again is a common pattern in New York City housing, which you can read about in the classic book, The Power Broker, about Robert Moses. Developers are always trying to clear low-income people to replace their housing with more profitable developments, and they always claim that they will provide for the low-income people when they're done, and I can't think of an example when that actually happened.

I also think it's important to make the ethnic conflict clear, as the Times did. The Times describes this as ethnic politics. Silver and Rapfogel were preserving and developing the neighborhood for the benefit of Jewish residents who were still there, and keeping out Chinese and Hispanic residents. These ethnic conflicts are common in New York City housing. There are many Jewish and non-sectarian housing and social services agencies which don't discriminate in favor of their own constituencies, but there are some that do. The major newspapers, and the Jewish newspapers, such as The Forward, have regularly reported on this, and many people within the Jewish community are critical of this favoritism, because it's unfair, and also because it violates the anti-discrimination laws. We have to tell our readers that the Times accused them of discrimination, and let our readers draw their own conclusions.

Your article on the Essex Crossing hardly discusses the ethnic politics at all, even though that was one of the main reasons that the development didn't go through, according to the Times.

Finally, my reading of the recent Times coverage and other sources is that the Essex Crossing project may never be built, especially now that Silver has been arrested. The Bagli story says that the next mayor (de Blasio) may not accept it. The Times story also says that one of the reasons it will go forward is because Silver agreed to it. Now Silver is facing prosecution. There have been dozens of major projects proposed in New York City that reached the same state that the Essex Crossing project did, and finally fell through, and I don't see any evidence from WP:RSs that the Essex Crossing will actually go through.

And I think it's important to attribute these conclusions to the Times, and make it clear that we're not saying it in Wikipedia's voice and on Wikipedia's authority. Wikipedia must be neutral. WP:NPOV

I realize that my outside authority doesn't count on Wikipedia. But I do a lot of writing and digesting in my work. It's good to be concise. But I've learned that it's also possible to be too concise, and make it difficult for your reader to understand important points. I'm also familiar with housing developments in New York City, and I've gone to community board meetings and talked with local politicians. I can see what those Times stories are getting at, as I've described above. --Nbauman (talk) 06:41, 25 January 2015 (UTC)

Belated thanks to both of you for the helpful comments. I trimmed some of the repetitive or less-relevant text in the article, and added some further info & refs. —Patrug (talk) 04:30, 10 October 2016 (UTC)

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To bless, better to have TWO Kohens

As of this moment, the name of the first lead exec, J. Simcha Cohen, is missing, and the only Cohen is the lead name in a disproportionate section that should, since it also brings in a major political figure, be named Controversies (a common Wiki section name); the politican, natch, will get lead billing (with NYTimes citation).

From earlier talk comments it is obvious that bringing in ONE sink is not kosher enough, and neither is two (meat, dairy): they're looking for a third (pareve) kitchen sink. But (to begin a sentence in violation of some lower grade teacher's rule) this article is about Met Council, which has had a number of leaders over the decades, and should also indicate their mission.

Links to article? Sure, that's the job of the article, to bring in (WP:NPOV) phone#s for sink sale display roms and warehouses, but not to flood the place with wrenches.

As for the name atop this section, Biblically it says KoHaNim, which is in the plural, i.e. minimum of two if you want the full power of their blessing. As for the Cohen in the article, as of this writing I don't have a clue as to whether he's a son, nephew (as in nepotism) or just member-of-the-tribe. Pi314m (talk) 00:43, 10 June 2020 (UTC)