Poverty stories

Preying on the Poor

2005-05-30T22:06:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
1/13/2003

On a gritty block lined with timeworn storefronts, the big bright sign in the freshly scrubbed window looms like a beacon to the neighborhood's poor. In bold letters, it reads: "Instant Money."

Mary Williams drops into the newly opened H & R Block branch on Uphams Corner and emerges with what she sees as a good deal. Rather than file her federal tax return herself, and wait perhaps two months to claim her tax credit, the 21-year-old mother will return to the Dorchester branch in three days and pick up a check - minus a fee of $200 or more.

"Christmas broke me," said Williams, after leaving the branch on a recent night. "I need the money - I've got bills, kids, and life to take care of now."

One of about 40,000 Bostonians who will benefit from the Earned Income Tax Credit - the landmark federal effort to pump extra money into low-income working households - Williams is among a quarter of those city residents who will give tax firms like H & R Block a significant portion of their often desperately needed refunds.

With scores of such firms now opening branches in the city's poorest neighborhoods, many of them similarly advertising instant cash - really loans with interest rates often exceeding 100 percent, if the money were borrowed for a full year - city officials are joining a national campaign this week to persuade residents this tax season to shun what they consider "usurious" business practices that unfairly target the poor.

After all, the average recipient gets about a $1,500 refund, and giving up $200 or more defeats the purpose of a program both Republicans and Democrats have long touted as one of the most effective ways to help the poor.

"The purpose of this tax credit is to lift poor people from poverty, not to line the pockets of tax firms," said Mimi Turchinetz, the city's living-wage administrator, who is hoping to steer residents to 16 sites around Boston providing free tax help. "Given what these firms charge and how they lure people, it's easy to argue they're preying on the poor."

Although studies show tax firms open more than half their offices in the nation's poorest neighborhoods - in 2000, according to a zip code count, a third of all those in Boston were in Roxbury, Dorchester, and Mattapan - officials at firms such as H & R Block insist they're not targeting the poor. "A lot of the criticism is unfair. What we do is give our clients options," said Denise Sposato, a spokeswoman for H & R Block.

First, she said, the firm's employees tell clients they can file their taxes electronically, and, if they have bank accounts, they can have their refunds automatically deposited within 14 days. If they don't have a bank account - and many don't - she said the tax preparers explain it may take as long as eight weeks to get a check in the mail.

Only after that, she said, do they raise the controversial option of a "refund anticipation loan." Depending on the size of their refund and their credit history, H & R Block will advance clients like Williams the money, subtracting a fee of about $100, or more in the case of larger refunds. That's on top of the usual tax preparation fee, which varies but often runs more than $100.

"For many of our clients, this is really just a convenience for them," Sposato said of the fee for the refund, comparing the trade off to someone who decides they would rather pay a high ATM fee than go without cash. "There are needs they have that may make the loan a smart choice for them."

But the loans have the effect of diverting billions of dollars from the poor to tax firms, said tax analyst Alan Berube of The Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, who argues that the government bears some of the responsibility for the expenses because of the complexity of tax forms.

Last year, Berube published a study that found in 2001 H & R Block and other major tax firms earned $357 million alone by selling rapid refunds to earned-income tax recipients, more than double what they earned in 1998. In all, the study found, 7 cents of every dollar of such aid to the poor went to tax firms.

Part of the problem, he and others said, is the tax forms are so complicated many people would rather have a specialist do the work for them. Also, unless people file electronically, it can take a long time for refund checks to arrive from the government. One other problem: Nearly a quarter of those eligible for the tax credit - working families who earn $34,000 or less - either don't know about it or don't apply for it.

"So without a more effective system, tax firms can take advantage of a situation where people need cash and aren't aware of their options," said Berube, adding that in some parts of Dorchester and Roxbury a third of the working-poor residents seek rapid loans. "After a while, what happens is this becomes an annual cycle. At the beginning of the year, people look forward to getting a quick lump sum."

Though they know they would get back more money by filing electronically, Chuck and Trina White said they aren't eager to wait the eight weeks it might take by filing on their own. Like others, they prefer not to risk having their tax refund check stolen or lost in the mail.

Leaving the H & R Block on Uphams Corner after filing their taxes recently, the two said they're not happy to have forked over about $250 to the tax firm. But they insisted it was their best option.

"You get your check and it's in your hand," said Chuck White, 28, who described himself as a consultant. "That's peace of mind worth paying for."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Yours, For a Price

2005-05-30T22:03:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
2/17/2003

No credit? No checks or savings? No cash for delivery?

No problem at Rent-a-Center.

If you're like Juanda Mwanza, and you want to furnish your home with anything from wide-screen high-definition TVs to plush, if used, sofas, all you need are a few dollars to cover weekly or monthly payments. If the money runs out, the goods go back to the store. No obligations, no credit problems.

"It's the best way out there for me to buy," said Mwanza, 38, a software engineer from Dorchester who spent time on a recent morning at the Uphams Corner Rent-a-Center, eyeing a Whirlpool washer and dryer set for $8.99 a week.

But what seems like a good deal to Mwanza strikes others, particularly consumer advocates, as extortion. Rent-to-own businesses like Rent-a-Center, they say, prey on the poor, millions of whom end up paying as much as three times a product's typical retail price in exchange for a low, commitment-free weekly or monthly fee.

Now, with the economy struggling, rent-to-own businesses are booming - and they're seeking to protect their multibillion-dollar gains. As consumer advocates bring pressure on Congress to regulate the rental business, the industry has put forth its own legislation that is expected to be considered in the next few weeks.

The nation's 8,300 rent-to-own stores, which last year took in more than $5 billion, already have a head start: In a mainly partisan vote last September, the Republican-controlled House passed their bill. The Senate never voted on it.

The industry also is seeking to expand its traditional base of customers, most of whom live in households with incomes below $25,000, according to a survey by the Federal Trade Commission. With debt and unemployment squeezing the middle class, rent-to-own businesses are increasingly targeting clients with more upscale tastes, prominently featuring everything from the latest brand-name DVD players to desktop computers.

"This started off as a mom-and-pop industry, and now we're a presence on Wall Street," said Richard May, a spokesman for the Association of Progressive Rental Organizations, the industry's trade group. "The ultimate point of our efforts now is to legitimize the rent-to-own industry, to broaden our demographics, and to give our stores more security [against litigation]."

The bill before Congress, which would supercede state laws now regulating the industry, requires all transactions to clearly disclose the ultimate price of the product, explain buy-out procedures, list whether the item is new or used, and, among other things, provide clear rules about the rights of customers who default on their payments.

The problem with the bill, consumer advocates argue, is that it doesn't treat rent-to-own transactions as credit sales, which are governed by federal and state laws. Courts in states including Wisconsin, Minnesota, and New Jersey have ruled that rent-to-own transactions are credit sales, and Vermont now requires all the industry's stores to disclose effective interest rates.

"Their entire marketing strategy is to sell the poor the notion of ownership, yet the industry wants to be treated under the rental laws," said Edmund Mierzwinski, a consumer advocate at the Massachusetts Public Interest Research Group, noting government studies show 70 percent of customers end up buying what they rent. "The customers think this is the best deal they can qualify for. But it isn't. They're not getting the cost of the finance charge, or the cost of buying over time."

Without a credit card or enough savings to pay in full, many customers see rent-to-own as their most convenient, affordable way to make purchases. In one of its brochures, the National Consumer Law Center describes a typical transaction: A customer is told that for just $16 a week, over a year, they can become the owner of a 19-inch TV. What they're not told is that, in the end, they're paying $832 for a TV that usually sells for about $300 - at an annual interest rate of 254 percent.

"What it comes down to is that this is undoubtedly a predatory industry, taking advantage of people who perceive they have few choices and they're charging them the maximum," said Margot Saunders, managing attorney of the National Consumer Law Center's Washington office. "A legitimate bill would include limits on price and protections from usury."

The controversial nature of the business was too much for John Madden. The popular football commentator, who for the past few years has served as a very visible spokesman for Rent-a-Center, decided this month he no longer wants to be affiliated with the company, ending his commercial appearances.

"We just didn't want to be involved in too much controversy," said Sandy Montag, Madden's agent. "Whether we agree with Rent-a-Center or not, if there are issues, you don't want to endorse it."

It wasn't because of its finances. In the past five years, Rent-a-Center, which dominates the industry with 2,500 stores, has seen it stock soar, its annual sales more than double to $2 billion, and its net income balloon from $25 million to more than $172 million last year.

The booming business also has produced an increase in customer complaints. Rent-to-own customers have long complained about everything from hidden fees to having their merchandise forcefully, and abruptly, repossessed.

Last year in Massachusetts, which now has 50 Rent-a-Center stores, 19 customers complained to the state attorney general's office. Two years before, when there were 37 stores, only three people complained.

But 3 million people patronize rent-to-own businesses annually. About 75 percent of the industry's customers say they're satisfied with their transactions, according to the Federal Trade Commission's 2000 survey.

Moreover, some academics argue that even if rent-to-own stores charge exorbitant fees, their success demonstrates they're filling a need in society.

Too much regulation of the industry would be counterproductive, two University of Massachusetts at Dartmouth professors argued in a paper published two years ago. It would "deny or limit immediate access to goods that are the basics of (the) modern household," Michael Anderson and Raymond Jackson wrote.

Mwanza, one of about 250 customers at the recently opened Rent-a-Center in Uphams Corner, values the convenience. If she gets something and doesn't like it, or it breaks, she can return it or have it replaced. She doesn't lose anything.

Now, for $600 a month, she gets two big-screen TVs, two reclining chairs, a bedroom set, and a dinette set. Though she knows she would pay less if she bought the items at another store, she thinks renting to own is a good deal. And soon, after she gets her tax refund, she plans to start renting the washer and dryer, which will cost more than $800 when she finishes paying.

"I trust the people here," she said. "They treat you right."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Swindling Immigrants

2005-05-30T22:02:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
7/05/2003

After paying the "law office" of Price-Price & Associates $1,200, Jaime Cardona expected help navigating the bureaucratic path to citizenship. Instead, he says, the firm improperly filed his application for asylum, then it vanished, and next week immigration officials expect the 41-year-old father of three to return to Guatemala, leaving his wife and children in Allston.

"They lied to me, they stole my money, and now a judge told me I have to leave," said Cardona, a factory worker who has lived in Boston since 1993. Cardona was advised that he could qualify for permanent residency under a special asylum act for Guatemalans, though he arrived in the United States three years too late.

A year and a half ago, Cardona learned that Price-Price wasn't qualified to provide the services they sold him. In fact, he says, they weren't even lawyers; they were notary publics, or "notarios," a title with a significantly different meaning in the United States than in Latin America. Though their powers are limited to stamping legal documents and almost anyone can be a notary in the United States - all you need in Massachusetts is $65, the rubberstamp approval of the secretary of state, and four signatures - in much of Latin America, the word "notario" connotes a lawyer, usually one of distinction.

With the region's Latino population growing, state authorities are increasingly receiving complaints about notaries using the semantic confusion to swindle immigrants, many of them poor, undocumented, and speaking no English. Worse than the theft, state officials and immigrant-rights advocates say, are the cases like Cardona's that have been botched beyond repair.

It's unclear how many of the state's 130,000 notaries have engaged in such deception. But state officials and immigration-rights advocates say they've received scores of complaints since Attorney General Thomas F. Reilly's office publicized last month the prosecution of Gaspard J. Francois, a 54-year-old East Boston resident sentenced to three years in jail for posing as an immigration lawyer and for defrauding at least five Costa Rican immigrants out of thousands of dollars.

"This seems to be a very significant problem," said John Grossman, chief of corruption, fraud, and computer crime at the attorney general's office, who is investigating suspicious notaries. "It happens too often for us to prosecute all these cases. But in cases with larceny and fraud, where victims will step forward - and many are reluctant because they aren't here legally - we will prosecute."

To prevent more cases like Cardona's, some advocates want the state to regulate notaries more closely.

Immigration lawyer Jeff Ross, who met Cardona after he learned that a judge ordered him to leave the country, has sent Governor Mitt Romney a draft of potential legislation that is similar to laws in 16 states. The proposed bill would forbid notaries who act as immigration consultants from advertising themselves as "notarios," strictly regulate what notaries can charge for their services, and create a licensing process for notaries interested in serving immigrants.

"It's like the way we regulate the insurance industry," said Ross, who is legal counsel for the Guatemalan Association of Massachusetts. "We need a law to hold people accountable when they're acting beyond the bounds of what they're legally allowed to do."

Doroteo Segura says a notary in Dorchester charged him $300 for helping him fill out a petition for permanent residency. Nothing ever came of his petition, and when the 32-year-old Guatemalan asked for a receipt to confirm that the notary filed the visa request, she brushed him off, he said.

"After about a year of not hearing anything, I asked her about my case and she said she had no idea what happened to my petition," said Segura, whose wife is a citizen.

The notary, Yolanda Reyes, keeps an office in the living room of her home on Callender Street, where a small, fading sign next to the front door advertises her company, Wide National Service. Inside, beyond a lobby that looks like a dentist's office, Reyes sits at an old desk, the walls behind her decorated with a collage of diplomas, American flags, and sample immigration forms.

When asked about the services she provides, she was reluctant to respond. "We don't just put a seal on a piece of paper; there's much more to it," she said. When asked to respond to allegations that she has improperly handled cases or charged exorbitant fees, she told a reporter to leave. "This is my life - and it's private," she said.

