Ridgewood Funeral Homes Adapt to New Populations
Posted on 27. Dec, 2009 by Carolyn Phenicie in Immigration, Money and Economy
By Carolyn Phenicie
For nearly 50 years, the Woodhaven branch of the Walsh-LaBella funeral home served over 150 families annually. Now the funeral home has manages, on average, one burial a week.
With an influx of new immigrants and fewer longtime residents remaining in the neighborhood after retirement, Walsh-Labella has lost about two thirds of its business annually, and like many funeral homes in the area, is trying to figure out how to adjust.
“You have to change with the community,” said John McNamara, a mortician at Walsh-LaBella, which has been open since 1959
Once a neighborhood with predominately German, Italian and Irish residents, Ridgewood now has residents with mostly Polish, Eastern European and Hispanic backgrounds. “This neighborhood used to be all German and Irish,” McNamara said. “Now it’s got the League of Nations.”
Currently, the area is about one-third Polish and Eastern European, one-third Latino and one-third German, Italian and Irish, according to Monsignor Edward Scharfenberger of St. Matthias Parish in Ridgewood.
Fewer families are coming to Walsh-LaBella because the new Hispanic population tends to patronize funeral homes that are run by Hispanics or have a Spanish-speaking staff, McNamara said.
Regina T. Smith, who teaches a course in the sociology of funeral service at the American Academy McAllister Institute of Funeral Service, said people want to use a funeral home with employees that understand their culture.
The overall number of people dying in the neighborhood is also decreasing as people retire to other parts of the state or elsewhere in the United States. St. Matthias had five or six funerals a week in the 1970s, Monsignor Scharfenberger said in an interview. Now, the average is two per week.
The church will celebrate a funeral mass in any language the family requests, Monsignor Scharfenberger said. He estimated that for every 20 funerals held, two are in Polish and two or three are in Spanish. There are also four to six per year in German. Those services are usually requested by the families of older people who believe it’s more dignified for the decedent and not necessarily for the language needs of those attending the service, as those held in Polish or Spanish are.
Many families are no longer sending remains back to their home country, said Robert Taylor, a mortician at the Peter J. Geis Funeral Home.
“Years ago we used to ship more to Romania and Yugoslavia. People have become more Americanized [and] they realized they can’t visit the grave if they ship the body back to the old country,” he said. “Plus, the cost is prohibitive.”
The requirements to send remains to another country varies depending on where the remains are being sent, and the cost of shipping the remains depends on the weight of the remains and the destination. Families essentially pay for the services of a funeral director twice, though, because a licensed mortician is required to pick up the remains in the receiving country, Taylor said.
Some families have begun doing the opposite: bringing the remains of family members who have passed away overseas or elsewhere in the U.S. back to be buried in New York. Walsh-LaBella brings in five to 10 bodies a year from overseas, most from Italy, and about 15 from elsewhere in the U.S., mostly Florida, McNamara said.
The trends are not limited to traditional burials, either. Formal acceptance by the Catholic Church in the 1960s plus a growing acceptance by younger people has caused the number of cremations to increase, according to J.P. Di Troia, president of Fresh Pond Crematory.
The trend is not limited to Ridgewood. Recent influxes of immigrant and refugee populations from Burma, Europe and Africa have changed the funeral business in upstate New York, Stewart Williams, a mortician at the Dimbley, Friedel, Williams & Edmunds Funeral Homes in New Hartford, N.Y. said in an interview.
Language is often the biggest barrier.
“You’re needing to always find a translator and just be very patient with families,” he said.
Changes have affected funeral homes all around the country, too, according to Bob Biggins, a funeral director in Rockland, Mass. and spokesman for the National Funeral Directors Association.
“It brings challenges to our members, but it also brings wonderful opportunities for them to continue to be beacons of service that our members have been for generations,” he said.
After Long Delay, Brazilian Duo Finds Radio Outlet
Posted on 01. Dec, 2009 by Christian Yarnell in Immigration
Ricardo Sarmento on the air at Radio America’s studio in Newark. Click here to listen live to Radio America.
