475 Kent - An Interview with Connie Crothers

Friday, May 30, 2008

Lorenzo Sanguedolce: You have your piano now, and you have almost all your sound equipment set up... so, is it life and work back to normal here?

Connie Crothers: No, and I think that is not the case for people in the building in general. It was quite a dislocation - we were out of this space for three-and-a-half months, which, when you live and work in the same place, is a dislocation. So, though we all might have anticipated that we'd get it all back together in a day or two,
everybody I've talked to still feels a sense of dislocation.

I'm extremely happy to have my piano back with me. I have never been separated from it - not since I got it, in 1964. So, to be separated for close to a third of a year was really an intense experience for me -

LS: - not by choice, either...

CC: Oh, I know - it was just amazing. And now I'm dealing with the kind of things that distract you and slow you down, and make you feel like you don't really have your feet on the ground, solid.

LS: Are they things that just have to do with your personal life and situation, or are you also working with other residents of the building to address issues here?

CC: We have a tenants association. We have a surprising kind of solidarity.
The thing that has been characteristic of the entire period of time is not knowing, from the time were evicted, when we didn't know anything.
We didn't even really know why we were being evicted. All throughout,
we didn't know what was happening sometimes, and we didn't know what was going to happen from one day to the next. We didn't know on May 1st that would be allowed back in the building at all. On May 2nd we were allowed back in the building. It's been like that, so it's still like that. People don't really know if they will be able to stay in the building, or what their lives are going to be. We're still very uncertain - all of us.

LS: You mentioned in the article you wrote that there was a strong organization of the residents here, and that continues today to be very strong...

CC: Yeah. This is the thing right now that interests me the most,
because I'm convinced that that's the reason why we got back into the building. In the beginning it seemed like perhaps the owner would sell.
All the indications were that it was certainly to his advantage to sell, and I've heard that he was approached a couple of times and did not sell, but it was certainly a strong possibility.

This area now is like the gold coast. Everybody's speculating here.
This particular spot--a lot of investors are eyeing it, you know? A lot of big builders have their eye on this particular spot in Williamsburg.
So, he might have even been pressured to sell.

And then, on the other side of it, the fire department, when we were evacuated originally, they were very aggressive toward us and sometimes hostile. They were not friendly at all, or on our side one bit, really,
except they kept saying over and over to us that they were saving our lives, which, as we found out later, couldn't have been truer. The danger was extremely real - scary in retrospect. But their manner was not encouraging. It was discouraging and confrontational and aggressive.

Then it turned all the way around. Both the owner and the fire department kind of changed their position with respect to us, and instead of working separately from us, much less against us, they joined forces with us. For example, the chief of the fire department,
Joseph Polcha, at the end of our evacuation, started personally running interference with some people who would have wanted it to be delayed.
He leaned on some people to allow us back in even though the work was not 100% completed. The work was done on the sprinkler system, but not on some of the other things that they had been talking about. So we could get back in, he started to actually use his influence on our behalf. And the same thing with the owner, much to our surprise.Instead of selling he made the statement that he wanted the building just as it was, and he wanted us in it. He made a statement that was published in the NY Times, a sentence that you might not hear from a building owner in this circumstance, "They're good people." So I think one of the reasons why there was this turnaround was because we really pulled together, and we pulled together all the time.

And this was in spite of the fact that there were odds that worked against us. For example, we were all scattered. This happened in the very beginning and never was any different during the entire time we were out. We were all scattered all over New York City. Some people were going from couch to couch. Some people may have found a stable situation - I was fortunate enough to do that - but many people did not. You know, they might even be going from one sublet to another, not knowing where they were gonna be next week, or even the next night. And then besides that, we were all suffering from financial difficulties and stress. And then, the very real possibility that no matter what we did, we'd never get back in this building. In fact, that's what everybody said. I don't think there was anybody who felt that we would in fact come back into this building.

But there was a dynamic at work that was a transcendent dynamic,
because no matter what the odds were, the tenants pulled together stronger as time went on. Another factor interested me, especially since I've been involved in other groups and have seen this form of group dynamics in other situations: groups will form groups within groups - factions, in a way - and they'll go head-to-head and fight.
And then sometimes individuals will do that, and if they are individuals that have sufficient strength within the group, or they're especially active or have connections or something significant that they're doing that people depend on, they carry every bit as much weight as a faction. And some individuals within the tenants groups went head-to-head, had terrific collisions. So, it's not as if this was an ideal situation - far from it - and it was turbulent and involved the kinds of confrontational situations that break other groups up.
I've seen this happen an awful lot - you reach a point of disagreement,
people start shouting at each other and talking about each other, which is ruinous. All that was going on, but in spite of that fact, the tenants managed to reach deeper than that and warring parties would find a way to work together and the other tenants would find a way to pull together so that all along we in fact did make our decisions as a group, together. We acted in accordance, we took our actions with each other, and we made our statements with each other. And I feel that's why we won over the owner and the fire department, because they saw that. They even remarked on it, you know, like, such a group of determined tenants was worthy of respect and consideration.