Recently, several of the state's immigrant-rights groups have started collecting complaints about notaries posing as lawyers, forwarding many of them to the attorney general's office. One group in Cambridge, Centro Presente, provided the names of a dozen suspicious notaries, from East Boston to Framingham.

"This is a widespread problem that will continue as long as there are undocumented people and those greedy to make a buck," said Elena Letona, executive director of Centro Presente.

One of the notaries Centro Presente has received complaints about, Letona said, has an office in the same space occupied by Price-Price & Associates, which vanished about two years ago. Over a pawnshop on East Boston's Meridian Street, where a picture of the Statue of Liberty accompanies advertising for services ranging from notarizing to filling out immigration paperwork, Servicios Pro fesionales Reyes welcomes a steady flow of immigrants, many of them former Price-Price clients.

The owner, Daisy Reyes (no relation to the Dorchester notary), insists that she has never misrepresented herself as a lawyer. What she does, she says, is help people with translations, taxes, and simple immigration forms. If a lawyer is necessary, she says, she recommends that her clients find one.

"Some notary publics lie to their clients," she said, arguing that Centro Presente has unfairly lumped her with those who break the law. "We don't do complicated cases, and that's why I continue to have many clients after 15 years in business. A new law, I think, would prevent abuse."

For Jaime Cardona, and an unknown number of immigrants like him, nothing can undo the mishandling of his case. He will give up his job at a New Balance shoe factory and leave his wife and children.

Despite a bleak future, he hopes to come back. But to do it legally, could take 10 years.

"It shouldn't have happened this way," he said. "There should be a way for me to stay."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Hitchhiking at 97

2005-05-30T22:00:00.000-07:00

Cash-Strapped Seniors Scrimp While Holding Valuable Property

By David Abel
Globe Staff
8/03/2001

Arnold Stephens could sell his Back Bay home and stash a half-million dollars in the bank. Instead, the 97-year-old man eats in soup kitchens and hitchhikes to get around.

Nearly every day, Stephens shuffles out of his Beacon Street brownstone in a rumpled suit, sticks out his thumb, and asks strangers to drive him to the T, the Prudential Center, or one of the churches he frequents for free meals.

With no savings and only about $14,000 a year from his pension and Social Security, Stephens is one of about 2,100 elderly homeowners in Boston - and nearly 24,000 in Massachusetts - who find themselves sitting on property so valuable they need help just to pay the tax.

In 1974, Stephens bought his two-bedroom condominium for $30,000, and since then the real-estate market has boomed. The city now assesses it at $359,000, though realtors say it could fetch far more in today's market.

"People are crazy about what they're willing to pay for a little apartment - just crazy," says Stephens, whose property taxes have risen to nearly $4,000 a year. "But this is my home. You don't leave your home. Besides, this is the center of the universe. Where else would I want to go?"

Stephens may be an extreme case. But Leo Moss, a coordinator of the city program that provides free home repair services for the elderly, says he sees hundreds of older homeowners struggle to pay soaring taxes and rising utility bills.

"A lot of these people would rather die than move," he says. "People get attached to their surroundings. Their homes are part of their lives."

Many of the homeowners Moss helps are like Mable Huggins, a 71-year-old widow living on an income that doesn't cover her mortgage and medical bills. The owner of a seven-bedroom house in Dorchester for the last 22 years, Huggins says her taxes have jumped more than $200 a month in the past few years.

"I'm sick, I'm struggling, but I won't ever move," she says. "Rents are even higher than my mortgage."

To keep people like Huggins and Stephens from being forced out of their homes, the state allows low-income seniors to deduct a portion of their property taxes. In Boston, homeowners over age 70 are eligible if their income falls below $16,350. Stephens has $1,500 of his taxes waived. (State and federal grants cover the city's lost tax revenue.)

Although property values, and taxes, have been rising for a decade, officials say the number of people in Massachusetts seeking deductions has declined by more than 7,000 since 1995, as fewer elderly people live in poverty.

Another state program allows older, low-income homeowners to defer nearly all their property taxes until they sell or die. But few have taken to the program. In Boston, only 10 people have signed up, city officials say.

"It's really a shame," says Ellen Docharty, director of the city's Taxpayer Referral and Assistance Center. "There are a lot of people like Mr. Stephens who would qualify for these programs. They just don't know about it."

Few of them, however, are as land-rich and pocketbook-poor as Stephens. His condo is worth about twice as much as the average home owned by a recipient of the tax waiver.

"Unequivocally, this is a rare case," says Tim Marsh, a broker who publishes Real Estate Insider, a newsletter about market values and trends in Boston. "With the rise in the market, few people hold onto their condos for more than a few years. Mr. Stephens could do very well if he sold."

But he has no plans to move.

He has lived in his brownstone at Beacon and Exeter streets since 1958. When their building was divided into condos in the 1970s, he and his wife bought a four-room unit on the first floor. She died in 1980 and today he shares the home with Janna Bruins, a 68-year-old retired lab technician who has rented a room from Stephens since 1958. Stephens never had children; his only relatives are three nephews.

Inside the condo, the paint is peeling, but he strolls out every day beneath the word "Royal" embroidered on the burgundy awning outside the building. Some of his neighbors are paying down mortgages worth more than a million dollars, but Stephens finished paying his years ago.

Molded by the Depression, the retired Raytheon machinist takes pride in his thrift in the neighborhood of the $9 martini.

"You have to go through the Depression, I think, to understand the meaning of the dollar," he says. "I squeezed the nickel so hard I could make the Indian ride the buffalo on the other side of the coin."

Why would a man his age hitchhike? Stephens laughs: "I don't drive," he says. "A man has to get around. People are nice. They're all my friends."

Over the years, Stephens says, he has grown to enjoy eating at soup kitchens. "Fellas like me don't feel like cooking - and some of us wouldn't eat otherwise," he says. "It's also free."

He calls the Friday-night supper at the Arlington Street Church "The best restaurant in town."

Digging in recently to a meal of soup, chicken salad, potato chips, and chocolate-chip cookies, Stephens swigs a cup of punch and says, "It's just excellent. I don't know what it is, but it is good."

With no plans to convert his valuable asset into a lifetime of restaurant meals, he says he'll keep pinching pennies and going to the soup kitchen. Moving, he says, would be too much trouble. Besides, he adds, there isn't enough affordable housing - and he loves the Back Bay.

Climbing the church steps to head to his home a few blocks from upscale eateries like the Capital Grille and the Armani Cafe, Stephens stops and points to his plastic bag filled with leftovers.

"The food is good, the feelings are good, it's quiet, there's a prayer," he says. "What else could a guy ask for?"

David Abel can be reached by e-mail at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Cracking Down on Pawnshops

2005-05-30T21:59:00.000-07:00

State Seeks to Bring Down Illegally High Interest Rates

By David Abel
Globe Staff
5/01/2003

FALL RIVER - The switchblade didn't sell, so the welfare recipient took off two gold rings her daughter had given her and pawned them for a $10 loan. When an unemployed carpenter got only $40 for a sack of old coins his great-grandfather collected in World War I, he hocked his diamond wedding band for $30. And after a cash-short telemarketer bounced a check, it was time to bring in his DVD player.

"I wouldn't say this is a good deal, but it helps in a bind," said Chris Nygren, 31, who got a $45 loan for his DVD player and 13 of his favorite movies. Like the others, the loan comes with a stiff interest rate: 10 percent a month.

Though scores of similar transactions occur nearly every day here at New England Pawnbrokers and the city's other pawnshops, state officials say they're illegal and must stop.

The high-interest loans pawnshops charge are nothing new, but after years of ignoring a century-old law requiring the Massachusetts Division of Banks to approve interest rates in every city and town, the state has launched a crackdown.

Adding pressure on the state's pawnshops, Representative John F. Quinn, a Dartmouth Democrat and cochairman of the Legislature's Joint Banks and Banking Committee, recently proposed a bill that would set significant limits on the interest they can charge and raise fines for those violating the law.

"It's egregious what some of these pawnshops are charging some of the most desperate people," said Quinn, who took action after learning that in February, Fall River's City Council voted to permit local pawnbrokers to continue charging 120 percent interest a year - the highest rate of any municipality in the state. Quinn's bill would cap interest rates at 36 percent per year.

In March, officials at the Division of Banks sent a letter to Fall River, telling the mayor and council members that their city's pawnshops would be breaking the law if they continued charging any interest. They can't resume making loans, officials said, until there's a public hearing and the banking commissioner rules on the city's new interest rates, a process that could take months.

The pawnshops' reaction? Ignore the state.

"They're trying to put us out of business," said Paul Wilner, who opened New England Pawnbrokers less than a year ago and says his South Main Street shop has yet to turn a profit. "We have to earn a living."

Wilner, who runs his pawnshop with his wife, justifies their interest rates by comparing their revenue with those in larger cities such as Boston, where similar shops thrive just charging 3 percent a month in interest. The shops in larger cities have more foot traffic. With only 90,000 people in Fall River, compared with seven times that in Boston, he says the higher interest rates are needed to make ends meet.

The couple, who earn most of their money making loans, say they take in about $28,000 in loans a month. However, they say their profit is only about $3,800, roughly a quarter of which comes from their $5 initial loan fees for jewelry. They also make money from selling all the things - televisions, Barbie dolls, guitars, family heirlooms - their customers give up by defaulting on their loans.

After they pay $1,000 a month in rent for their small, cramped shop, and their many other expenses - including police confiscation of stolen items - the Wilners insist their overall take-home isn't much, and anything but usurious. "We're not going to get rich here," said Linda Wilner, adding she often cuts her clients some slack and believes she provides a crucial service to those desperately in need of cash. "We don't have any vacations planned to Hawaii."

City officials, however, are starting to rethink their support for the 120 percent annual interest rate - which pawnbrokers in Fall River and other unregulated municipalities have charged for years.

"I thought the 10 percent [interest] was for a year, not for a month," said Joseph Camara, the City Council's president, adding he expects council members will revisit the issue. "I don't think we were hoodwinked, but maybe I didn't pay as much attention as I should have. I think 10 percent a month is a little steep."

After long ignoring the 1902 law regulating pawnshops, state officials rediscovered it three years ago when commissioners at the Division of Banks learned a Revere pawnbroker had been illegally taking car titles as collateral for loans.

After that, commissioners surveyed the state's 351 towns and cities to compare interest rates. They found most had no regulations. Since then, they've told all those municipalities with pawnshops that they must set a local interest rate and then have it approved by the Division of Banks.

So far, commissioners have approved interest rates for only six municipalities - Revere, Lawrence, and Somerset at 36 percent a year, Quincy at 24 percent, Chicopee at 18 percent, and Cambridge at 13 percent. At least seven other communities are still waiting for approval, including Fall River and Boston, which is seeking to increase its rate to 60 percent a year.

But until commissioners approve their municipality's interest rates, the pawnshops are operating illegally, said David Cotney, senior deputy commissioner at the Division of Banks. "People do stuff outside the law; I'm not blind to that," Cotney said. "But we're trying to make people comply with the law. We've made our decision clear: Until interest rates have been approved, charging interest is not authorized."

The state's new interest in regulating pawnshops has peeved Ed Bean, chairman of the board of Massachusetts Pawnbrokers Association. Compared with other states such as Florida and Texas - which he says allow their pawnshops to charge as much as 20 percent interest a month - Massachusetts already has some of the lowest rates.

If the Legislature votes to set a cap on interest rates at 3 percent a month, he expects about half of the state's 57 pawnshops to close.

"Why should we have the lowest interest rates in America?" Bean said. "What the commissioners are doing is wrong - and it will hurt the people they're trying to protect. When they need money, they'll have to sell their things instead of loaning them."

At New England Pawnbrokers, where two large German shepherds keep a close watch on the customers, Joy Covel seemed nonplussed when the shop's appraiser wouldn't buy her switchblade, necklaces, or bracelets. So when the 44-year-old pawned the gold rings her daughter gave her 15 years ago, she said she would use the $10 loan to buy milk and cigarettes. "I like having money in my pocket," she said.

If Covel was satisfied by her deal - in a month, she'll have to pay the pawnshop $16, the 10 percent interest plus the $5 base fee for pawning jewelry - Eddy, the 33-year-old unemployed carpenter, was less than enthusiastic.

Having pawned his wedding band and sold his great-grandfather's collection of century-old coins, the father of three grumbled about not having "some hidden treasure" that would have padded his wallet a bit more.

"Do I think this was a fair deal? Definitely not," said Eddy, who would only give his first name. "But what else can I do?"

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Slashing Detox

2005-05-30T21:56:00.000-07:00

BUDGET CUTS FORCE THOSE ADDICTED TO WAIT FOR SPACE, OR GO WITHOUT

By David Abel
Globe Staff
4/28/2003

When all else fails, they come to Ludy Young. They come confessing their crimes, they come and kneel before her to pray or beg for help. One woman, nearing withdrawal, recently burst into tears, pleading with her: "Please, please, I need your help. I need a bed."

Increasingly, however, the emergency room counselor whose office is a spare basement room at Boston Medical Center finds she can't help.

"This is the end of the line for a lot of people," Young said. "You know there's nowhere else for them to go, and it makes you feel helpless, like your hands are tied."

