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CNN Live At Daybreak
Look at Squatters on New York City's Lower East Side
Aired November 04, 2002 - 05:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Affordable housing is hard to come by in New York City. Dozens of families seized vacant city owned buildings several years ago and now they have won the right to stay.
Here's Jason Bellini with more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): How long have you been living in this place?
APRIL MERLIN, UHAB OFFICIAL: Twelve years since 1990. BELLINI (voice-over): Squatters is what they are. Homesteaders is what April Merlin prefers to call her family.
(on camera): Looking around here already, this looks like a normal apartment in New York City.
(voice-over): A term now changing from euphemism to reality.
MERLIN: I have a hot water heater underneath that red curtain. BELLINI: These fabled bohemian dwellings, once raw and renegade, are becoming legal and legit.
MERLIN: They're the last historic squats and they're going to be something historic by becoming the first of the squats to go legal and become home owned, tenant owned, low income co-ops. BELLINI: The City of New York agreeing to sell the buildings for $1 to an organization that will, in turn, over time sell them back to the squatters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We give them a dollar, they give us the building. We get absolutely no funding. Anything that needs, any work that goes into the building now, we have to take out a mortgage for. BELLINI: In the '90s, the City of New York, the owner of the abandoned buildings, sent in riot gear clad police to evict the squatters. The squatters resisted and remained.
JOHN WARREN, DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING PRESERVATION: Well, we thought it was a pragmatic solution to a 20-year-old problem. BELLINI (on camera): Why do you think the city decided finally to give in and let you keep these places?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I think we beat the city in a lot of ways. We beat them psychologically.
WARREN: And we saw this as a great opportunity to create permanent, affordable housing and get the buildings brought up to building code.
MERLIN: When people come in and they see these nice apartments that we've slaved and spent over a decade building, and they say like, what? You got this? You just walked into the, you know, they think we just walked into, you know, this beautiful apartment, when actually what I came into was a completely empty shell. BELLINI (voice-over): The Lower East Side in recent years has become a hip, safe, expensive place to live. Monthly rent for an apartment like April's would normally be well over $1,000.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We took it from being a ruin into something beautiful.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Living and sleeping, you know, 40 degree weather inside is tough. But, you know, that was the exchange for an ideal. BELLINI: An ideal, an adventure and now a victory.
Jason Bellini, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired November 4, 2002 - 05:24 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
CATHERINE CALLAWAY, CNN ANCHOR: Affordable housing is hard to come by in New York City. Dozens of families seized vacant city owned buildings several years ago and now they have won the right to stay.
Here's Jason Bellini with more.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
JASON BELLINI, CNN CORRESPONDENT (on camera): How long have you been living in this place?
APRIL MERLIN, UHAB OFFICIAL: Twelve years since 1990. BELLINI (voice-over): Squatters is what they are. Homesteaders is what April Merlin prefers to call her family.
(on camera): Looking around here already, this looks like a normal apartment in New York City.
(voice-over): A term now changing from euphemism to reality.
MERLIN: I have a hot water heater underneath that red curtain. BELLINI: These fabled bohemian dwellings, once raw and renegade, are becoming legal and legit.
MERLIN: They're the last historic squats and they're going to be something historic by becoming the first of the squats to go legal and become home owned, tenant owned, low income co-ops. BELLINI: The City of New York agreeing to sell the buildings for $1 to an organization that will, in turn, over time sell them back to the squatters.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We give them a dollar, they give us the building. We get absolutely no funding. Anything that needs, any work that goes into the building now, we have to take out a mortgage for. BELLINI: In the '90s, the City of New York, the owner of the abandoned buildings, sent in riot gear clad police to evict the squatters. The squatters resisted and remained.
JOHN WARREN, DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING PRESERVATION: Well, we thought it was a pragmatic solution to a 20-year-old problem. BELLINI (on camera): Why do you think the city decided finally to give in and let you keep these places?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Well, I think we beat the city in a lot of ways. We beat them psychologically.
WARREN: And we saw this as a great opportunity to create permanent, affordable housing and get the buildings brought up to building code.
MERLIN: When people come in and they see these nice apartments that we've slaved and spent over a decade building, and they say like, what? You got this? You just walked into the, you know, they think we just walked into, you know, this beautiful apartment, when actually what I came into was a completely empty shell. BELLINI (voice-over): The Lower East Side in recent years has become a hip, safe, expensive place to live. Monthly rent for an apartment like April's would normally be well over $1,000.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We took it from being a ruin into something beautiful.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Living and sleeping, you know, 40 degree weather inside is tough. But, you know, that was the exchange for an ideal. BELLINI: An ideal, an adventure and now a victory.
Jason Bellini, CNN, New York.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