So, it proves out a principle that I have always felt, but you so seldom see, which is that there is strength in numbers and a power when people pull together rather than pulling apart, especially if it's for a reason that concerns not just their lives, their livelihoods and their circumstances - their survival circumstances - but also involves something, which I could call their belief, or their passion, their commitment. Because this was definitely true for this group of people.
A lot of people thought that this was a cause that was greater than just, "Are you gonna to get back into your loft?" They saw it as a kind of premise for life in this city, and it kept them going during times when it was rocky. They would reach that other, deeper level, and hang on to that one, and that worked.

LS: I'm sure it was discouraging for a lot of people. What was the proportion of people who actually returned?

CC: Oh, I don't know exact numbers, but I think more than half of the people did in fact get discouraged and find other places to live.

LS: More than half left...

CC: Yeah. And so even that might have been discouraging or even demoralizing to the tenants committees, but it wasn't. No matter what the odds were, if anything, the tenants committees pulled together more. We became more cohesive and more effective. One of the things that happened as a result of this was that a kind of outreach to the community, which took many forms, starting from a kind of impromptu demonstration that was held in front of the building on the very day that we were evacuated.The tenants invited the press, and it got a lot of press, and tenants were enabled to make their statements. That was our opening action. Now, a lot of people could do that - that's not that uncommon. Something lands on you and you're out in the street,
you've got your demonstration briefly, and then you get derailed by all the unexpected odds - expected and unexpected odds - that then come at you and hit you and knock you over, demoralize you, or whatever.

So, that's where we began. A couple of months into it, the tenants organized a presentation at an art gallery at Queens Museum of Art,
Bullova Gallery, to present the art that goes on in this building. And there was a lot of coverage of that also. I performed at the opening,
along with Richard Tabnik, who's not a tenant, but was an actor in a movie made by one of the tenants. Melvin Gibbs, the bass-guitar player,
who lives right down the hall from me, performed that night. And then there were paintings and sculptures and art installations, photography.
The show itself was just a stunner. Even among us we didn't know the variety and the range of art that's being done here all the time. As an art show goes, the consistency of the quality of the art was really surprising to everybody. So, this exhibition was a way in which we could show that this not only concerns individuals who need a place to live and work, but these individuals are contributing to the cultural life of the city on a very high level. It's not just somebody living the bohemian life, you know. It's people who have obviously been working very hard for many years. There's a very high level of artistic achievement that was presented at this gallery.

That's just one example of the actions that were taken.

Another example: many tenants became fireguards, becoming knowledgable enough to pass the test to get authorized, and then staying in the building for long shifts, so that people could gain access to their units while the work of installing the the sprinkler system was being done.

Some tenants became involved in the planning and installation of the sprinkler system and other construction work.

LS: One of the reasons that real estate values go up in this city is because of artists living in neighborhoods.

CC: Well, that's the tradition, yes. The artists move into the neighborhoods where the rents are cheap enough. A lot of times the artists open up neighborhoods that have been abandoned, actually. This is how SoHo began. It was empty buildings and artists initially were squatters, and then they were living there illegally. And then after that - this is a phenomenon, the SoHo evolution is the paradigm - the money follows the artists. So, what that says about the undervaluing of the artists in our culture is really bizarre. But in a sense, the artists act as shock troops for real estate development. Then, when the money starts moving in, then they call it gentrification, and everybody who has lived in the neighborhood to make it vital has to leave. It's not just the artists. It's also the people who have lived there with their families, sometimes for generations. Everybody has to pack up and go. The low-income people have to move on, and the artists have to move on too.

Everybody thought this building was going to be another example, and to everybody's great surprise, it turns out that this particular building didn't go that way.

LS: Do you know what rights the tenants have? This building isn't technically zoned for living...

CC: No, but as far as I know, I've been told that there are papers that have been submitted to the department of buildings to convert it to residential use.

LS: Is there timeline? Is there some kind of projection?

CC: No. As long as the papers are in there it's in process and there's no deadline. But the big problem is that there isn't a good program for live/work units in this city. There used to be. They called it "Artists in Residence" - "A.I.R. Lofts". You had to get certified.
You had to prove to the city that you were in fact a bona fide artist,
and then you could live and work in an industrial space. It was a legal live/work room - not the whole building, just the room that you got certified by the city.