Less than a month after the state cut health coverage for 36,000 of its poorest residents and slashed nearly 50 percent of the beds at detox facilities throughout Massachusetts, those suffering the worst addictions to alcohol and drugs already see the difference: It's getting harder for them to sober up.

Before the budget cuts took effect on April 1, the state subsidized 997 beds, which last fiscal year helped some 45,000 patients get sober - at least for a little while. Now, only about 500 beds remain, and by the end of the fiscal year, the number will drop to 420.

"This just hit the streets, so the effects are only now becoming apparent," said Elizabeth Funk, president of the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Corporations of Massachusetts. "But we expect to see an increase in deaths, arrests, domestic violence, child abuse, and emergency room visits."

At Boston Medical, there has been about a 25 percent increase in addicts seeking help at the emergency room.

Across the street, at the Boston Public Health Commission's central intake, social workers used to be able to find a detox bed in about a half-hour; now, it can take as long as a week.

And uninsured addicts say they've been left to compete for the few remaining state-subsidized detox beds.

It took Andrew Schena about two weeks to land a bed at Andrew House, a detox facility on Long Island where, of 30 beds, only five are available to the uninsured. After a year of feeding his addiction to Percocet and OxyContin, and on the verge of getting thrown out of his apartment, the 38-year-old unemployed construction worker decided it was time to clean up.

But like a growing number of addicts who lost their Medicaid benefits this month, Schena found it wasn't as easy as checking himself into the closest hospital. Lacking insurance, he went to Room 5 at BMC, central intake, and they couldn't help. He spent the next week-and-a-half waking early and calling around to local detoxes, asking if they had a bed.

When he finally landed one after two weeks, he said: "It was like winning the lottery."

Things could get worse next year.

A plan recently proposed by the House would cut 10 percent of the $37 million the state now provides for substance-abuse programs.

A provision in the House proposal would also forbid the state from awarding contracts to any social services agency that provides methadone treatment, a move that would end aid to nearly all the state's remaining detoxes.

The reason for the cuts, House officials say, is the state's looming deficit of $3 billion. Part of a raft of other cuts, they include the curtailing of everything from education programs to prescription drugs for the elderly.

"Nobody takes pride in these cuts, but the state is facing a historic decline in revenue," said Charlie Rasmussen, a spokesman for House Speaker Thomas M. Finneran. "Tough cuts had to be made."

But with a growing number of people using heroin and some 15,000 state residents receiving methadone, public health officials warned that if the House's proposal becomes law, it would be catastrophic and ultimately exacerbate the budget problems.

"This is huge," said Deborah Klein Walker, associate commissioner of the state Department of Public Health. "The problems now would get much worse."

To a group of men on the streets near Downtown Crossing, any potential pain pales compared with their current woes. Several said they're already getting unwelcome messages from the detoxes they've relied on for years.

The message Jeff Oldfield got during one recent effort to sober up: Don't come back. Two visits a year, he was told, would be the limit.

And rather than staying five to seven days, the detox told the 44-year-old homeless alcoholic he could stay at most three days, to make room for other uninsured addicts.

"I'm one of the people you could blame for all these problems," said Oldfield, adding that he's been to detox about 200 times. "But this is a disease. You relapse and relapse and relapse. It's hard to beat this."

What will he and others do?

Oldfield's friend William Gaskell said that after a while, "Jail is the only option."

Still, some will try to beat the odds and sober up on their own. Others, when their money runs out, will steal to feed their addictions. And some will keep trying for the few detox beds remaining.

The rest are likely to end up seeing Ludy Young or emergency room counselors at other hospitals.

They are coming in droves now, some already beginning the sweating, vomiting, and delirium of withdrawal.

With so few detox beds available, Young's office has started a waiting list. And with most of the beds now taken every night, she and her colleagues are looking to facilities across the state. Recently, a bed became available in Brockton, so the hospital sent the patient there in a cab, picking up the tab.

"It's very frustrating," Young said. "You want to help, but sometimes there's nothing you can do."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Homes Without Toilets

2005-05-30T21:53:00.000-07:00

IN BOSTON, 2,500 SAY THEY LACK PLUMBING

By David Abel
Globe Staff
7/08/2002

The elderly Italian immigrants aren't eager to complain. For decades, they and at least a few other poor, non-English-speaking families in the North End have resigned themselves to taking the bad with the good.

The landlord of their century-old brick building is not raising rents, allowing them to live in one of the most expensive parts of the city. But she also is not investing in renovations, leaving them in an apartment where cleanliness means a sponge bath in the kitchen sink or a walk to the nearest pool house, and the toilet - shared with neighbors - is in a small closet in the hall.

"It's crazy people are still living in these illegal, primitive apartments, but it's a catch-22," said Giovanna Veitch, the family's social worker who runs a neighborhood outreach program for Action for Boston Community Development, a citywide antipoverty agency. "If they speak up, they fear they'll be evicted or the landlord will raise rents."

Despite ever-soaring real estate prices and gentrification that spruced up some of the shabbiest parts of Boston, more than 2,500 city residents reported living in homes without complete indoor plumbing, according to the most recent data from the 2000 Census.

Although that reflects just over 1 percent of the nearly 240,000 homes in the city, Boston ranks fifth, among the 50 largest cities in the United States, in the percentage of homes lacking sufficient plumbing.

News that people like the Italian immigrants, who asked to remain anonymous, live in such antiquated homes - which violate city codes - has perplexed housing officials.

"If some are still living like this, I would say it's very rare - much lower than what the census has reported," said Robert W. Consalvo, director of research at the Boston Redevelopment Authority.

One theory, he and others suggest, is that many of those who said they live without plumbing misunderstood the question. It asked: "Do you have COMPLETE plumbing facilities in this house, apartment, or mobile home; that is, 1) hot and cold piped water, 2) a flush toilet, and 3) a bathtub or shower?"

Tony Johnston, for example, said he misunderstood the question.

Like some 2,000 people living in one of the city's dwindling number of rooming houses - low-rent apartment buildings - the 43-year-old clothing-store manager has a sink but no shower, bath, or toilet in his unit. There is, however, a bathroom on his floor, which he shares with other residents in the building in Brighton.

"It seems to me a lot of people, probably many of those in rooming houses, got confused," said Mark Winkeller, executive director of Caritas Communities, a nonprofit, affordable housing company that owns several rooming houses in the city, including the one on Commonwealth Avenue where Johnston lives.

If there was one place in Boston where housing officials speculated others might be living without a full complement of plumbing it was on a 10-acre lot at the edge of the city near Dedham, the city's only trailer park.

Yet a visit to the Boston Trailer Park, with more than 100 mobile homes, proved that all the trailers not only have toilets, showers, and hot and cold water but everything from couches to washing machines to newly built decks.

"We have all the modern conveniences here," said Arthur C. Tanck, president of the trailer park's tenants association.

For some in the city, it's hard to believe anyone could still be living without private showers or toilets, even in the North End, which has some of the city's oldest buildings.

"It's been at least 20 years since I heard of someone living here without indoor plumbing," said Joanne Prevost Anzalone, president of Anzalone Realty, the largest real estate company in the North End. "I've been probably in every building in the North End. I just can't believe there are any apartments left without toilets."

While more people in Boston reported living without plumbing than anywhere else in New England, the percentage was higher in 11 other cities and towns, ranging from 4.4 percent of the residents in Lawrence to 1.2 percent of the population in Worcester, the census figures showed.

Nationally, the number of houses without plumbing dropped to about 670,000, to 0.6 percent, from about 1.1 million a decade ago. In 1940, when the Census Bureau began keeping plumbing records, about half of all homes lacked plumbing. Today, San Francisco, with 2 percent, leads major cities with homes without complete plumbing.

As for Boston, which ranks behind Miami, New York City, and Los Angeles, and is statistically equal to Oakland, Detroit, and Chicago, city officials and advocates doubt the numbers.

"It's against the law," said Lisa Timberlake, a spokeswoman for the Boston Inspectional Services Department, which monitors code violations. "We would have the unit condemned. It must have been a misunderstanding."

Jay Rose, manager of the housing unit at Greater Boston Legal Services, said: "It's astounding to me if these numbers are true, but I find them hard to believe. I thought we would have gotten way past that by now."

Unfortunately, however, the threat of losing an apartment is enough to keep some tenants quiet.

Veitch, the social worker, said that at least six of her clients still live in North End apartments without showers or toilets. Rather than complaining to the city, which could condemn the buildings, she's trying to persuade the landlords to renovate the timeworn apartments.

But because the investments would take tens of thousands of dollars, and the rents her clients pay are now less than half what they would pay at the market rate, she isn't optimistic they will take action any time soon.

"It's better to be in an apartment without a bathroom than on the streets," she said. "But people really shouldn't have to live like this anymore."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Island of Calm

2005-05-30T21:51:00.000-07:00

Incomes low, contentment high

By David Abel
Globe Staff
9/02/2002

GOSNOLD - When not debating budget issues as one of this small town's three selectmen, Kris Lombard is stocking her general store, serving as a librarian or teacher at the one-room schoolhouse, maintaining neighbors' homes, or checking on her husband, Asa, the town's harbormaster and waste department manager.

With few fires to tend to, Seth Garfield, chief of the town's volunteer fire department and chairman of the harbor committee, tends to his oyster farm, lawn-mowing business, and catering clients. When he can, he goes scuba diving to earn a few dollars from a local marine towing company.

And because being secretary for the town doesn't pay enough, Sara Smith also pumps gas at the fuel dock, cleans houses, and collects the mooring fees from visiting boaters.

"A lot of people do a lot of different jobs here - it's the only way to survive and maintain our lifestyle," Smith said.

With the lighthouse atop the rocky cliffs of Gay Head in view over on Martha's Vineyard, beach plums and blackberry bushes lining pristine beaches, and old cedar-shingle homes rising from a well-manicured hill on the most westward of the Elizabeth Islands, it's hard to tell that this town ranks as the poorest community in all of Massachusetts.

But on the 16 islands that make up the town of Gosnold, where many longtime residents wear multiple hats to make ends meet, few were surprised to learn the 2000 Census ranked their town's median income - $22,344 - below all others in the state.

Of course, with only 39 households surveyed, many here were quick to note that the unflattering statistic didn't reflect the real money in this town, which for decades has been the summer home of the Forbes family and other magnates.

Still, this isn't a wealthy community - and that's just the way the regulars like it. Long resistant to change, the scores who live here through winter and the hundreds who come every summer look across the Sound at the Vineyard and feel they're seeing their poorer cousin, an island overrun by tourists and drowning in commercialism.

On Cuttyhunk, the island with the largest year-round population and the only one open to the public, Bruce Borges says he's little different from many others who have lived here for years - a family man who likes to work, doesn't covet money or possessions, and enjoys the solitude of living off the mainland. The 65-year-old lobsterman and former town selectman is content rising before dawn and spending seven days a week, often 13 hours a day, pulling up hundreds of traps around the island.

"You'd be surprised how little you need to live on when you don't have the malls, the cars, and the rest of it," he said. "We like it that way."

Though there is an increasing number of visitors, a few thousand every summer now, locals are doing little to promote tourism. In fact, many residents shun publicity and would rather dissuade tourists from visiting Cuttyhunk, one of the largest of the Elizabeth Islands. Some islands in the chain are so small no one lives on them.

There are few, if any, cars, and residents like to keep the mostly dirt roads clear for their golf carts and for roving pets like Henry, the affable basset hound who idles by the harbor and serves as the town's unofficial sentinel.

"We want to keep this an unspoiled island," says Carolyn Powers, curator of the Cuttyhunk Historical Society. "We have very little resources, and there's only so far we can stretch our drinking water, electrical power, and marina space."

Because of a fear of overcrowding, the sleepy 2 1/2-mile-long island, long known for some of the world's best striped-bass fishing, has also done little to cash in on the 400th anniversary of the town's "discovery." The 1602 demarcation by British explorer Bartholomew Gosnold will be marked only by a low-key lecture series.

Tourism has occasionally become an issue of controversy. Although property taxes are very low compared with most towns - $1.99 for $1,000 of assessed value - a rise in the number of boaters could reduce them. Mooring fees already make up a quarter of the town's $1 million budget. But a recent decision to build a public bathroom by the docks rankled some residents.

The desire to discourage visitors partly explains why Gosnold remains a dry town and has no restaurants, movie theaters, or golf courses. The nightlife mainly consists of potlucks, bonfires, and the annual talent show at the church. And because the town is so tightly knit, local officials say they can't remember the last arrest. Complaints to the town's two police officers are usually for lost eyeglasses or dog bites.

The aversion to tourism has long been a dilemma for those like Rick Hopps, 29, who has been coming to visit the island his whole life. The captain and son of the owner of Alert II, the only ferry that connects the island with the mainland, said: "There's a fine line between annoying people and trying to fill your boat. People live here because they want to get away from it all. The consensus here is that they like it when the tourists go away."

To finance their quiet lives on Cuttyhunk, 14 miles off the coast of New Bedford, many here try to earn enough in the summer to carry them through the year.

Don Lynch, another selectman, makes most of his income in June, July, and August towing disabled boats. In the winter, when the work is available, he helps neighbors with work on their homes.

"It's a tight squeeze," he said, "but it's worth it. We can sit here and watch the sunset and sunrise and that's worth all the money in the world."

Tessa Olsen, Gosnold's town clerk, cleans homes, cooks for families, looks after houses of summer residents during the winter, and produces shoulder bags to sell in her mother's small gift shop, one of only two on Cuttyhunk.