By Christian Yarnell
Ricardo Sarmento, wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, and a New York Red Bulls baseball cap that partially covers his graying hair, waits for the song to finish in his D.J. studio. Then he cuts in. Speaking Portuguese in his deep voice, he says: “Radio America AM. Uma rádio feita pra você!” — “A radio made just for you!”
It took a long time for Sarmento to say those words.
He is half of a husband-and-wife team who founded Radio America, a Brazilian music and news station based in Newark’s Ironbound district, about 18 months ago.
Sarmento, 41, and wife Marcia Martins, 32, moved to the United States nine years ago. Sarmento had worked in radio in Brazil, at one point appearing on a weekly show, but his dream of becoming a full-time radio host remained unfulfilled after arriving in the United States as he faced the struggles of many immigrants, finding work and keeping his family together in a new country.
When they first arrived in the United States, Sarmento worked in construction and Martins, who was a kindergarten teacher in Brazil, as a bartender. Sarmento never gave up, though, on his dream to be on the radio, but it took some six years to get the radio station up and running.
He did not think that his biggest obstacle would be navigating the rules set by the Federal Communications Commission, which he described as tortuous. The breakthrough came at the beginning of 2008 when the FCC opened a new window for AM broadcasts, allowing Radio America to appear in March at the end of the dial on 1700 AM.
At first unable to secure studio space, Sarmento and Martins launched Radio America from their living room. “People thought we had a radio station. We didn’t mention we were at home,” Martins recalls. The station, now based in a small office on Monroe Street, features Brazilian music and news for the Brazilian community.
Brazilians came to Newark’s Ironbound in large numbers starting in the 1970s, in part because of their linguistic and cultural connection to the Portuguese who had settled in the area decades before. Adnor Pitanga, from the Brazilian American United Association or BAUA, estimates that about 70,000 Brazilians live in Newark and surrounding areas, with the highest concentration in the Ironbound.
Pitanga, 63, came to the United States 11 years ago. He was a filmmaker in Brazil and rose to become president of the country’s state-run film agency Embrafilme. Embrafilme was disbanded in 1990 during the failed presidency of Fernando Collor de Mello, whose resignation amid impeachment proceedings led to a purge of many who had served in prominent government positions.
“I had no way to work,” said Pitanga. “I couldn’t make movies anymore.”
When he first arrived in Newark, Pitanga found work as a handyman in a small hotel. Like Sarmento, however, Pitanga found a way back to his craft before too long. He now operates a video production company in New York City that films commercials and private events.
Listeners can tune into Radio America over the internet, but Sarmento and Martins want it to be a traditional radio outlet that serves the local community and offers some public service on their airwaves. They recently gave airtime to a local resident, 28-year-old Cleo Santos, one of many victimized by an unscrupulous moving company that targeted the Brazilian-American community. The company a year ago took $340 from Santos to deliver two boxes to her family in Brazil, but the boxes were never delivered. Workers from the moving company then moved on to a new company, which took another $200. The packages still did not come.
Santos says she was inspired to act because the shipment included Christmas presents for her 10-year-old daughter. She approached local newspapers with the story, but could not find an audience until Martins let her on Radio America. After the radio broadcast, other victims came forward, and many began working together. Brazilian Customs also contacted Santos, and they believe they have located her packages in the Port of Santos.
Radio America can be heard in Newark and a few surrounding towns. Sarmento and Martins are hoping to upgrade their antenna to expand the station’s reach, although the couple says they already run into many fans in the community.
“I can’t stop now,” says Sarmento. “We’re everywhere.”
A Battle to Define Sunset Park: Zoning Changes Spark Lawsuit
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Jeannette Neumann in Immigration, Money and Economy, Politics and Government
By Jeannette Neumann
For more than two decades, Ruben Sosa has worked as a community organizer in Sunset Park, helping the neighborhood’s many low-income residents access affordable housing and find help for domestic violence.
Now, Sosa, 54, said he is facing his biggest challenge to protect Sunset Park’s residents: the city’s plan to change the zoning for 128 blocks in the neighborhood by allowing more commercial development and larger buildings along the avenues.