Another example of live/work situations would be Westbeth, which was developed for that reason. It is rent supported, so that the rents remain low. It is an industrial building, with lofts, but it was converted for artists to live and work there. You can't move into Westbeth anymore. The waiting list is closed.

Then there is Manhattan Plaza. They call it "The Musicians' Building",
which it never was. The walls are thin as paper. Everybody can hear everybody. It was originally developed as a condominium building, or maybe a co-op building, and it was a failed venture. The city took over a failed venture and made it a rent subsidized place for people who could prove that they were artists. The waiting list is closed, has been actually for many years. Every now and then some apartments open up and they give some to a few that are there on the list, but it's been closed for at least ten, fifteen years.

So, there is a need in this city to address this particular issue,
rent-supported live/work residences. This city needs places where artists can live and work for a rent that they can afford. Rents that are becoming the norm in this city require people to work very hard just to make that rent, to concentrate on bringing in a high income.
Artists can't devote that much of their lifetime to making money. They need their time to express and develop their art. That is their work.
Without that time, there is no art.

LS: Maybe the city could provide live/’work residences in decent neighborhoods, that aren't constantly farther out...

CC: Well, I'm not even asking for that. I'd say any and all neighborhoods. Maybe the city could consider that the artists don't have to always be the ones to open up devastated neighborhoods, but I am for artists locating in some of the neighborhoods that are now reputed to be undesirable, because I feel that there should be, at some point, an opening for artists to join in with people who are considered disadvantaged. I feel that very strongly for a number of reasons, one of them being that there is a kind of natural alliance between the artist and the disadvantaged person. Artists traditionally are poor.
The percentage of artists that are successful financially is not very high. Many artists manage to get a life where they can go along okay,
but they don't get rich doing that. And I feel that a lot of the wealth of artistic creation comes from that section of the society rather than from a higher economic level. Traditionally, I think you could make a case for this, and I think that many of our greatest artists have come from that sector. And the connection, I think, needs to be re-established.

So, turn around the phenomenon that we've seen, which is that the artist moves into a poor neighborhood, and the poor people who live there just hate them, because as soon as they see them, they know they're gonna lose their home! This could be turned around so that there is a way in which, in each building where artists live, there would be a section of the building that is devoted to the community,
with instruction for the community, rooms where people from the community could perform and present their art, and rooms where they could have decision-making control. Bring the community into the life of the artists and the artists in contact with life of that section of our population.

LS: But how would you keep the costs - the rents in that neighborhood - down. I mean, eventually it seems inevitable that artists are gonna bring money - I mean, "money follows the artists"...

CC: That's a very good question. I think a proviso would be that no one could profit from their unit. For example, you couldn't sublet it for more than you pay, or, you couldn't sublet. Like, if you're not gonna stay there, it should open up for another artist.

LS: And if the rents are reasonable, that would be feasible for an artist who has to tour, or something.

CC: Yes, exactly. So then it wouldn't be like loft spaces that are just there for a rich person to move in and occupy, the way it was in SoHo.

LS: Other than the safer building conditions, has what happened at 475 Kent had any positive effects that you see, either personally or for the community?

CC: Well, the most positive effect that I see is, number one, it's a victory. No one expected it - we won. And it puts out there in this city that that's possible. Because I think that before now, people have felt that it isn't. They have been almost beaten back by the prevalence of property speculators overturning people and uprooting them. Everyone expected that here, and it didn't happen. It's an instance of how it's possible to fight back and win. The other thing that I think is very valuable is the fact that we pulled together, against tremendous odds.
It proves out that that can happen, and that when it does, that can open up possibilities that weren't there before. People have lost a kind of belief that they might once have had, decades ago, that this can be.

LS: Like what kind of possibilities might have been opened by this?

CC: People coming together to form whatever kind of group they feel is appropriate to take actions to get supportive live/work housing in this city.

LS: You mentioned in your article that there were probably a lot of buildings throughout this city in similar circumstances.

CC: Yes, there are thousands of them, in fact.

LS: Will this be an example for other groups?

CC: It might be an inspiring example. I certainly think right now it is a paradigm. One of the things I'd like to see is for the residents of these kinds of buildings to form an alliance. There's another building where they suffered an evacuation before our evacuation, and they reached out to us, and we have a kind of an informal alliance with them.

LS: What about other buildings that are potentially dangerous.
What would you advise tenants of situations like that to do, especially if they are not zoned for living. I mean, if they say something, don't they risk getting evicted, or forced evacuation?