"We get by," she said. "Everyone here has a roof over their heads and there's no feeling of being in the projects. But people have to work to make a living."

Last year, Chuck and Dawn Vogt, who have summered here for decades, were struggling as they tried to keep the only restaurant in town open. But the couple couldn't cover their expenses. Now, instead, they maintain a small food stand they set up near the docks and do odd jobs, even on the mainland.

"We'll never get rich doing this, but this is the good life for us," Chuck Vogt says. "When you evaluate your life, you realize you don't need much. It's the simple things that matter."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Taking Advantage of Free Care

2005-05-30T21:48:00.000-07:00

'I Would Really Like to be Able to Walk'
Free Care for Needy Foreigners Clash With Reality of Struggling Health System

By David Abel and Alice Dembner
Globe Staff
9/26/2002

Smiling shyly, the paraplegic 11-year-old boy shows how he uses his thick, calloused hands to move around, enabling him to earn about a dollar a day shining shoes back home in Honduras. He has come to Boston for an operation on his legs, he says, "so I can walk to school."

After six months here seeking surgery and prosthetics, with the backing of the persistent pastor of a Jamaica Plain church, Noel Ramirez has learned how to speak and smile to win doctors over.

Over the past decade, using videos or escorting sick children like Ramirez, Rubenia Bomatay has made emotional appeals to Boston-area hospitals that have secured hundreds of thousands of dollars in free treatment for at least a dozen poor patients her church has flown up from Latin America.

"I know it well that there isn't money, that we need insurance, and that the state has no requirement to pay for these operations," she says. "I just ask God that he will help him. I know, legally, that the hospital doesn't have to do anything. But they do often, and we are very thankful for that."

Local hospitals provide hundreds of millions of dollars worth of free care annually to needy patients, and some have programs to treat groups of foreign patients from medical trouble spots. And the hospitals direct most free care to US residents, especially at a time when budget cuts are slashing social services.

Still, as Bomatay has found, few are willing to turn away a desperate foreign patient on their doorstep. The 47-year-old pastor has made an art out of obtaining free care for patients, ranging from open heart surgery and the removal of cancerous tumors at major hospitals to free medicine at health clinics.

Though doctors and health care advocates say Bomatay's tactics are unusual, some worry that - however well-intentioned her efforts - her success may come at the expense of US patients in an overburdened system.

"I think it's a heroic thing to bring families here who are disadvantaged," says Rob Restuccia, executive director of Health Care for All, an advocacy group. "But the fact of the matter is that we can't sustain it, especially with 50,000 residents being thrown off Medicaid. We're in a health care crisis and we have to be careful where our dollars go."

It didn't take long for Bomatay to figure out how the system could work for impoverished visitors.

Shortly after moving to Boston from Honduras in 1994, her blood pressure began to rise and one of her children, who had become a US citizen, took her to Boston Medical Center. She stared in awe at the technology and at the contrast with hospitals in Honduras. "It gave me a lot of sadness for my country," she says.

Then the bill came. But to her surprise, the doctors told her she shouldn't worry. They had ways to cover the expense for patients without insurance or residency. The free care and impressive service gave her an idea: "It made me realize that I had to help my people, those who really needed the help," she says.

But things haven't always gone so smoothly. Some of the patients her church has brought to Boston have spent months seeking free care. Martiza Soto, a 28-year-old Honduran who spent eight months here seeking treatment for mouth cancer, returned home without the needed operation - and eventually died.

For Ramirez and his mother, Ursolina, it's been a long wait since they arrived in March with tickets and visas obtained through Bomatay's church, La Iglesia Reformada Emanuel in Jamaica Plain. Ursolina left six other children with relatives at their cramped home in Teopacenti, a small town in southern Honduras.

Soon after arriving, Noel saw Dr. Michael J. Goldberg, a pediatric orthopedist and chairman of orthopedics at Tufts-New England Medical Center, who agreed to waive his fees for the evaluation. Goldberg found Ramirez was missing a bone in each leg and needs amputation of his deformed bones and feet to fit prosthetic legs. Although Goldberg was willing to do free surgery, the hospital rejected the boy's application for free care and referred him to the Shriners, whose mission is to provide free care to children.

"On occasion, the empathy of the physician and the business reality of the health system are not in synch," Goldberg says. The operation and prosthetics would cost tens of thousands of dollars.

At Children's Hospital, doctors said they were concerned about making the boy's condition worse in the long run. "He needs a plan for the rest of his life," said Dr. James Kasser. "He'll wear out the prosthetics every few years or he'll grow out of them. Then he might be worse off."

Ramirez took the rejections hard. "The boy was crying every day and he thought nobody wanted him," says his mother, who is staying with Noel at Bomatay's home in Dorchester.

But Bomatay's persistence paid off this week on at least one front: Doctors at Boston Medical Center performed another much-needed operation on the boy, freeing an undescended testicle.

BMC, which provides the most free care in the area - $226 million in the last fiscal year - rarely turns away patients in need of treatment, especially children. "Our job, as we see it, is to care for children who come to see us," says Dr. Barry Zuckerman, chairman of BMC's pediatrics department.

The medical center put his request for leg surgery on hold while the Shriners Hospital in Springfield considered Ramirez's case. That hospital specializes in orthopedics, treats about 120 foreign children a year, and has an affiliate in Mexico City.

In the end, it's likely the Shriners will treat the boy, says hospital administrator Mark Niederpruem, but the decision rests with its doctors.

While he waits, Ramirez spends most of his time watching television and playing with Bomatay's younger children, picking up a few sayings in English.

But most of all now, he dreams about returning home as a new boy, taller and more mobile.

"I would really like to be able to walk," he says. "It would make it easier for me to help my mom."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

The Invisible Man

2005-05-30T21:45:00.000-07:00

Federal Figures on Unemployment Do Not Include The 'Discouraged'

By David Abel
Globe Staff
8/21/2003

Nearly a year ago, Brian Lupaczyk lost his job after nine years of earning a six-figure salary. Last week, he exhausted his unemployment benefits. Now, depressed about his fruitless search for work, he grumbles: "If I applied for a job at Home Depot, I'm not sure they'd be interested."

Still, the federal government doesn't consider him unemployed.

Lupaczyk, a 48-year-old father of a college junior who shoulders a hefty mortgage for his four-bedroom home in Franklin, is one of a growing number of Americans whom the federal government calls "discouraged workers," or those who haven't looked for work in at least a month.

Even as the economy shows signs of new life, the number of discouraged workers has nearly doubled to half a million since 2000 - helping to account for a drop in the nation's unemployment rate in July. If the government had added Lupaczyk and other discouraged workers to the total, the unemployment rate would have risen to 6.5 percent, instead of fallen to 6.2 percent.

"Typically, in a weakened economy, we see college graduates trade unemployment for underemployment," said Paul Harrington, associate director of the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University. "But when a lot of people bump down - and some refuse to - people end up getting bumped out of the economy."

For Lupaczyk, in a few weeks a job at Home Depot may no longer be a wistful joke; it may be a necessity.

In October, when he lost his $125,000-a-year job as a project manager at Fidelity Investments, he thought that with his years of experience and many contacts in the field, it wouldn't take long to find a similar job.

His first volley of resumes landed him two interviews. But the good vibes didn't last. Because of the slow economy, both companies eliminated the positions.

Still, with steady unemployment checks and a few months' worth of severance pay, he had a cushion, and he kept at it - up early every day and at his desk, often for 10 hours straight, he would scroll through websites, posting queries on some and finding names on others.

In a typical day, he said, he would send out 10 resumes and make 10 calls.

But the months went by and nothing happened.

"This is the first time I'm out of a job since I was 8, when I had a paper route," he said. "I kept thinking the economy would get better, and it just hasn't. Talk about discouraging."

Of about 150,000 jobs cut in Massachusetts since the start of 2001, nearly half were technology-related positions like the one Lupaczyk lost, according to the state Division of Employment and Training. In the same time, twice as many state residents - now about 85,000 people - have resorted to "involuntarily part-time" work, often giving up professional jobs for service ones at places like Home Depot.

The falloff in jobs has translated into a longer time on unemployment. Between 2000 and 2002, the average number of weeks the state's jobless spent collecting unemployment benefits nearly doubled to 18 weeks, according to the Center for Labor Market Studies. And last year, 31,000 more people left Massachusetts than moved here, the highest level since the recession of the early 1990s.

By the start of summer, with most hiring managers on vacation and the competition for the few available jobs daunting, Lupaczyk had all but given up on finding a job. Over the past few months, he and his wife, who earns a small income as a hairdresser, have been struggling to meet their monthly expenses of roughly $4,000, which include mortgage payments, car loans, food, gas, insurance, and medical expenses.

Aware of his tight budget - the couple now lives off roughly $15,000 in savings, a sum that won't last long - Lupaczyk's former wife has temporarily taken over paying for their son's college education, and he and his current wife have all but abandoned their social lives. Since October, they haven't been to the movies, taken a vacation, or dined at a restaurant. They've gone from aggressively paying down their loans to paying the bare minimums.

"This can be a very depressing lifestyle," Lupaczyk said.

Others are worse off.

The category of discouraged workers - those who have not actively sought a job in the four weeks preceding the government's monthly survey - is just a subset of a larger number of jobless workers who aren't counted in the nation's unemployment figures. The larger category, called "marginally attached" workers, last month included three times as many people, or nearly 1.6 million potential workers who haven't given up looking for work but cite reasons ranging from a lack of child care to transportation problems for their lack of success in landing a job.

And among the 8,000 discouraged workers in Massachusetts, there are those such as Bill Masson, who was so depressed after months without work that he was driven to taking antidepressants to relieve his anxiety. The 60-year-old from Littleton, a former six-figure-salary employee of a technology company, said he has "burned out" his network of contacts and given up on all the job-hunting techniques he learned from previous job searches.

"It just got to the point, for my own sanity, I couldn't keep going on," said Masson, who has remortgaged his home to survive and now spends his days working on home improvements. "I was driving myself crazy."

Unemployment has provided Masson with the opportunity to concentrate on self-improvement. In addition to keeping his lawn freshly mown, he has found the time to exercise; since losing his job, he has lost 30 pounds and seen his cholesterol level plunge more than 75 points. He's also had more time to ride his motorcycle.

Of course, the perks of unemployment, he said, don't outweigh the benefits of having a steady income - and a place to go to every workday. Still hopeless about the prospects of finding employment anytime soon - at least not at the level he'd like - he's considering posting an ad in the local newspaper, hoping neighbors might hire him to set up their home computers.

"It's not a living, but who knows, maybe it will become one," Masson said. "It's the only thing that's giving me any hope."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Lure of the Reverse Mortgage

2005-05-30T21:43:00.000-07:00

REVERSE MORTGAGES LURE MANY SENIORS
By David Abel
Globe Staff
8/04/2003

BANGOR - Unwilling to move, but pressed by rising bills and weak retirement portfolios, senior citizens in downeast Maine are leading a national love affair with costly loans called reverse mortgages.

After working for decades to pay off their home mortgages, a record number of seniors today are turning to such loans that allow them to spend down their home's value and put off payments until they move or die.

For some, the loans - available to homeowners 62 or older - improve quality of life, help avoid nursing homes, or keep bill collectors at bay. But with monthly fees and closing costs running thousands more than conventional mortgages, the federal government requires people to talk to specially approved counselors before taking one out.

"I was strapped, and I didn't want to depend on my children," said Dorothy, a Bar Harbor resident who recently took out a loan of $55,000 on the two-story, $250,000 home where she has lived for two decades. Dorothy, like others interviewed, is uncomfortable about resorting to a loan so late in life and asked that her last name not be used. "This is a way for me to maintain my independence."

Interest rates for reverse mortgages - so called because the bank pays the borrower for many years instead of the other way around - are now at a half-century low of 2.6 percent, but they're adjustable monthly, so that number is likely climb. And taking out a reverse mortgage means people like Dorothy, 80, will have less money to leave their children when they die.

Nationally, between September and the end of June, more than 12,000 older homeowners received reverse mortgages - an increase of more than 2,600 from the same period a year earlier, according to the National Reverse Mortgage Lenders Association.

The number of homeowners obtaining such loans jumped in cities around the country, but no more than in the Bangor region, where the percentage of older borrowers rose by 145 percent, according to the association.

"If a senior needs cash, this is often their best option," said Peter Bell, president of the reverse mortgage association. "More people are recognizing that."

Stephen J. Eastman, who sells reverse mortgages in Maine, coastal New Hampshire, and Essex County, Mass., said the seniors he works with say their fixed incomes, rising bills, and slow-growing investments are limiting their lifestyles.

"Their taxes have continued to go up with the value of their home, or their investments - whether they be in the stock market or in CDs - they're just not staying up with the amount of money it costs them to live," he said. He's had clients use reverse mortgages to pay for home health care nurses, prescription drugs, second homes, that special vacation, or just for "enjoying life a little more."

"Some people think reverse mortgages are just for the needy," he said. "For me, my typical customer is in their 70s and usually in pretty good health. . . . They have a very nice home and they just want to have a better quality of life."

Congress sanctioned reverse mortgages in the early 1980s, but the loans didn't really catch on until the past decade.

Some advocates for the elderly worry that brokers eager to earn the lucrative closing costs, which the association says average $8,000 to $10,000, and service fees that can run $35 a month, are pushing seniors into deals not in their best interests.