The City Council recently voted 42-2 in favor of the plan, which supporters say protects the low-rise, residential character of the neighborhood by setting height limits on buildings along the side streets, but that opponents fear will accelerate gentrification, displacing low-income residents.
“They’re going to push the rest of us out – the working class people,” said Sosa, community outreach director for the Sunset Park Alliance of Neighbors.
Many of the buildings affected by the changes in zoning are rent-stabilized. If developers tear them down and replace them with more expensive condos, Sosa and others fear it will leave fewer options for Sunset Park’s low-income residents.
“It’s not that people are against rezoning, but they want rezoning to protect them, rather than kick them out,” said Bethany Li of the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
But a spokesman for City Councilwoman Sara Gonzalez said she voted in favor of the rezoning for her district precisely to protect working-class people.
“Displacement will be kept at a minimum,” said Mike Schweingsburg, communications director for Councilwoman Gonzalez.
A study by the Department of City Planning says the proposed rezoning won’t trigger major new developments like luxury condos that could price people out of Sunset Park.
But Sosa and a handful of other Sunset Park residents, community organizations and churches say it will, and they are suing the city for moving forward with the rezoning after what they say was an incomplete study of the impact of the plan on the neighborhood. If they win the lawsuit, a judge will grant an injunction against the zoning changes.
“We firmly believe it’s a flawed rezoning plan and the city should have at least disclosed all the flaws,” said Rachel Hannaford, 31, a lawyer with South Brooklyn Legal Services representing the plaintiffs. Hannaford and Li filed the lawsuit on Oct. 2.
The rezoning plan is now in legal limbo, awaiting the next hearing on Nov. 16 in New York State Supreme Court in Manhattan.
A decision could take months, leaving the battle to define Sunset Park unsettled.
Sunset Park residents realized the impact zoning has on their community two-and-a-half years ago when a developer tried to construct a 12-story building on a street of two-story houses. Uproar from residents concerned the building would change the look and feel of their street stymied the developer, but legally he could have moved forward with construction since there were no height restrictions. The incident spurred Sunset Park residents and political figures to push for rezoning, Schweingsburg said.
Now, proposed zoning changes place a four- to five-story height limit on narrow residential side streets – a plan that has received wide support.
But if the city places height restrictions on one section of a neighborhood, it typically allows bigger buildings elsewhere – part of a tradeoff to maintain a neighborhood’s character while accommodating a burgeoning population citywide, explained Paula Crespo, a planner at the Pratt Center for Community Development.
The proposed zoning changes also allow a height increase to 80 feet along 4th and 7th Avenues, two heavy traffic corridors running the length of Sunset Park.
That height increase could create greater incentives for developers to demolish existing buildings and construct their own, Crespo said, because they can earn more money adding square footage.
That could be a threat to the more than 1,000 rent-regulated housing units along 4th and 7th Aves.
As of 2007, the income of one in five families in Sunset Park was below the poverty level, according to the most recent estimate by the American Community Survey, an ongoing project of the U.S. Census Bureau. The neighborhood is home to the city’s largest Mexican population and the third largest Chinatown after Flushing and Manhattan.
More recent poverty figures aren’t available, but the number of people at the weekly food pantry at Fourth Avenue United Methodist Church has quadrupled in the past few months to nearly 400, as the economy continues to shed jobs, said Reverend Hector Laporta, 53. He said he has spoken out against the rezoning at Sunday sermons because he believes the changes will encourage developers to demolish lower-income housing and construct luxury condos.
Jeremy Laufer, district manager for Community Board 7, said the rezoning could actually help alleviate the housing shortage since it provides incentives for developers to construct larger buildings if they include moderately priced homes – part of the city’s inclusionary housing program.
Opponents counter that because the incentives are optional, few developers will opt to include low-income housing.
Councilman Charles Barron was one of the two councilmembers to vote against the zoning changes. Rezonings have triggered gentrification in his own district, he said, which includes parts of East New York, Brownsville, East Flatbush and Canarsie.
