Post 13: Political alliances in Community District 3

As always, with the exception of public figures, I use altered names to protect the individuals in this history.

Policy-making in Community District 3 cannot be understood without knowing the close political alliances within it. At the heart of CD3 is the Coalition for a District Alternative (CoDA), an activist group started in the 1990's that is effectively the local Democratic Party club. All three of the last City Council members have come from CoDA, ever since Margarita's upset victory. The core interest of the group has always been housing. It has had a close relationship with the two large affordable housing managers, Good Old Lower East Side and Cooper Square Mutual Housing. LES People's Mutual Housing was not active in CoDA itself so far as I know -- I could be mistaken since I did not attend every CoDA meeting by any means -- but as an affordable housing developer, it had common interests with the other non profits. Asian Americans for Equality, the affordable housing manager in Chinatown, also had a close political association with CoDA. In short, the affordable housing non profits are at the heart of the politics of the East Village.

Margarita won her election by going door to door in the NYCHA properties, registering voters. CoDA has always looked to NYCHA residents as their primary constituency and concern. CD3 has one of the highest concentrations of poverty in the city, certainly in Manhattan. Unlike the upscale residents of the EV, who have the resources to move at will, NYCHA residents have no such resources. This makes them the core, enduring community of the EV. They are also the least served, especially since the Federal Government has disinvested in public housing maintenance. CoDA, despite its diversity of membership including many whites, has always kept its moral and political dedication to the NYCHA residents.

Maragarita herself was a homesteader from 1978 (the same year I moved in just down the street from her), a Puerto Rican who, with a group of other Puerto Rican women remodeled an abandoned building on 11th Street between Avenues B and C, turning it into a viable home amidst urban blight.