"With so many people's retirement plans in the dumps, this can be an appealing option, but there are a lot of risks in not understanding their options," said Bronwyn Belling, a reverse mortgage specialist at the AARP Foundation, which assists people 50 and older.

A reverse mortgage doesn't make sense for someone planning to move in a few years because of the expense of the closing costs. And many people don't realize that they can get tax relief from their state or communities to help pay tax bills or federal grants for prescription drugs.

The nonprofit group Homeowner Options for Massachusetts Elders, counsels its clients against all loans, arguing that seniors with lighter debt loads will fare better in the long run. Len Raymond, the group's founder and director, said he's against the idea of taking out reverse mortgages for lifestyle improvements, which he says will leave people with little or no home equity when they really need it.

He's had a few clients, he said, who lost their homes because they took out reverse mortgages to invest in technology stocks during the dot-com boom.

But Raymond, who also helps seniors take out loans, said the nonloan options for senior citizens have dried up in recent years, with government cutbacks and the shrinking economy possibly contributing to the rise in reverse mortgages.

"In the old days, for eight out of every 10 clients, we could find nonloan options," he said. Now, he can do that for only five or six out of 10.

At Bangor's Hammond Street Senior Center, a new meeting place for the growing number of elderly residents - who now account for 16 percent of the metropolitan area's population - few believe that taking out a reverse mortgage is wise, no matter how desperate their finances.

"To me, it's like cashing in all your chips," said Bob Paschal, 73, a widower and retired painter, who describes himself as financially strapped and "very disappointed" with the performance of his retirement account.

Echoing scores of seniors playing cards or chatting with friends at the newly refurbished building downtown, Hiram M. Perry, an 86-year-old former businessman, said: "I wouldn't touch it with a 10-foot pole."

But for nearly every doubter, there's an elderly homeowner curious about the options - and in serious need of cash.

They are couples like Calvin and Barbara Shattuck, of Lyman, who have lost thousands of dollars in mutual funds and have only the value of their house left to sustain them.

They asked Eastman, a broker for Financial Freedom Senior Funding, the nation's largest reverse mortgage company, to come over late last week to talk with them about reverse mortgages. Like many of Eastman's clients, the Shattucks, who've lived in their home on 30 acres for years, don't want to move out just because money is tight.

Barbara Shattuck, 65, said her husband's pension from working as a mailman no longer suffices. Eastman's pitch was convincing.

"We think this will help," she said, after he left. "We hope it will."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Evicting the Mentally Ill

2005-05-30T21:40:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
7/07/2003

When a judge asked one man to name the US president, he responded: "Osama bin Laden." Another judge confronted a defendant so mentally disturbed he had chased neighbors with a samurai sword. Then there was the man whose landlord found him aimlessly walking through traffic beside his building.

Housing court judges have long grappled with how to evict mentally or physically disabled tenants without sentencing them to life on the streets. The law requires the court to find "reasonable accommodation" for the disabled, but because of budget cuts and a shrinking social safety net, an eviction ruling often has meant homelessness.

Now, for the first time, judges are successfully persuading landlords to keep their disabled tenants. Their new weapon: teams of social workers in Boston, Brockton, Springfield, Northampton - and soon, other parts of the state - who make sure the mediation sticks, even if it means they have to drive tenants to court hearings, spoon-feed medication, or clean up cluttered apartments themselves.

"These are difficult cases, where you have to look after vulnerable tenants at the same time as balancing the rights of landlords to preserve their property and protect their other tenants," said Chief Justice Manuel Kyriakakis of the Boston Housing Court. "But now with this new program, for the first time, we have a real ability to render reasonable accommodation."

The Tenancy Preservation Project began a few years ago at the housing court in Springfield, which like the one in Boston hears thousands of eviction cases a year. The program in Boston, which received $162,000 in state and city aid last year, made a modest start in September. Judges asked the program's three social workers to intervene in 24 cases, half of which have been resolved with tenants remaining in their apartments.

The social workers' help ranges from mundane tasks, such as finding a state agency that will provide money for a tenant's medication, to grittier jobs such as clearing rat-dung, cobwebs, and mildew from apartments so grimy that cleaning services won't enter them.

"The main thing we do is try to make sure people don't fall through the cracks," said Ruth Harel, who runs the Boston program and frequently visits tenants to ensure they're taking their medication, paying their rent, and otherwise complying with agreements she has helped negotiate with their landlords. "The overall goal is to prevent homelessness."

There are limits to the program, which court officials plan to spread to Worcester and Lowell this fiscal year. It is voluntary, and some mentally ill defendants deemed competent to stand trial refuse the help. Also, the state aid covers only those disabled tenants in subsidized apartments.

But the program's success has convinced even skeptical landlords. In the beginning, court officials say, many landlords feared the program would favor tenants. Now, lawyers who represent landlords say that many realize a fair compromise can mean not having to bear the cost of evicting someone and finding a new tenant.

When the new system works, the cases look like the compromise reached between Katherine Ross and her landlord in Dorchester. A few months ago, the 80-year-old former nurse, who suffers from arthritis and a heart condition, received an eviction notice. Her landlord said she had too much stuff in the one-bedroom apartment where she has lived for the past 21 years, creating a fire hazard and a maintenance problem. After a judge referred the case to the Tenancy Preservation Project, social workers and the landlord arrived at a solution: Ross could stay if she had the apartment cleaned, put many of her things in storage, and cleared some space by the entrance.

But, no matter how much help social workers offer, some cases can't be solved through compromise. Housing court judges, for example, rarely seek such solutions for disabled tenants found with illegal drugs, those known for violence, or those who refuse to pay their rent, which can disqualify them from subsidized housing.

Then there are the cases of tenants such as Heidi K. Erickson, a.k.a. the Cat Lady, whose squalid Beacon Hill apartment city inspectors condemned after finding dozens of diseased and dead felines there. When her case came before Judge Kyriakakis earlier this year, he referred it to the social workers. But Erickson refused to let them help, he said. She was deemed competent to represent herself, and the judge convened a trial and ordered her to move out.

On a recent day at the courthouse on New Chardon Street, Vickey Barnes was hoping the system would rescue her and her two sons. Her landlord wanted her out, alleging she has broken windows, bored holes in the walls of her Roxbury apartment, and disturbed neighbors by screaming.

The judge referred the case to the social workers, and the landlord's lawyer offered a compromise: If she agreed to eviction, she would have three months to leave. If she fought it and lost in court, she would have to move as soon as the judge ruled against her.

Barnes didn't think it was a fair deal, so she turned it down. The judge set a date for trial this summer. The social workers promised to use the time to press the landlord to find a solution.

"I don't have nowhere else to go," said Barnes, 41. "I hope they help me keep my apartment."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Welfare Dads

2005-05-30T21:37:00.000-07:00

Ranks of Fathers on Welfare Rise

By David Abel
Globe Staff
7/19/2002

DESPITE the chaos of caring for his two girls and a grandson, Mark Foster cuts a lonely figure.

As a single father on welfare, who sleeps on a couch and survives on food stamps, he says he's often greeted with hostility or disdain by social workers, whose clients are usually single mothers, many abused and deserted by men.

Long after gaining custody of his children, he says, incredulous state officials repeatedly harassed him for child support payments and provided public housing to his ex-girlfriend - not to him - even though she was the one who deserted the family. He was also once cut off public aid, he says, when social workers suggested that because he is a man who can work, he should be able to provide for his family.

"There's definitely a feeling of prejudice you get being a single dad on welfare," says Foster, 39, of Worcester, who works odd jobs. "Nobody wants to do nothing for you. And you feel weird, out of place, alone, and like you shouldn't be there every time you go to the welfare office."

As the number of single fathers increases and the percentage of men collecting welfare rises, more men are complaining about bias in a system that has long catered to women, social workers, and researchers in the field say.

Today, more than 3 million of the nation's men are singlefathers, triple the number of two decades ago, and they now represent 16 percent of all single parents. Only a small number of those collect welfare, but as single mothers are increasingly cut off from public aid, the percentage of men is climbing. In Massachusetts, 6 percent of the 47,000 welfare recipients are men, up from 4 percent a decade ago.

As Congress considers putting more welfare recipients to work, able-bodied men like Foster are likely to be among the first pushed into the job market, and perhaps the first to complain of unfair treatment. While only 6 percent of welfare recipients in Massachusetts work, legislation that recently passed the US House is likely to require 70 percent to find jobs.

"The discrimination is a result of many agencies not used to dealing with men," says James Levine, director of the fatherhood project at the Families and Work Institute in New York. "That creates a built-in bias and it's not uncommon to hear about guys having to jump through hoops that women haven't had to."

Like Foster and other single fathers, Lee Hutchins says he has long been treated by social workers as if he were lying.

Now off welfare nearly a decade after gaining custody of his children, the 36-year-old father of three from Springfield says he was constantly told, "You're a man; you should be working."

"Every time I turned around there was some kind of problem," he says. "They said I was working too many hours, I wasn't working enough hours, I have to participate in programs. They even wanted me to leave a part-time job to participate in a job-search program."

Complaints from recipients, male and female, are common.

"I don't know anyone on welfare who particularly relishes the contact with the department," says Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Department of Transitional Assistance, which oversees the state's welfare programs. "I'm certain that both males and females feel victimized and discriminated against, when in fact caseworkers are merely doing their jobs."

But as the number of men winning custody of children slowly rises, largely the result of drug abuse and jail sentences among women, researchers say there's an institutional problem that must be corrected.

Social workers aren't used to dealing with male welfare recipients and often distrust them.

"Men get a really hard time; even women on welfare believe they should be working," says Elizabeth Lion, a spokeswoman for the Doe Fund, a large social service provider for single men in New York. "There's really a stigma and it's usually a bad rap for no reason."

Because there are relatively few men on welfare, about 2,800 in Massachusetts, there has been little research into their complaints.

The prejudice is palpable, some say.

Julio Tirado, a single father of four from Worcester, said he feels like he is failing as a man when he walks into a welfare office.

"There's total prejudice; the women are always asking why I'm there, why I can't take care of my family," says Tirado, 39, whose wife died of cancer. "It makes you feel bad about yourself, kind of a hit to your masculinity."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Reforming Welfare

2005-05-30T21:32:00.000-07:00

Job Mandate Nears For Welfare Rolls

By David Abel
Globe Staff
5/20/2002

Like thousands of welfare recipients throughout the state, Jaime Morrow may look back in a few years and think how easy she has it now.

All the 22-year-old single mother has to worry about today is caring for her 8-month-old daughter and 4-year-old son while keeping up with her studies at Greenfield Community College.

As a consensus emerges in Congress behind the most significant changes in welfare since landmark reforms six years ago, her welfare checks may soon come with strings attached. Morrow and many other mothers like her will probably have to find work.

With only about 6 percent of the state's welfare recipients working - and the Congress expected to require 70 percent of them to join the work force - Morrow and other able-bodied parents with healthy preschoolers are likely to be part of the first group pressed to work.

"For me, it means I might have to choose between work and school," said Morrow, who would have to work 24 hours a week on top of 16 hours of classes to continue receiving welfare. "With the homework and my kids, I don't think I could handle it all."

If legislation approved by the House last week stands, Massachusetts could have more trouble than any other state in the country complying with the new rules. The Commonwealth, which has the nation's most liberal work requirements, would have to radically change its approach to welfare to avoid losing $459 million in federal grants.

And no matter how much the state tries to comply with the new work requirements, skeptics say, the costs of child care, training, and transportation would outweigh the benefits of putting most of the 47,000 welfare recipients to work.

For states to meet the work requirements, the Congressional Budget Office estimates it would cost $35 billion over five years for child care - $11 billion more than currently budgeted.

In the Commonwealth, according to a study by the United Way of Massachusetts Bay, providing child care and training to the 8,400 parents of children ages 2 to 5 would cost about $30 million a year. "It's just not possible," said Donna Haig Friedman, director of the Center for Social Policy at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "There are too many barriers. Wishing them away or mandating they find jobs just won't work."

But officials in the administration of Acting Governor Jane Swift, who have long sought to put more welfare recipients to work, don't buy the doom-and-gloom predictions. Like congressional Republicans, they argue that Democrats made similarly dire prophecies a decade ago, before the first round of changes successfully cut the nation's welfare rolls by more than half, to about 5.3 million.

In Massachusetts, the decline has paralleled the national trend, with the number of welfare recipients falling from 102,993 in 1995 to 46,953 as of the end of last month.

"Whether or not those goals are attainable is questionable at this point, but we'll never know unless we try," said Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Department of Transitional Assistance, which oversees the state's welfare program. "Not having high standards is a disservice to people on welfare."

Opponents say now is a bad time to put pressure on the poor, unlike the last round of welfare changes, which coincided with an economic boom. In the past year, since the downturn took hold, the state's welfare rolls have grown by 12 percent. And with Massachusetts facing the largest budget cuts in a decade, the House last week cut millions of dollars from the welfare department's administrative and support services budget, making it likely that hundreds of staff members will be axed and offices throughout the state will close.

The smaller number of caseworkers and training programs, combined with a backlog of some 17,000 nonwelfare families waiting for a spot in state child care, would make it much more difficult for the state to comply with the proposed welfare rules, both opponents and supporters say.

