Nilsa Owens, president of the Riis Houses tenant association and treasurer Mercedes Harvell.
It’s election season at the Riis Houses in Manhattan, and Nilsa Owens, the current president of the tenant association, is running for a second term.
Although it looks like no one will oppose Owens, she still faces a great challenge: getting people to care. Located in the East Village, the public housing development has 4,038 residents. The tenant association has only 30 members. Owens aims to increase participation.
“My goal is to get people to come back,” she said. And, even if it takes a lot of work, she won’t stop. “My mission in this lifetime is to wake people up.”
New York City Housing Authority tenant associations “are democratic organizations dedicated to improving the quality of life in NYCHA developments,” according to the NYCHA website. To reach these goals, tenant associations are supposed to work with NYCHA management “at every level,” which “gives residents a real voice in the operation of their developments,” the website said.
The leader of each development’s association is the president, who is elected by the members of the association. Each development has different rules of membership. At the Riis Houses, a resident has to pay an annual fee of $1 to become a voting member. In addition to the president, members vote for two vice-presidents, a treasurer, secretary, sergeant-at-arms and two chaplains.
Curiously, perhaps, Owens didn’t even want to run the first time. “I was like anybody else, complaining but not doing anything” she said. Then her neighbors and friends pushed her to run. “They egged me on,” said Owens, 56, a mother of three with three grandkids who works full-time as a legal secretary.
The last election, in which Owens faced then-president, Odell Pamias, was a bitter and long battle. The elections were delayed for almost a year, and had to be repeated after they ended in a tie in June 2010.
Pamias decided to retire and dropped out of the race. “I knew people would vote for me, I would’ve won,” said Pamias “She wanted it. I let her have it.”
Owens is running again because she believes she still has more to accomplish. “I didn’t have enough time to finish what I started,” she said.
During her tenure as president, Owens has successfully lobbied elected officials like Councilwoman Rosie Mendez and New York State Senator Daniel Squadron to try to obtain more funds to solve maintenance problems like the water leaks that affect most of the buildings, and to try to re-open the development’s senior center, which was closed last year. She wants more programs for the kids and thinks the senior center building would be an ideal place for that. Owens said she just wants to improve her neighbors’ lives. “I want more for Jacob Riis,” she said.
It’s not clear, however, that her neighbors want the same. Most of them never go to the association’s monthly meetings. “What for?” said Sebastian Martinez Alcalá, “They don’t do nothing.”
Others agree. “I never went,” said Victor Manuel Matos, “I don’t think it would change anything if I went.” Another tenant, Maria Carmona doesn’t even know who the tenant association president is.
For Carmen Cruz, who once served as tenant association vice-president, the neighbors are wrong. “They complain but nobody goes to the meetings,” she said in Spanish. Owens, according to Cruz, “is doing the best she can with what she has.” Even though she is not a member right now, Cruz said she intends to pay the tenant association membership fee and vote on election day.
Mercedes Harvell, the current treasurer, thinks the tenant associations jobs are worth it, even if people don’t get involved. “We’re trying to make a change,” she said.
To get more people involved, three residents have volunteered to run the membership drive committee and work to recruit residents to join the tenant association and vote.
On November 15, the tenant association will gather for nomination night, when members announce their candidacy or are nominated by other members for any of the board openings. If more than one candidate is nominated for any given spot, elections will be held on December 14. If there are no challengers, a candidate will be automatically elected.
Boosting membership in the tenant association is just the first step for Owens. The next is raise money by increasing the tenant association membership fees to $5 a year, which would help provide a budget for social events. “Now we’re paying out of our own pockets,” said Owens, noting that she and other board members paid for the recent Halloween party she organized.
Ultimately, though, the only solution to boosting involvement for Owens’ disenchanted neighbors to act. “You wanna see change?” she asks rhetorically. “Participate!”