“It seems that Bloomberg and others are still promoting development for the affluent rather than the lower income communities,” Barron said of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “The city is in danger – black and Latino communities and low-income communities are in danger of gentrification.”
The effect of the zoning changes depend largely on the market, said Crespo. Now, few developers are eager to spend the money to demolish a building and put up a luxury condo.
But as the economy improves, incentives for developers to build in Sunset Park could increase, she said.
“If there’s a demand for housing in Sunset Park combined with a robust market, you will probably see some bigger buildings on 4th and 7th Avenues,” Crespo said.
More money in less time: Workers’ cooperative in Sunset Park helps immigrants weather economic downturn
Posted on 14. Nov, 2009 by Jeannette Neumann in Health and Environment, Immigration, Money and Economy
By Jeannette Neumann
Alicia Chavez used to work 48 hours a week at a Sunset Park baking factory, shuttling hundreds of loaves an hour from oven to cooling rack during her 5 pm to 1.30 am shift. She earned $350 a week for herself and family – two adolescent boys and her husband, who still works there.
Two years later, she earns slightly more money in less than half the time.
Chavez, 34, is president of Si Se Puede! We Can Do It! Inc., an all female workers’ cooperative based in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. The 23 members provide housecleaning services to more than 400 regular clients.
“Now, I’m a business woman,” Chavez said. “Before, everyday was the same. I was like a machine at my old job. Now, I see everything differently. I have a better salary and more job security.”
Like all workers’ cooperatives, We Can Do It is owned and controlled by the workers. Twenty of the women are from Mexico, two are from the Dominican Republic, and one is from Bangladesh. Although there is a hierarchy, including president and treasurer, for instance, there is no board of directors, meaning decision-making is democratic; Chavez refers to all of the women in the housecleaning cooperative as “directoras.”
Employees at the Center for Family Life in Sunset Park, a 30-year-old community service nonprofit, were instrumental in starting the co-op and continue to act as consultants for the women, helping to organize monthly meetings. Potential and regular clients call the Center directly to hire the women. The nonprofit recently started two other workers’ co-ops, one for babysitting and one for house repairs, called We Can Fix It.
Since We Can Do It opened in August 2006, the women’s wages have increased from $8 to more than $20 an hour. Chavez and the other women attribute part of that increase to a monthly marketing campaign, often held in neighboring Park Slope, aimed at attracting clients who prefer to pay workers directly, rather than a middleman, as it is customary in many housecleaning agencies.
Wages and quality of life – greater pay for fewer hours worked, for example – often do increase over time in workers’ co-ops since the members set the priorities for their business, said Lynn Pitman, associate outreach specialist at the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives in Madison.
That makes cooperatives especially attractive in a downturn, said Jim Jenkins, director of communications at the National Cooperative Business Association in Washington, DC.
“Historically, when there’s an economic or social crisis, people tend to turn to co-ops as a way to move beyond their current situation,” Jenkins wrote in an email. “As more and more consumers grow skeptical of big business, they tend to look for business models with more integrity, transparency and value – cooperatives are the often the model they tend to trust.”
But Pitman cautioned that a workers’ cooperative is still susceptible to the challenges all businesses face.
“If the members say ‘we really want to pay our workers this amount of money,’ but there’s not a demand for those services – it doesn’t matter if you’re a co-op or not,” she said. “You have to deal with what the market is demanding.”
Chavez said she has seen the demand from her 20 regular clients dip only slightly amid the downturn.
“I haven’t experienced the recession,” Chavez said.
Two other coop members, Margarita Pavon, 31, and Daniela Salazar, 27, said they have received fewer calls from clients since January. Despite the ebb in workflow, they said they feel lucky to have a job, as friends and family struggle to find employment.
As of 2007, the income of one in five families in Sunset Park was below the poverty level, according to the most recent estimate by the American Community Survey, an ongoing project of the U.S. Census Bureau. In neighboring Park Slope and Red Hook, the poverty rate was a little less than one in ten families during the same period.
Current data documenting the impact of the economic downturn on Sunset Park’s low-income residents isn’t available yet, but there is evidence that many are scrambling to secure a salary.