"I don't see any way to comply with this without a huge investment from the state - and I don't see that happening," said Elizabeth Toolin, coordinator of the Family Economic Initiative, a welfare advocacy group in Boston. "Unless there's a serious change, I think Massachusetts will suffer a financial penalty for not meeting the federal requirements."

Still, the state has time. A waiver would keep the proposed rules from taking effect in Massachusetts until 2005. The federal legislation, which increases the number of hours welfare recipients must work, study, or attend job training from 30 hours to 40 hours a week, doesn't take full effect until 2007.

Moreover, the proposed rules would excuse a significant number of welfare recipients from working, including as many as 38 percent of those in Massachusetts.

Even so, the new rules would boost the number of working welfare recipients from little more than 2,700 today to about 30,000 by 2007.

Supporters cheer such numbers, saying many of the parents with preschoolers are "doing little more than watching `Oprah,' " according to Powers.

In Massachusetts, unlike every other state, parents don't have to work until their children turn 6. Every other state requires parents to work after their children reach 2, except Texas, which sets the limit at 4.

But opponents worry the cost of full-time work will be too high for thousands of mothers like Jaime Morrow, who will grind through low-end jobs instead of breaking the cycle of poverty.

Sandra Umana already has a job, as do nearly 1,000 working welfare recipients with preschoolers. But for the 30-year-old mother from Jamaica Plain, the prospect of being required to work more than the 10 hours she already does is frightening. She has a 4-year-old and is trying to balance being a single mom with attending Bunker Hill Community College. If Congress requires her to work an extra 14 hours while carrying a full load at school, she worries her grades will fall and she won't graduate.

"For me, stopping my education is exactly what would keep me from being self-sufficient," she said. "How is that good for the state?"

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

DISABLED ON WELFARE FACE PRESSURE TO WORK

By David Abel
Globe Staff
6/17/2002

As Congress presses states to put more of their welfare recipients to work, Massachusetts may be forced to change regulations on the largest pool of people now exempt from work requirements: the disabled.

And the state will likely look first at those suffering from the increasingly treatable diseases of depression and anxiety disorders, who make up roughly half of the nearly 14,000 people receiving work exemptions for disabilities, according to those overseeing the state's welfare program.

With only 6 percent of the Commonwealth's welfare recipients now holding jobs, and the proposed rules in Congress requiring 70 percent to work, "The Legislature's going to have to consider it," said Dick Powers, a spokesman for the state's Department of Transitional Assistance.

The possible move has revived a longstanding debate among specialists dealing with low-income people. Some argue it would be either cruel or impractical to force the clinically depressed to work, but others contend it could be therapeutic, a means of evading their isolation at home and infusing their lives with a sense of accomplishment.

Ellie Thillet knows firsthand both sides of the debate.

For years, the 46-year-old single mother of three wrestled with the opposing arguments in her own head. The Springfield resident likes to work, she says, and often has sacrificed her welfare checks to earn more money as everything from a nurse's aide to a real estate agent to a ticket collector at amusement parks.

But years of depression caught up with her two years ago. As feelings of inadequacy, a short temper, and a desire to kill herself built up, she had a nervous breakdown - at work. Since then, she has collected Social Security Income benefits, which have no time limit and no work requirement.

"I would love to work, and I miss it - but I just can't," she said. "I can't be around a lot of people; I just can't deal with them, and I don't think I could handle a job."

The problem, say those who have studied cases like Thillet's, begins with an inadequate intake system. Welfare case managers in Massachusetts and around the country don't ask those seeking welfare whether they suffer from a mental illness - and some don't know they're depressed.

The result is that many of those who suffer from depression, anxiety, or other mental illnesses often end up on welfare without any awareness that they're eligible for the work exemptions. Nationally, while only 1 in every 5 welfare recipients is diagnosed with depression, fully half show symptoms of the condition, according to Mary Clare Lennon, director of social science research at Columbia University's National Center for Children and Poverty.

Putting the depressed to work could succeed, Lennon and others say, but it requires a rigorous medical screening process, as well as the proper treatment, including drugs and therapy, and a support system that gives more job flexibility to those suffering mental illnesses than the general welfare population.

"Having a job is important to most people, regardless of severity of disability," said Lennon, who recently wrote a paper on depression and welfare. "Being engaged in productive activities certainly helps with self esteem, especially for many who suffer from depression - but without support, I don't think it could work."

In Massachusetts, welfare recipients must report their mental illness to be eligible for the work exemption. Then they must present documentation from a doctor about their condition. In all, according to current figures, about 30 percent of people receiving work exemptions are disabled, and half of those are suffering from anxiety or depression.

After filing for the exemption, their cases are reviewed by Disability Evaluation Services at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, which affirms exemptions only if the welfare recipient's depression is "a prolonged emotion that colors the whole psychic life" and includes symptoms such as sleep problems, significant weight changes, or antisocial behavior. Three out of every 10 who claim depression are rejected for the work exemption, said Kristin Johnson, acting director at the UMass center.

As depression is confirmed by asking subjective and hard-to-prove questions - anything from "Do you have feelings of guilt or worthlessness?" to "Do you think about suicide" - some try to cheat the system. But researchers say the numbers are few and don't compare to those who are depressed and unaware of the exemptions.

"People always ask: Aren't these people lying?" said Mary Ellen Colten, director of the Center for Survey Research at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. "The answer is no, they usually aren't. Just because some people run red lights, doesn't mean most people do."

Those doubts, some welfare advocates suggest, fuel misguided reforms - such as requiring the mentally ill to work. Rather than pushing the depressed into work, they say, it would make more sense to offer them training and education programs.

"By putting people with mental disabilities to work, no one can predict with certainly when there will be a crisis - and whether they'll stay at their jobs," said Melanie Malherbe, managing attorney of the welfare-law unit at Greater Boston Legal Services.

For Ellie Thillet, now on a tight regimen of antidepressants and meeting once a week with a therapist, a job wouldn't be a burden. It would be nice, she says, but only if she can overcome her depression.

"I've worked most of my life, and I'd like to work again," she said. "But if I'm always crying, I'm agitated, and I'm feeling down, who would want to hire me?"

STAFF CUTS HALT PROBE OF WELFARE FRAUD CASES

By David Abel
Globe Staff
4/22/2002

The state has stopped investigating all new reports of welfare fraud, with about 1,500 new cases untouched since last month,when Acting Governor Jane Swift drastically cut the number of fraud investigators.

On March 1, looking to offset the state's budget crunch, Swift slashed the number of investigators at the Bureau of Special Investigations from 68 to five, a steep cut on top of the dozens of investigators laid off in recent years. The governor also announced that she intends to reduce the bureau's budget from more than $5 million last year to less than $450,000 next fiscal year.

"It's absolutely nuts," said David Hemenway, a 21-year veteran of the bureau and one of the five remaining investigators. "We can't do our jobs; we don't have enough people. Not only is the state losing the ability to deter fraud, it's losing the revenue we bring in - which is more than it costs the state to pay us."

Now, hundreds of boxes stuffed with files from cases around the state are piling up atop rows of empty desks in the bureau's central office in South Boston. The phones there ring constantly, but no one has time to answer calls. And when several investigators take vacation at the same time, as occurred this week, foiling welfare fraud is practically impossible, staff members say.

Over the past month and a half, instead of staking out families illegally collecting public assistance, Hemenway and his colleagues have driven from Pittsfield to Worcester to Hyannis to collect files from about 25 bureau offices. They have also appeared in courtrooms across the state - as many as 10 times in a week - to prevent judges from dismissing ongoing cases.

The effort hasn't always succeeded. Three weeks ago, when one of the bureau's laid-off investigators failed to show up for a hearing, a judge in Haverhill decided to drop charges against a 27-year-old welfare recipient accused of bilking taxpayers of $51,000. Investigators say they recently reinstated the case.

The lack of investigators has riled prosecutors across the state, who rely on them to prepare and oversee thousands of welfare fraud charges every year, and as many as 1,500 since March. Middlesex District Attorney Martha Coakley sent a letter to Swift last month urging her to reconsider the cuts to the welfare fraud unit.

Without the investigators' help, she wrote: "We will be unable to prosecute those who intentionally defraud the Commonwealth. Many, if not all, of the welfare fraud cases currently pending may not be pursued, resulting in the loss of revenue to the state."

Investigators say the state receives $3 for every $1 it spends on the bureau. Nearly 50 percent of the welfare applications they investigate are rejected, they say. And every year they help convict hundreds of people who commit welfare fraud, earning the state millions of dollars in court-ordered restitution and reimbursements from the federal government.

For officials at the Department of Transitional Assistance, which oversees the welfare program and has seen 14 percent of its own staff cut in the past two months, the growing number of uninvestigated reports of fraud is troubling, especially as the welfare caseload rises with the economic downturn.

"It's just very frustrating right now," said Dick Powers, a department spokesman. "We hope the problem is resolved soon - something has to be done. This situation can't last."

Despite bipartisan calls in the Legislature for restoring many of the investigators' jobs, administration officials justify cutting the bureau's staff and say they have no plans to change their decision.

Because the state's welfare caseload has dropped by more than half since welfare reform laws took effect in the mid-1990s, falling from a peak of 102,993 in 1992 to 46,915 cases last month, the administration argues it needs fewer investigators. The declining caseload, they say, has resulted in a drop in welfare fraud cases by more than 80 percent.

Moreover, Swift officials argue, new technology and increased cooperation among states in recent years has made it more difficult for people to take advantage of the system. In 1997, for example, the state introduced an electronic benefits system that requires nearly all welfare recipients to use a photo ID to receive payments. Officials also dispute the financial benefit of the investigators, saying the majority of the court-ordered restitution is never collected.

"No one is happy about layoffs, but we feel the staffing is now appropriate," said James Borghesani, a Swift spokesman. "With the steep reduction in welfare cases, we think this is the appropriate action in a time of fiscal hardship."

Many lawmakers don't agree and some are organizing an effort to restore the investigators' jobs. They contend that the administration's decision is sending the wrong signal to welfare recipients - and that the cuts could violate the law. To be eligible for federal money, Congress requires states to investigate welfare fraud.

"I think this is just very shortsighted of the administration," said state Senator Therese Murray, a Plymouth Democrat and member of the Ways and Means Committee. "This is the wrong place to cut. We are losing money because the investigators aren't working."

She and others point to the amount of money the federal government reimburses the state each year for successfully prosecuting hundreds of welfare cases. From 1998 through 2001, the government reimbursed the state more than $16 million.

"This is a major mistake, a huge problem," said state Senator Richard Tisei, a Wakefield Republican and assistant minority leader. "It's a major retreat and a step backward. It could shake the very foundations of the entire Welfare Reform Act."

For Bruce Carmichael, one of the investigators laid off, it's also about a paycheck. The 20-year veteran of the Bureau of Special Investigations is collecting unemployment, job hunting, and, as president of the investigators' union, lobbying legislators to override Swift's decision.

He said that in addition to catching hundreds of people with bogus welfare claims, the bureau has helped state and federal authorities catch hundreds of fugitives and bust others for everything from illegally selling food stamps to defrauding state medical assistance programs.

"We are trained investigators," Carmichael said. "You can't replace that kind of knowledge with a computer. The state shouldn't use our success against us."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Janitors Strike in Boston

2005-05-30T20:57:00.000-07:00

Janitors Describe a Limited Life; Benefits as Important as Pay

By David Abel
Globe Staff
09/05/2002

This is Oscar Dominguez's life: The 43-year-old father of three shares an East Boston studio with a friend, works through the night mopping floors and dusting classrooms as a janitor at a local university, and sends any money left over at the end of the month to his family in El Salvador.

The $9.95 an hour he earns is enough to get by, he says, and it certainly dwarfs the $1.50 an hour he earned working in a cement factory before coming to the States, but the cost of living here is high and he believes he and his colleagues deserve more.

Though nervous he may lose his job, Dominguez is one of nearly 11,000 janitors in Greater Boston considering a strike in hopes their activism will land them better salaries and benefits.

"We all come here with the dream that we can save a little and help our families," he said before he and thousands of janitors rallied yesterday on Boston Common. "But that doesn't mean we should have to do without respect and dignity. Is it right, after years working for the same employer, they don't pay for sick days?"

After taxes, Dominguez earns about $1,000 a month. A quarter goes to paying rent and whatever doesn't go to food, clothes, utilities, transportation, and phone bills, he says, he sends to his three children and his parents in El Salvador. Although he gets no sick pay, Dominguez works full-time and, unlike many of his colleagues, receives two weeks of vacation pay a year.

On a typical workday, the soft-spoken Salvadoran spends more than an hour getting to his job, taking the T to the commuter rail and then walking the final half-mile to Brandeis University.

He often arrives a half-hour early for his 10 p.m. shift and punches in as soon as possible. Then, the supervisor distributes the keys and Dominguez works until 6 a.m., doing what janitors do - vacuuming, cleaning toilets, and dusting off desks. In the winter, he often shovels snow.

"It's hard work, and it can be exhausting," said Dominguez, who arrived in Boston three years ago and says he has a visa to work. "The hours are terrible, but it's a good job. I wouldn't want to lose it."

For Jose Guevara, a 35-year-old janitor also from El Salvador, the problem isn't so much the pay, although he says he deserves more. It's that after 15 years in this country working as a janitor, he says he can't find a job with health insurance that covers his three children.

Guevara and his wife, Reina, live in an apartment in Chelsea and he earns about $400 a week, cleaning and doing odd jobs at 2 Center Plaza downtown. Through their jobs, the two have insurance for themselves, but they have to shell out hundreds of dollars a year to cover their children's insurance - money they say they can't afford.

