Harlem Housing: The Bad and the Good

The New York Times yesterday ran article by Josh Barbanel entitled Harlem (Housing Woes) on His Mind. The article told the story of a relatively high-profile writer, Keith Boykin, who moved into a second floor apartment in a Harlem brownstone in 2001. The apartment served his needs and at $1000 monthly rent didn't break his budget.

Unfortunately, the brownstone, seen at right in a New York Times photo by Susan Farley, was a living monument to corruption, mismanagement, crime and greed.

His building was caught up in a notorious mortgage scandal in which shady mortgage brokers, engineers and appraisers used phony churches and other not-for-profit groups to buy more than 500 deteriorated brownstones in long-troubled neighborhoods at inflated prices. They got federally guaranteed mortgages to buy and rehabilitate them, and then walked way with the money

It's an amazing story of a building with no one providing essential services, of power blackouts (Con Ed pulled the plug), and of a "helpful" super who was carted off to jail as a persistent child molester. It's complicated by Boykin's failure to pay rent and electricity bills for many years because, as Barbanel explains, "there seemed to be no one to pay..."

What's wrong with this picture? What's wrong is the writer's implication that not only are there many other such buildings in Harlem -- in fact, there are -- but that this is the norm for the neighborhood. In fact, it's decidely not.

What's real and normal are the many hundreds of apartments and scores of buildings rehabilitated, renovated, and managed, both ethically and compassionately, by Harlem-based real estate developers like Lois and Milton Manning of Sugarhill Services and Leroy and Ken Morrison of Lemor Realty. The Mannings and the Morrisons are just two of several member firms of the Greater Harlem Real Estate Board who have successfully renovated occupied Harlem buildings under the Neighborhood Entrepreneurs Program of New York City's Department of Housing Preservation and Development.

Harlem is experiencing a revitalization that is making it, according to New York City Real Estate Appraiser, Ronald M. Gold, "the next hot spot in Manhattan." Tenants like Boykin, whose failure to pay rent and electricity was, according to Barbanel, "a subsidy as valuable to him as a grant, helping him to make ends meet while he researched his new book..." are not the norm, nor are tragic brownstones like the one he calls home. Their story needs to be told, of course, but in the context of the good done by HUD, the City, and particularly, by property developers and managers like the Mannings and Morrisons who, working together, have provided decent, affordable housing to the Harlem community.

Rehnquist: Focused Warrior or Over the Hill?

When I read that Chief Justice Rehnquist, who is battling thyroid cancer, was hospitalized yesterday for a fever, and saw this AP photo of him leaving his home for work the day before, I started wondering if the Founding Fathers got it right when they decided that Supreme Court appointments be "for life." Do we really want the most important judicial decisions in the land fielded, in part, by a man who, when asked recently when he's going to retire, retorted with a playground taunt: "That's for me to know and you to find out." (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Churchill in World War II  But then I listened to another chapter in John Ramsden's Winston Churchill: Man of the Century. The book, from the Modern Scholar audio series, comprises fourteen lectures by Ramsden, who is Director of Graduate Studies and professor of history at London's Queen Mary College. The chapter tells how Churchill journeyed to Russia to meet Joseph Stalin, who was too paranoid to agree to meet anywhere else. It was an an extraordinary undertaking for anyone in the midst of World War II, with the flight, in unpressurized, barebones aircraft, taking nearly two weeks. It was even more extraordinary for a chubby, cigar-smoking, sedentary man in his 70s!

Franklin in the Revolutionary War  And then I thought how Churchill and Stalin later went on to meet Roosevelt -- literally on his last legs -- at Yalta. And these weren't the only old and infirm leaders in history who could be relied upon to make world-shaping decisions. I've just finished listening to Stacy Shiff's A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America. Troubled with gout and a gallstone that made travel excrutiatingly painful, Franklin, in his late 70s and early 80s, succeeded in getting the money and troops needed to win the Revolutionary War, then proceeded to nail down treaties with Britain and France, before returning home "to retire," only to be elected to two terms as Governor of Massachusetts.

Will Justice be Served?  So is Chief Justice Renhquist demonstrating poor judgment by failing to announce his retirement, or is he a focused warrior, in the mold of Churchill and Franklin, who will serve us well to the end? Should there be a mandatory retirement age for Supreme Court Justices? How about a paper-and-pencil test of memory, judgment and intelligence? Or do we just leave it up to them as the Constitution mandates?

What Happened to the Privilege in Privileged Communications?

In defending his decision to cooperate with special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald and reveal TIME journalist Matthew Cooper's source of information about the outing of CIA operative Valerie Plame Wilson, Norman Pearlstine, editor-in-chief of Time Inc. said (TIME, July 11, 2005):

"when the courts rule that a citizen's obligation to testify before a grand jury takes precedence over the press's First Amendment right, to me, going against that finding would put us above the law."

