Kew Gardens Hills: Cleanup on Main StreetAugust 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 TuberculosisAugust 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 StreetsOctober 21, 2003 Sidewalk and street maintenance, pedestrian safety and police protection are among the priorities of community planners in this district.

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