Migdalia Garcia, 40, said nearly 200 people sit down every week in the unemployment office where she works on 4th Avenue to fill out paperwork, hoping to qualify for one of the 25 jobs available at any given time. About 9 in 10 are men, most from Mexico, she said. Sunset Park is home to the city’s largest Mexican population, according to the 2000 census.
“Three years ago, it used to be that there were more jobs than people looking for them,” Garcia said. “Now, it’s completely the contrary.”
Pavon said that since she joined the co-op in February 2008 she’s worked fewer hours for a better salary. But most importantly, she said, there’s more time for the things that really matter to her.
An aunt used to pick up her two children, America, 8, and Alan, 12, from school at 3pm because Pavon was always working.
“They didn’t like that,” said Pavon, shaking her head and wrinkling her nose at her daughter, America, who nodded her head in agreement.
Now, Pavon walks America and Alan home.
“I decide my time,” Pavon said. “I’m my own boss.”
In September, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus in Washington, DC invited the 23 women to their annual conference, highlighting We Can Do It as an example of Latino entrepreneurs who have started a successful “green” business. For health and environmental reasons, the women encourage their clients to use organic cleaning products – such as baking soda and vinegar. About 70 percent of their clients use organic products now, Pavon said.
The recognition has reminded the women of the importance of their work, Chavez said.
“Before, I felt like I didn’t have a life here or there,” she said, referring to her native Mexico. “I hadn’t done anything important in my life and I felt like I was in limbo.”
Now, she said, she has a purpose.
“Working at the co-op, our children have less probability of ending up in the street because we’re home more,” Chavez said. “We’re helping the environment and our community.”
For Chinese Immigrants, Money Pools Offer a Risky Promise
Posted on 22. Oct, 2009 by Lulu Yilun Chen in Immigration, Money and Economy
by Lulu Chen
Shi Yuqing, a 65-year-old retired waitress from Flushing, said she had hardly slept in the past weeks over fears that she might not be able to retrieve the $196,000 that she and seven of her family members invested over four years in a Chinese bidding consortium known as “Biao Hui.”
This June, Shi learned that the person in charge of the bidding consortium which she was part of had fled to China with $980,000, according to the U.S. Wen Zhou Chamber of Commerce and Industry, based in Flushing. The man who fled, whose name has been omitted because he has not been charged with a crime and the reporter has been unable to track him down, took Shi’s life savings and those of some 20 other people, most of whom are Chinese immigrants earning moderate incomes in Flushing.
“I worked so hard to earn that money,” said Shi in Chinese. “I think about it every day and night.”
Shi is among the thousands of Chinese immigrants who participate in bidding groups known as Biao Huis, institutions designed to allow their members to access large amounts of money pooled together by others in the consortium through a bidding process. While this money-raising mechanism has helped Chinese immigrants to establish business over the years, it is not protected by the same laws that shield bank customers in the United States against fraud or theft.
In the current economic downturn, Biao Huis in Flushing have been struck hard: Some members have stopped making monthly payments and, in even worse scenarios, individuals in charge have embezzled the money. The eroding trust on the Biao Huis is hurting Flushing’s economy.
Chinese immigrants in Flushing who invest in Biao Huis mostly come from Wenzhou, a city on the east coast of China, known for being one of the largest shoe manufacturing capitals in the world today. In the 1980s, when China began to open up to the outside world and establish a market economy, immigrants from some villages in Wenzhou managed to enter the United States illegally.
Today people from those villages reside in Flushing and have reestablished the connections they had back home. For more than two decades, they have set up thriving businesses with start-up capital raised through Biao Huis. About 30,000 people from Wen Zhou are residing in Queens, according Lin Jiaji, the president of the U.S. Wen Zhou Chamber of Commerce and Industry.
Lin said that anyone can set up a Biao Hui and that there is no effective way to measure the number of Biao Huis that exist in Flushing today.
Participants in Biao Huis do not sign up contracts or documents and the consortium is built on trust and credibility, according to Lin.
Most of the people who have lost their money are hesitant to contact the police and district attorney’s office because of their limited knowledge of the legal system. They also do not know whether participating in Biao Huis is legal or not.
