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Major Issues for District 24




Kew Gardens Hills: Cleanup on Main Street

August 11, 2004

By Josh Halpert

When Diane Cohen was eating dinner at a Chinese restaurant near Kew Gardens Hills recently, she glanced out the window to see a car pull up in front of an empty city wastebasket.  A man took out two huge bags packed with garbage from his trunk, emptied piles of spoiled food into the public litter basket, and drove away. The basket, intended for candy wrappers and soda cans, overflowed with rotten leftovers. 

"People are slobs," said Cohen, district manager of Community Board 8, which includes Kew Gardens Hills.

Such garbage problems plague the commercial area of Main Street in Kew Gardens Hills, Queens. Litter baskets spill over with trash, and paper plates, stained with grease from the pizza they just carried, litter the sidewalks.

Everyone in the neighborhood contributes to the problem, according to Cohen.  Some storeowners throw garbage bags full of rotting fish and sour milk, into street wastebaskets instead of putting the refuse into a dumpster for pickup. To keep the overflowing litter baskets away from their storefronts, shopkeepers illegally move the wastebaskets to the center island of the street. Homeowners illegally sublet their basements and tell the tenants to put their trash in public litter baskets.

But a number of efforts are underway to try to change all this.

Last year, the City Council member for the district, James Gennaro, called the Doe Fund's Ready, Willing, and Able program for assistance.  By providing $24,500 to the program, which pays homeless men to clean city streets, Gennaro secured a crew to empty wastebaskets, sweep, remove graffiti, and otherwise spruce up Main Street.

Gennaro also used city funds to put 70 new wastebaskets, costing $500 a piece, in the Main Street area. These new litter baskets are bulkier than the traditional wire model and have a smaller opening to deter people from putting large garbage bags in them. A long sticker surrounding the center reads, "Brought to You by City Councilman James Gennaro."      

The Department of Sanitation is also trying to crack down. It sets two specified nonconsecutive hours during the workday, known as "routing times," when shopkeepers are expected to keep their storefronts impeccably clean.  If the storefront is unkempt, the Department of Sanitation can fine the owner up to $50.

The Tzu Chi Foundation, a nonprofit Buddhist organization, has also supported the cleanup effort. One Saturday morning, it arranged for 180 people, dressed in white jumpsuits, to clean the predominantly Jewish neighborhood.  The volunteers used two high-pressure water hoses, cleaning solution, and a special Department of Sanitation truck.   

The overall cleanup effort has elicited mixed reviews. Chaim Rubinseld, who manages a local kosher deli, complains that, on some days, workers collect trash from the wastebaskets and then put two or three huge bags in front of his store to be picked up.  He claims the trash discourages people from coming into his store. 

But Margalit Susser, manager of the Kew Gardens Hills branch library, hails the cleanup campaign. "This is an active, vital neighborhood," she said.  "We can't help but notice that now, the streets are cleaner and the litter baskets are attended to."

Related Story:
Clean Streets
Issue of The Week (August 16, 2004)





Jamaica: Fighting the Increase in Tuberculosis

August 9, 2004

By Maliwina Siedlinska

Foreign-born New Yorkers account for almost two thirds of all of the tuberculosis cases in the city. In some immigrant communities, health commissioner Thomas Frieden has said, tuberculosis rates are 10 to 20 times the national average.

One such community is Jamaica. One third of all Queens tuberculosis patients live in the area, which is home to Dominican, Ecuadorian and other Latino immigrants as well as to Chinese and Haitians. The neighborhood?s rate of 14.8 tuberculosis cases per 100,000 is the second-highest rate in New York City. (Corona has the highest rate.)

To combat the lung infection, which can be fatal if left untreated, the health department has announced plans to open a new tuberculosis clinic in the Jamaica Health Center on Parsons Boulevard, located next to a McDonald?s. It already provides a range of services from pediatrics to internal medicine.

The clinic would use a treatment technique known as Directly Observed Therapy. Already used in other city clinics, it matches each patient with a health worker who administers the medicine every day and records each dose.

Currently most tuberculosis patients from Jamaica go to the Corona Chest Clinic, the largest in the city, for treatment. The travel makes the treatment extremely time consuming -- the one-way trip from Jamaica to Corona takes approximately 40 minutes and two different subways.

"Opening a clinic in Jamaica thus allows the Health Department to provide tuberculosis services to an area of greater need," said Sin Dinsay, a spokesperson for the Health Department.

As part of this, the city is looking to close the only other tuberculosis clinic in Queens, which is in Far Rockaway where incidence of the disease is relatively low.

The rise in tuberculosis among immigrant communities in the city comes after 10 years in which the number of cases of the lung disease steadily decreased, Frieden said in recent testimony.

According to the NYU School of Medicine Center for Immigrant Health, the increase has occurred because of the high rate of the disease in the countries that immigrants come from. Since the mid 1980s, the situation has worsened because of deteriorating health-care systems, poverty and homelessness, and the spread of HIV, which greatly increases the risk of an individual who has been exposed to tuberculosis developing the disease.

Once here, many immigrants find it difficult to seek screening, therapy and other care to detect, prevent or treat tuberculosis. Lacking health insurance and the knowledge of what is available, many immigrants ignore their symptoms and never get tested. They also worry that a visit at a clinic might affect their immigration status.

City health officials urge all recent immigrants to get tested for tuberculosis and note that all the chest clinics are free. Information is kept confidential from immigration authorities.

To help immigrant communities deal with tuberculosis, the Center for Immigrant Health, in collaboration with the City Bureau of Tuberculosis Control, Haitian Women?s Program and other community organizations, created the Community Tuberculosis Prevention Program. It trains bilingual workers to go into immigrant neighborhoods and identify and screen individuals. If tuberculosis is detected, the organization helps the patient arrange for treatment.

"The Jamaica area in Queens has always been one of the focus points of our program," said a spokesperson for the Haitian Women?s Program, "Most people in that area need someone to guide them in the right direction."

(For information on tuberculosis clinics in the city, visit the Bureau of Tuberculosis Control.)

Related Story:
The Urban Health Challenge
Issue of The Week (August 9, 2004)





In Search Of Safer Streets

October 21, 2003

Sidewalk and street maintenance, pedestrian safety and police protection are among the priorities of community planners in this district.




Homepage of the Community Gazette for District 24

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ALL DISTRICT 24 MAJOR ISSUES
Kew Gardens Hills: Cleanup on Main Street
(Aug 11, 2004)

Jamaica: Fighting the Increase in Tuberculosis
(Aug 09, 2004)

In Search Of Safer Streets
(Oct 21, 2003)

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