That, of course, confuses the issue. The rules of confidentiality which protect a journalist's source, a lawyer's client, a priest's confessional penitent, and a partner's spouse are all designed to protect the nature of the relationship despite legitimate societal needs voiced by the government and the courts. If society could benevolently determine when to honor and when to void these relationships, there would be no need for rules about them.

Unfortunately, Pearlstine is not alone in his confusion about the case. It's hard to understand why nobody's on Robert Novak's tail since he actually outed Plame. And why is Judith Miller of the New York Times in jail when TIME revealed the source? Is she really standing on principle? Or is her source -- for work she never published -- different from Matthew Cooper's? And is Novak's different still, and has he revealed it in his cooperative testimony? And with all fingers pointing to the master puppeteer, Karl Rove, as "the source," why is nobody bringing him before a grand jury?

I didn't pose that last question seriously. Would an administration that thinks the Freedom of Information Act means the freedom to coerce information by any act -- the same administration whose mastery of double-speak is epitomized in the naming of the Patriot Act -- would that administration allow the puppeteer to get caught up in his own strings?

The Commoditization of Mohawk Lifts

My friends Lou Coccaro and Mark Tulley at AutoQuip Sales in Mineola just upgraded their company computer system with the purchase of two laptops and two desktops from Dell. The tab: about $2200, which wouldn't have bought even one desktop ten years ago.

The Course of Commiditization  I remember because I used to build and sell desktops in the 90's. Then PCs and parts got cheaper and building gave way to buying wholesale from Rob Wolfson at Doc Audio and his now-retired partner Rick Whitley, who, incidentally, introduced me to Lou. And then came Dell and imports from Taiwan, dropping prices so precipitously that selling gave way to shopping and configuring. So yes, I still occasionally build a special purpose computer, but today it's mostly PC consulting, not retailing.

Makers & Sellers Regroup  The commoditization of PCs reached its zenith (some would say nadir) recently when IBM, the folks who "invented" the personal computer, agreed to sell their PC division to Chinese manufacturer, Lenovo, formerly Legend Computer. But what forced IBM and me out of the business of making and selling computers, wasn't bad in the long run. I migrated into website development, IBM began to focus on its profitable service business, and the consumer was a clear winner.

Consumers Win  Commiditization, with its attendant competition, resulted in cheaper computers, that are more versatile and of higher quality. Today's "entry level" PC is an outstanding value. Quality is uniformly high and has become a non-issue. Power is more than adequate to satisfy all but the specialty user. Like today's entry level cars, today's PCs take you where you want to go without breaking the bank.

Commiditization Hits Mohawk  So Lou and Mark should be happy about commiditization, but they're not. Although they're happy to get inexpensive, quality PCs, they're the "victims" of the commiditization of another product category, automotive service equipment. Their company, AutoQuip Sales, is the metro New York distributor for Mohawk Resources, who make the hydraulic hoists used by mechanics to lift your car or truck in a service bay.

Outlook for Mohawk Okay  Mohawk, and the other domestic makers of automotive service equipment, are under increasing price pressure from manufacturers with factories in China, Mexico and Canada. It's early days yet, so product diversification, new marketing strategies, increased advertising, belt-tightening, and dual-sourcing or outsourcing are all in the cards. In the short run, bankruptcies won't be part of the picture except when poor management or widespread economic distress become factors.

Commiditization Hits AutoQuip  While AutoQuip has to hope the factory does the right thing about the pricing and production issues raised by commiditization, they've got to react directly to another aspect of the challenge. As a distributor, AutoQuip adds value to the Mohawk product by onsite installation, inspection and training, but the the cheaper imports are often sold on the Internet or by mail order, cutting out distributors entirely.

What's a distributor to do? It's hard to say how AutoQuip will handle the challenge, but we've got some suggestions. Two other Mohawk lifts distributors who are also our clients -- JRH Equipment serving Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin and Specialty Automotive Equipment (SAE) serving New Jersey and parts of New York -- have both begun to emphasize OSHA-compliant automotive safety inspections, reports, and training on their websites and they're getting more traffic than the other Mohawk sites we produce. AutoQuip is already practicing another JRH and SAE strategy, namely, targeting government contracts, which are less sensitive to market fluctuations, and offer long-term stability.

Co-opt the Interloper Another Mohawk distributor -- not one whose site we produce -- has taken the tack used by car dealers, namely of co-opting Internet sales by selling on the Internet themselves. While the factory undoubtedly won't permit a distributor to sell lifts on its website, AutoQuip could follow the lead of car dealers and sell used lifts that have been reconditioned and safety-certified "by a Mohawk factory-authorized distributor" -- them.

Good luck!  Some strategies for the "China problem" that we guarantee won't work: belly-aching, retrenchment, and looking to the government for a bail-out. Good luck, Lou and Mark. We're on your side.