Jesse Sligh, the executive assistant district attorney in Queens confirmed that his office had not been informed about the case and that they needed the victims to come forward to establish a case.
Mr. Sligh added that, “Putting money into a consortium does not break the law.”
“Even if there is a lack of physical evidence, it does not mean these people do not have a case,” said Mr. Sligh. “We need to gather more facts to see if a crime has been committed.”
Jun Wu, a Beijing-based lawyer who specializes in international trading, said that “the most probably way for the victims to get back their money is to file for litigation in China as the suspect is in China right now.”
“Biao” is the Chinese character for bid and “Hui” means group. The origins of this unique finance system are unclear, but it is generally believed that Biao Huis were founded in ancient Chinese times among people who needed access to large amounts of money to start up businesses at a time before banks existed. Similar bidding consortiums exist in many East Asian and Southeast Asian countries, according to Ming Jer-Chen, a professor at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia.
Wen Zhou immigrants in the United States have benefited greatly from Biao Huis. Upon their first arrival they were able to start up small businesses with the money raised in Biao Huis. This helped legal immigrants overcome the problem of lack of credit in the U.S. banking system and undocumented immigrants dodge the issue of identity.
Shi started to invest in Biao Huis soon after she arrived in the United States in 1991, a prime time for Biao Huis in America as immigrants from Wenzhou flooded into New York.
Shi said that participants in Biao Huis receive higher interest rates and are able to raise more than $30,000 shortly after their first arrival in America.
“This is actually a great thing,” said Shi who made a down payment for a two-story house on Kissena Boulevard in 2002 with the money collected through a Biao Hui. “Everyone from Wen Zhou takes part in it.”
Anyone can start up a Biao Hui as long as that person can find enough people to join.
In September 2004, Shi joined a Biao Hui that had 70 equal shares and about 30 members — some members bought more than one share. In addition to the $1,000 initial payment, a monthly payment of $500 is required on each share. Every month, members are entitled to the total monthly contributions collected, after paying a fee. The winner is determined by a bidding process: The higher the fee offered, the better chance to win the monthly amount. Each member wins only once.
The monthly bidding rounds of Shi’s Biao Hui were supposed to start in September 2004 and end in June 2010. In theory, each member should win a bid. It was just a matter of time.
However by March of this year, Shi realized that there weren’t enough bidding rounds left for Shi and 15 of her friends to win a bid.
Shi and her friends sensed that something was wrong and tried to contact the person in charge. In an attempt to ease the tension, the organizer paid $500 on each share to the participants who had not won a bid yet. Two months later, Shi and her friends learned that the organizer had fled to China taking with him all the money in the fund. By then Shi had put in $56,000 in the consortium.
The person who embezzled the money is a Chinese citizen who used to work in pyramid selling for Market America, according to Shi.
After the discovery, Shi and her friends contacted the local Chinese commerce organizations and other non-profit organizations. Chen Yangming, the secretary of the Wen Zhou Residents’ Association, said that he had helped the group contact the Chinese embassy. The Chinese Consulate in New York did not respond to a reporter’s questions.
Shi’s experience with her Biao Hui was not unique.
Qu, who asked to be identified only by his surname, is a 35-year-old man who owns a supermarket. He said he had lost a total of $168,000 with his sister in a Biao Hui set up by a 45-year-old woman in 2007. Qu said he has been trying to track her for months to persuade her to return his money. If unsuccessful, he will consider taking legal actions against her.
Hu, who also asked to be referred only by his surname, lost about $50,000 in the same Biao Hui. The 40-year-old man, who runs a catering business, said that he would like to see the American legal system help to protect the interests of participants in Biao Huis and to preserve this financial system that once benefited so many people.
The woman in charge of Hu and Qu’s Biao Hui stopped the bidding process around February, much earlier than the scheduled bidding term of five years, according to Hu.
“This is hurting the economy in Flushing,” Hu said in Chinese. “Biao Huis helped us set up prospering businesses, but now no one dares invest in them anymore.”