CC: I think that's one of the reasons why the forced evacuation happened the way it did, because we essentially don't have any rights,
and we have no protection because of that. Artists are desperate enough to risk their lives, actually. Everybody who goes into an old industrial building that's not legal for living, knows they are running a risk. We were risking dying in a fire. We didn't know we had this risk, but in fact that's what was going on. This risk was very real.
Other kinds of things that represent a health risk. You don't know what toxic substances lurk in an old industrial building. Artists are desperate to find a place where they can have enough time to actually do what it is they are so compelled to do. That's what an artist is.
It's not like you are looking for security and a comfortable life. You are driven to find the time to do the thing which is so compelling. You can't help it. And so,artists will take risks and have no protection.
And this is another thing that must be demanded of the city - that the artists deserve protection! Simple protection. This would require some kind of legislative action on the part of the city for live/work units that were legal and because they'd be legal, the people who live there would have some protection against this kind of dire situation.

LS: You mentioned before that tenants were possibly facing rent increases. Is that across the board? Is that all the tenants in this building?

CC: No. It's all up in the air. Nobody knows anything. People haven't known, sometimes from one day to another, what's gonna happen.
One day it's one thing, another day it's another thing. The one thing I will say is that the tenants organization - the tenants association -
has hired a lawyer, and another group of floor tenants have also hired a lawyer, and there are negotiations in process. Some tenants are dealing individually with the owner. But whatever the case is, no one has an answer yet about what's going to be. We won't know for a while,
probably. Most tenants fear an increase. The owner does want the vacated units to rent for market rent. He took a tremendous loss during this period of time. If he can get market rates for the vacated units,
why wouldn’t he? This is the law of real estate in this city.

LS: Even if the owner was as negligent as this one was? Can he lose some kind of right or privilege?

CC: There are no penalties.

LS: Not even monetary...

CC: No.

LS: Huh.

CC: That's right. But he paid a monetary penalty, with the loss of rental income. There's no question about that - he really did.

LS: Well, because it turned out, in the end he got caught, so to speak.

CC: Yes. But, there is a general agreement among the tenants and possibly something negotiable with the owner that the people who've been here will not have their units raised to market rent. If rents are raised that much, most of the tenants who fought so hard for this to happen will be forced to leave. So, of course, we don't want this outcome, and hopefully it won't go there.

LS: Be forced to leave, how?

CC:Because no one will be able to afford to stay.

LS: Do you know if the vacant units are already being rented out?

CC: So far, it seems to be going slowly.

LS: Do you think that the assembly people and other city officials will recognize this somehow? Have they recognized it?

CC: That's a good question. Thanks to the fact that we were a group that moved together - that was observable, we took our actions and made our statements together - we drew the support of many congressmen. We received support from City Councilman David Yassky, State Assemblyman Vito Lopez, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, Senator Martin Connor and Assemblyman Joseph Lentol.They visited with us and gave us recommendations. There were times when they intervened on our behalf,
in various ways, making statements, writing letters and leaning on officials to give us the kind of consideration that they felt was fair and that was due us.

LS: So, now that you have a group, do you think that with or without this building you might have a chance of staying together as a group of artists seeking an ideal place to live?

CC: Well, this is another thing that's really up in the air. A lot of times when a group achieves the objective, then the objective being achieved, they go on with their lives, as individuals. I'd like this to be a springboard for more action. The way I feel is that we're not solid here. If there were more people and more group organization throughout the city, the individuals in 475 Kent would have a better chance of keeping what we've won.

LS: But then there are still problems for musicians such as yourself - having a place where you can work and play music around the clock.

CC: That's a special problem - not even around the clock. In artists buildings (and it's not just 475 Kent - this is notorious in Westbeth) the musicians are really not wanted.

LS: In fact, on the application for Westbeth, it doesn't even specify what a musician needs to present. It centers around theater and visual arts - you know, the kind of material you need to submit to prove that you are an artist.

CC: Yes. And so, living here, as a musician, I got some severe complaints. One of the worst complaints I got was in the middle of the afternoon. So, it isn't even about 'round the clock, it's about being there at all. And in a sense, we live in a culture right now that wants music, but doesn't really want musicians. In the old days there was much more tolerance. Any musician might have the experience of somebody knocking on the radiator, but you might not be driven out of your unit,
or be shut down altogether. There was some tolerance.

I think that the needs of musicians should be addressed because,
uniquely among the art forms, every musician knows that their time spent at developing their art is always limited by the tolerance of their neighbors. If you're a painter or a writer, and you have your big inspiration, you can go around the clock with it for days on end if you want to and not lose the spirit and the momentum of your inspiration.
If you're a musician, people would be pounding on your doors and walls and ceiling if you did that. And we live with this in a way we don't even possibly know about it - that we're always stopping because we have to. It could be considered from the point of view of the other people as well. People complain because they don't wanna be distracted by someone else's music. So I think that there should be housing built specially for musicians, with soundproof units.