Another grievance the couple and many other janitors have is a lack of job security.

"They can fire us for anything," said Guevara, in between chants of "Huelga! Huelga!" or "Strike! Strike!" at yesterday's rally. "There's nothing we can do. We have no control over our lives, and they abuse their power."

Standing beside him, Guevara's cousin, Joaquin, also a 35-year-old janitor and father of three, said he, too, appreciates the job, but barely makes a living.

Like most of the janitors in the area, Joaquin Guevara works part time, just 20 hours a week, cleaning floors at the Prudential Center. He lives in Lynn and his wife cares for their young children.

Although he works other odd jobs, he says, it's difficult to find work because, like his cousin and most janitors, he speaks only a few words of English.

"As long as we stay united, we won't be defeated," Guevara said. "We believe, at this point, a strike is the only way to improve our lives."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

REPLACEMENT JANITORS FACED WITH HARD CHOICES

By David Abel and Marcella Bombardieri
Globe Staff
10/04/2002

They haven't worked for weeks. Their bills for everything from rent to electricity are mounting. And sometimes they're so hungry, they say, their stomachs hurt.

Cousins Maria Lopez and Mario Melendez don't speak a word of English, although they have lived in East Boston for two years, and they often have to scrounge for work - washing dishes at restaurants, cleaning toilets at hotels, working odd jobs for temp agencies.

Their desperation, they say, has driven them to a nondescript, street-level office in downtown Boston where the Salvadoran cousins sign a few forms, stand for photos, and prepare to do something they don't want to do, but feel compelled to: cross a picket line with scores of others and betray thousands of their fellow Central American immigrants, on strike since early this week.

"They have their rights, and we have our necessities," said Melendez, 34, who's trying to support his wife and two children back in El Salvador.

"I don't have money to eat," said Lopez, 28, who sees the strike by Boston-area janitors as an opportunity. "If I unite with them, are they going to give me money? Are they going to feed me? This is our stomachs demanding our help!"

The dire need for jobs among the area's growing number of impoverished residents, many of them Latino immigrants who see $10 an hour as a good wage, has made it easier for contractors like Unicco Service Co. to fulfill threats to replace the striking janitors.

Even before negotiations broke down nearly three weeks ago between the janitors' union and cleaning companies, the contractors were drafting plans for the looming strike, according to a document prepared by the Maintenance Contractors of New England.

The delay in the start of the strike, which was originally threatened to begin a month ago, gave the contractors time to plan in detail, the memo shows. They hired replacement workers using newspaper advertisements that didn't identify the employers. They drew up a list for the most critical cleaning tasks, including arranging for backup trash removal procedures. They stocked up on as many supplies as possible, arranged for security and special transportation for replacement workers, and they told management personnel to "observe and keep written records of any picketing."

As the last contract was about to expire, according to the document, the contractors planned to hire replacement workers on a temporary basis and use supervisory personnel from other locations to complete the work. "Although within our legal rights," the memo reads, hiring replacement workers permanently would "produce intractable political and public relations problems."

"However, having said this, the above should not be construed as a waiver of the association's right to engage permanent replacements," according to the "strike plan and preparation," a copy of which was provided to the Globe by the Service Employees International Union, the janitors' union.

The lack of a promise for a permanent position drove some aspiring replacement workers away.

When Elvira, a 50-year-old Peruvian immigrant from East Boston, saw the ad in the Boston Herald this week, she thought her prayers for a real job had been answered. But when she arrived at the office at 37 Court St. and learned she would only be offered a temporary position, she said she put down the application and walked out.

"I'm looking for a job that will last," said Elvira, who wouldn't provide her last name.

For others, the part-time nature of the work was appealing.

Jorge Cespedes, 53, moved to the South End from Colombia five years ago and says he has recently had problems making ends meet. He works from 5:30 a.m. until noon five days a week as a janitor at the Meadow Glen Mall in Medford, earning about $1,600 a month and receiving health benefits. But his rent has risen and his costs are now higher than his income.

Living alone and with little understanding of English, he has few options other than janitorial work. After taking an application at Unicco, he said: "All I know is that I need to find another job."

Carrying their lunches, Maria Lopez and Mario Melendez came to Unicco headquarters prepared to be hired on the spot.

But on Wednesday afternoon Unicco was only looking for women. The contractor sent Melendez home and asked him to come back the next day, when perhaps there would be work available.

Lopez, who shares a three-bedroom East Boston apartment with her cousin and three other Salvadorans, had better luck. Unicco officials escorted her and a group of women to a passenger van. She was off for an evening shift of cleaning at an undisclosed building.

When asked if she knew the meaning of the English word "scab" - a replacement worker who crosses a picket line - she said no, but that she understood the idea.

"This is not easy to do, but I need to eat," she said. "Nothing else matters."

BACK TO WORK, FEELING BETRAYED

By David Abel
Globe Staff
10/23/2002

J.C., a 40-year-old father of three, walked off his job cleaning a major downtown Boston office building three weeks ago, and chanted "Justicia for Janitors" on a picket line.

Though he still hopes the union will win him and his colleagues better pay and benefits, the Salvadoran now feels betrayed and set up to fail. Last week, he and five of the 12 janitors who work the day shift with him decided to return to their jobs.

"It's like we were sent to war without guns," says J.C., who as other janitors interviewed wouldn't give his last name and asked that the building where he works not be identified. "How can you fight that way?"

About 2,000 janitors have respected the picket lines since the strike began Sept. 30, according to Local 254 of the Service Employees International Union, which organized the job action. The Maintenance Contractors of New England, about 30 companies employing more than 10,000 janitors in the area, puts the number of striking janitors at less than half that - and they insist more and more janitors are returning to work.

Regardless of the actual figures, there's little doubt that most - if not all - of the nearly 100 buildings hit by the strike are being cleaned. At the high-rise where J.C. mops floors and empties trash cans full time, only four of 12 janitors on the day shift remain on strike.

Like his colleagues, J.C. wasn't eager to cross the picket line. He says he deserves more than the $10.20 he earns per hour, and believes it's unjust that thousands of other local janitors are trapped in part-time jobs without health insurance or sick days.

But just over a week after the strike began, he and his colleagues grew frustrated. The woman from the union who organized their building had disappeared, they say, there were arguments about whether the picket line should be in front of the loading dock or the building's front doors, and a sizable number of replacement workers seemed to be comfortably settling into their jobs.

Then, as the plan for the strike seemed increasingly sketchy and J.C. and others questioned their future on the picket line, the threats started. They would be traitors if they left, other janitors told them. Angry, vilifying messages were left on their answering machines at home.

"They didn't treat us fairly," says Dilcia, a Dominican who works with J.C. "It wasn't right."

Another janitor, who wouldn't give his name, says: "Everything seemed so poorly organized and they were threatening us. It got very ugly."

Union officials say they frown on threats, but they do try to persuade janitors to stick it out.

They say they have dispersed strike pay to more than 1,800 janitors - far more than the 760 contractors say are out on strike - and argue that with nine out of 30 contractors signing interim settlements, morale is high.

"We're confident about our numbers," says Jill Hurst, the union's staff director. "For every janitor who's becoming convinced that the strike's ineffective, I can give you 10 others who feel the other way."

For example: Lourdes Hernandez, 43, a mother of three from the Dominican Republic, has been on strike from the beginning. For 25 hours of work a week cleaning One International Place, she's paid less than $250.

The strike may have lasted longer than she would like, but she says she's patient and resolute. "We're going to win," she says. "We just have to remain united."

On break, in the bowels of their building this week, J.C. and the five janitors who returned with him to work, shake their heads when asked about crossing the picket line and breaking the unity.

"Yes, you feel guilty," one man says, not revealing his name, "but there wasn't unity."

They didn't understand the strategy and no one kept them informed, they say. When the picket lines seemed to thin after the first few days, as did their bank accounts, they say they couldn't take it anymore.

"We felt like we were blind and we were saying, `What are we doing?' " J.C. says. "We want the strike to succeed, but this just didn't seem the way to do it."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

MANY JANITORS RELIEVED, BUT SOME TAKE ISSUE

By David Abel
Globe Staff
10/24/2002

Many were euphoric. Some were unsure how to take the news - they wanted more details. And others were downright peeved.

Despite mixed reaction to the contract their union agreed to, ending a nearly four-week-old strike, all the janitors interviewed last night agreed on two things: They were relieved they would soon be able to return to work and they were happy they wouldn't have to picket in the cold.

About 1,000 janitors crammed into Old West Church near City Hall, cheering from the rafters, standing atop the pews, beating drums, blowing horns, and screaming as Mayor Thomas M. Menino applauded their action.

"Continue to work for social justice," said Menino, barely audible over the jubilant crowd. "You're important to all of us."

As they filed out, some slapped hands while others shook their heads.

For Mynea Cea, a 35-year-old Salvadoran who works part-time at 125 Summer Street, the most important thing the janitors won was "dignity and respect." "We're very happy," she said. "We can return to our jobs with our heads held high. Whatever the details, I have no doubt we won."

Marcos Hernandez, a 25-year-old part-time janitor also from El Salvador summed up his feelings this way: "It's very simple: This contract will help many janitors."

Others reserved their opinions until reading the fine print of the agreement. They wondered: Why would only 1,000 additional janitors be getting health insurance and why would it take three years? Why would it take five years for their salaries to increase only a few dollars an hour, to at most $13.15? And was two sick days enough?

"They're saying we won," said Oscar Aguilar, 40, another part-time janitor from El Salvador, "but what exactly did we win? It's not really clear. I don't know how to react."

Others, however, had more decided opinions about the agreement, which the janitors must still affirm before it takes effect: They felt it left them out.

About 30 janitors from outside of Boston stood at the gates of the church, shaking their hands and questioning union officials. What happened to us, they demanded to know. Why would only janitors in Boston's largest buildings be getting health insurance and better pay? Weren't they on strike for the past four weeks as well?

"We're very angry - we're not getting anything," said Jose Leger, 60, a janitor from the Dominican Republic who now earns $8.54 an hour working in Lawrence. "This won't help us."

Maria Martes, 42, another Dominican janitor working in Lawrence, said: "This is worse than we started with. Do they not have any respect for us?"

Still, they and others don't regret the struggle. Many said they believe they proved immigrants with little voice in the community could unite and have an impact.

Her voice hoarse after chanting "Justicia para Janitors" for nearly four weeks, Mynea Cea said neither she nor the other low-paid immigrants will ever be invisible again.

"Our voice has been heard," she said. "We can be proud of that."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com

Migrant Workers Face Hostility

2005-05-30T20:50:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
9/23/2002

AGAWAM - With Puritan laws once banning the planting of seeds, the early arrival of frost spoiling autumn harvests, and developers steadily buying much of the land, it's never been easy to grow tobacco in this once-thriving Western Massachusetts agricultural community.

Now, with subdivisions and strip malls covering most of the fertile land and SUVs far outnumbering tractors, the few farmers left here lead an increasingly lonely existence.

For Elaine and Calvin Arnold, a tobacco-farming couple who own 42 acres of farmland surrounded by homes, much of the last two years has been "a living nightmare."

The Arnolds complain they have been repeatedly harassed and had their equipment and crops vandalized. Since they decided to build a dormitory for 27 migrant workers on their land, they have been steeped in such an acrimonious spat with their neighbors that they recently attracted the support of the US Justice Department.

Last week, the Justice Department joined the couple and four workers in bringing suit, charging the town and its zoning board with discrimination. The dispute had already sparked two lawsuits against Agawam, one filed by the Arnolds and the other by the Jamaican and Puerto Rican migrant workers.

"You'd think we would be past this by now, but I don't think there's any other word for it than racism," said Elaine Arnold, while showing off thousands of tobacco leaves the workers recently cut and hung to dry. "The neighbors and the city have done everything they can to make our lives miserable."

Responding to the Justice Department's charge that the town violated the federal Fair Housing Act, Agawam Mayor Richard A. Cohen said, "It's absolutely not true. It could not be any more frivolous."

More than a year ago, the Planning Board approved the Arnolds' design to build a dormitory and a maintenance garage. But after neighbors in this mostly white community complained, telling officials at public hearings they feared increases in crime and prostitution, the Zoning Board of Appeals rejected the plan.

Denying that prejudice motivated their reversal, municipal officials said the board acted for "merely procedural" reasons. Neighbors, who have formed the Dormitory Action Group, collected more than 850 signatures in a petition against the project, and hired a lawyer to defend their interests. They now mainly voice concerns about increased traffic, noise, and damage to wetlands.

"There has been absolutely no discrimination," Cohen said.

The row took root four years ago when the Arnolds, longtime farmers who own C & E Tobacco Inc., leased three parcels of land in hopes of cultivating more than 150,000 pounds of broad-leaf tobacco to sell to cigar manufacturers. Hoping to cut transportation costs, the couple sought permission from the town to build a 2,800-square-foot dormitory for their migrant workers, now housed in three camps about an hour away in Connecticut.

When the town approved their plans early last year, the Arnolds decided to buy part of the property they had been leasing along North West Street. Now, the Arnolds say they're losing thousands of dollars a year and feeling the pinch of their neighbors - who have begun calling the police for everything from the smell of pesticides to the noise of their tractors.

"We never used to get these complaints before we proposed building the housing," Elaine Arnold said. "Do you think that's just a coincidence?"

Neighbors say the Arnolds have threatened them and say the matter would never have become so contentious had the couple consulted them before going to the planning commission.

Before the couple took over the land, the neighbors say, they used to walk their dogs on the property and ride snowmobiles there in the winter. They complain the Arnolds won't let anyone on their property and have told neighbors they intend to build the dormitories - the federal government requires farms who employ migrant workers to provide housing - whether they like it or not.

Racism, they insist, is a red herring. The real issue, they say, is what introducing 27 migrant workers into the community and what the extra housing will do to everything from property values to water tables to the peace and tranquillity they had become accustomed to.

"We would be just as up in arms if this was a dormitory for white students," said Dee Duncan, a neighbor of the property for the past 29 years. "We bought here because it was quiet and peaceful and we could hear the frogs at night. We want it to stay that way."

Another neighbor, Kathy Mancini, who has lived in the area for 20 years, said, "We have nothing against anyone. We just have legitimate concerns."

To the scores of black and brown migrant workers, who are increasingly an anachronism in this town of 28,000, the strident opposition to their living on the farm seems very much like racism. They work between 80 and 100 hours a week during the harvest season, toiling for $7.94 an hour, and they say living on the farm would make their lives much easier as it would eliminate most, if not all, of their daily commute.

From May through October, Lloyd Henry, a 43-year-old father of four from Jamaica, wakes around 3 a.m. every day to cook breakfast and lunch, then picks up other workers in an old gray school bus, and arrives at the farm at 7 a.m.

He spends the day planting seeds, cutting stalks or hanging tobacco leaves, and doesn't arrive back at the camps until well past sundown. "It's offensive for anyone to suggest that we would steal or do any other crimes," said Henry, who has spent seven seasons working in Agawam. "We are good, hard-working people."

Another longtime employee of C & E Tobacco, Junior Forte - also a 43-year-old father of four from Jamaica - said he used to like the residents he met around town. But now, he said, he's losing respect.

"This whole thing just makes me think less of the people," he said. "They're giving us a bad name and that's just sad."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Combating 'Overhousing'

2005-05-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

A Two-Sided Solution for Near-Empty Triple-Deckers

By David Abel
Globe Staff
5/19/2003

The seven children raised by Mary and Elbert Vines are all gone. There are cobwebs in the bedrooms where they slept, and pockmarked walls where their pictures hang. It's just the two of them in the cluttered, eight-bedroom triple-decker on Devon Street.

But these days, the Vineses are preparing for something they have not had in a while - company.

In a little-noticed but growing effort, the City of Boston and housing specialists are persuading homeowners, especially widows and elderly couples, to open their big homes to strangers in need of low-cost living space.

It's a way to try to ease Boston's housing crunch, with more than 6,000 homeless residents and some 20,000 on waiting lists for government subsidized housing.

Getting homeowners to agree to new tenants has not been easy. Many are reluctant, especially later in life, to live alongside strangers. But with coaxing and financial assistance for renovations and repairs, 25 already have signed on, including the Vineses, and officials hope to recruit hundreds more.

"I've been here so long I might as well stay until I'm gone," said Mary Vines, who long ago paid off the mortgage.

The phenomenon of "overhousing" - the term used when an individual lives in a home with three or more bedrooms - is growing, according to housing specialists, in part because senior citizens are living longer and hanging onto their large homes. Nearly half of all Boston homeowners considered overhoused are elderly, many living in three-deckers they paid off long ago.

Recent surveys show as many as 90 percent of seniors say they prefer to "age in place," said Nicolas Retsinas, director of the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. Being in familiar surroundings might contribute to peace of mind, but occupying the large homes for decades contributes to the very pressing housing shortage.

"This is a persistent problem," Retsinas said. "There's a lot of inertia among the elderly, and having paid their mortgages, many don't want to bother having new people living with them."

But city officials and community groups have come up with incentives to help persuade the homeowners to consider renting out part of their homes. They offer them cash to fix up the properties, which are often in need of repair. In exchange, the homeowners are required to lease the space to low-income tenants.

One of the city's first homeowners to sign up was Jennie Johnson, 62, a divorced grandmother who has lived in the same Mattapan three-decker for the past 35 years. Like other senior citizen homeowners, she used to rent out the units she didn't use. But after so many years, her house fell into disrepair and the apartments she rented began failing inspections.

Trying to comply with city codes was expensive and too much of a hassle. "I was in and out of housing court . . . it was a nightmare," she said. So when her last tenant died several years ago, Johnson didn't bother trying to rent again, and she began living alone in her eight-bedroom home.

After a while, though, something didn't feel right. "I thought it was selfish to keep such a big house just for me," she said. But she didn't want to leave. Then she learned about Nuestra Comunidad's program.

For agreeing to rent her first- and second-floor units to low-income tenants, the group helped finance all the apartments' necessary renovations, from new bathrooms and kitchen appliances to new carpeting and windows. To cover the costs, it also secured special city grants for $75,000 and provided her a low-interest $30,000 mortgage.

Now, with her home almost completely renovated, Johnson has a monthly income of nearly $2,000. Her only requirement, until she pays back her mortgage, is that she rent to low-income tenants. "I think it's a good deal," she said.

Officials at Nuestra Comunidad, the city's main community group addressing overhousing, believe there are at least 1,200 other seniors in Roxbury and Dorchester alone who are living in mostly vacant three-decker homes. Their efforts to expand the housing program have support from the highest levels of city government.

"This is a win-win situation," said Mayor Thomas M. Menino, who complains that the federal government isn't doing its share to help build affordable housing in Boston.

There is a limit, though, to how many grants the city can cover. "We're doing what we can, and we'll continue to move on this," he said.

For now, the problem isn't a lack of city grants, as much as persuading seniors it's in their best interests to participate in the program. Despite Nuestra Comunidad's success, other organizations have found it difficult to get seniors to agree to a new mortgage, let alone welcome strangers into their homes.

Since East Boston's Neighborhood of Affordable Housing group began promoting the program a year ago, only five seniors have signed up. Others filled out applications, but after a while, they dropped out.

"Many of them just got cold feet," said Phil Giffee, the program's director. "This isn't the final answer to solve the affordable housing crisis."

Still, with thousands of potential apartments available, it could make a dent.

For seniors like Mary Vines, it's a way to fix up the house, as well as earn some much-needed money. More than a century old, Vines's home is crumbling, the ceilings are sagging, paint is peeling off the walls, and there are piles of clothing, newspapers, and other clutter all around.

The repairs to her home will cost more than $300,000, but with grants from the city and the income from future rent, she believes it's worth it. Moreover, Nuestra Comunidad will find tenants, draw up the leases, and do all the things a property owner usually needs to do as the landlord.

Eventually, after all the work has been finished and she and her husband have passed on, Vines said, she'll have something worth leaving to her children.

"This is a nice home," she said. "They should have the chance to live here, with their families. It's better that it isn't empty."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Section 8 Shortage

2005-05-30T20:30:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
6/10/2003

After years of turning people away because there weren't enough affordable apartments, the state has started turning them away because there are too many applicants.

Earlier this year, for the first time in the history of Massachusetts' Section 8 rental-assistance program, the state ran out of vouchers that provide federal subsidies to low-income tenants. The federal government, which is in the process of reforming the Section 8 system, refused to issue any more vouchers, leaving the state to tell people like Eliana and Daniel Rivera - who had already waited nearly a year for the subsidy - that their wait would now be indefinite.

"I cried a lot after hearing it would take so long," said Eliana Rivera, 25, who had been told she was only weeks away from receiving a voucher worth 70 percent of her monthly rent.

For years, Massachusetts couldn't use its allocation of vouchers because the real estate market was so hot that few landlords were willing to bother with Section 8 tenants. In the last six months, though, the softening market has dramatically increased the number of landlords willing to rent to those tenants, pushing up the use of the vouchers.

Governor Mitt Romney recently asked the federal government for 1,800 more vouchers to add to the 19,487 now in use in Massachusetts. But Congress earlier this year prohibited extra vouchers for housing authorities that have used up their allocation.

"By law, there's nothing more we can do" for Massachusetts right now, said Jerry Brown, a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which oversees the voucher program.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration is trying to transform the housing subsidies from grants aimed at individuals into a lump sum to states. Mel Martinez, the US secretary of housing, told Congress earlier this year that after three years of adding vouchers - 210,000 since 1999 - the government needs to focus on reducing the number of unused ones, which in the past two years amounted to about $2.4 billion in subsidies.

"Allocation of the funds to the states should allow for more coordinated efforts," Martinez told the House Appropriations Committee in March. For fiscal 2004, the administration has proposed spending $1 billion more than the $13 billion it spent this year on Section 8, adding 5,500 vouchers for people with disabilities.

State officials argue that the proposed changes to the 27-year-old federal program would end up costing the states more money - and ultimately reduce the number of vouchers. Not only would each state have to spend money administering the program, but they argue that a lump sum, instead of a specific number of vouchers, won't go as far when rents climb.

"The numbers just don't add up," said Beth Bresnahan, a spokeswoman for the Massachusetts Department of Housing and Community Development. "The cost of our housing far exceeds the national cost-of-living increases provided by block grants."

Local housing advocates are concerned about the proposed changes, saying that during tough economic times, the administration should be dramatically adding to the stock of vouchers - and leaving alone a program that is the only line of protection for thousands of Massachusetts families.

With a near-record 35,000 applicants already on the state's waiting list, state officials and housing advocates worry the backlog will significantly drive up the number of homeless families.

"Given that 75 percent of all homeless families exit our shelters with a subsidy, this freeze on Section 8 subsidies causes tremendous concern," said John Wagner, commissioner of the Department of Transitional Assistance, which oversees state homeless programs.

Homelessness is a growing worry for the Riveras, who lost their clerical jobs at New England Medical Center last year, and since then have moved in to his mother's crowded house, then to a state-subsidized motel, to a family shelter, and most recently to a temporary apartment.

Like the Riveras, Danielle Echevarria, a 20-year-old single mother who had already waited three years for a Section 8 voucher, believed she was only a few weeks away from getting one when she heard the program had been frozen. Now, she doesn't know what she's going to do.

Echevarria has been living in a small room in her grandmother's house for a while. But now, her grandmother wants her and her 3-year-old son to move out, Echevarria said - and her only option will be a homeless shelter.

"All I can say," she said, "is I'm very desperate."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Candidates Ignore Poverty

2005-05-30T20:23:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
11/04/2002

CAMPAIGN 2002 / CAMPAIGN ISSUES

They're calling it the campaign's "stealth issue."

Rising poverty is not part of many stump speeches. There are few, if any, position papers about it on the Web sites of the two major-party gubernatorial candidates. And though more than half a million state residents are mired in it, the candidates have rarely mentioned the word.

As the economy continues to sputter and the state suffers a cash crunch, poverty issues (which advocates define as homelessness, hunger, and welfare) will be among the most pressing matters to confront the next governor.

About 575,000 residents live below the federal poverty line.
More than 55,000 people, many of them with families, became homeless last year and an increasing number of residents are seeking shelter beds. The number of families on welfare is 48,000, 14 percent higher than last year. Food banks around the state are reporting a surge in demand, and 1 of every 5 children in the state lives below the poverty line, just $18,100 a year for a family of four.

"It's not unusual that the needs of the extremely low-income aren't an issue," said Mary Ellen Hombs, executive director of the Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance. "But this year it should be unusual."

The candidates deny ignoring poverty issues, noting that they have spoken about creating jobs, reducing health care costs, and building more affordable housing. But advocates say they haven't addressed key issues vital to the poor, who make up 10 to 30 percent of the state's population, depending on the standard.

The Globe put questions to the candidates about poverty and each had a different take on how to tackle everything from homelessness to welfare reform.

"Perhaps there is nothing that demonstrates how wrong our state's priorities currently are than the decision by Beacon Hill this year to focus budget cuts on the homeless," said Republican Mitt Romney, adding that he would curb homelessness in part by reducing domestic violence.

Democrat Shannon O'Brien supports counting education and training toward future work requirements for welfare recipients. Jill Stein, the Green Party candidate, supports helping the poor pay their rent. Independent Barbara Johnson said she would replace the federal poverty line with a more detailed measure of poverty. And Libertarian Carla Howell said the key to ending poverty is ending the income tax and encouraging charity.

All this comes as the Legislature has removed funding for 328 beds at homeless shelters, closed multiple welfare offices, and reduced the number of caseworkers. Meanwhile, the number of uninsured residents rose to above 400,000, and lawmakers removed 50,000 chronically unemployed people from the Medicaid rolls.

Some of the cuts, advocates say, may result in higher costs for the state. For example, rather than building more shelters or other temporary housing for the homeless, the state has spent millions of dollars putting families in hotels. Now, with shelters full, the state is paying an average of $100 per family, per night to put 550 families in hotels. Two years ago, 90 families needed that help.

The state also cut a $9 million program that helped the poor pay rent. Many cut off from rental assistance have been evicted from their apartments, adding to the homeless numbers.

Advocates point to $8 million the state is spending this year to provide emergency food to the poor as an example of waste. The expense would be unnecessary if the state prodded more eligible residents to apply for food stamps, a federally subsidized program. Today, only 48 percent of the half-million people eligible for food stamps get them.

"Shouldn't we at least be talking more about maximizing our federal money?" said Ellen Parker, executive director of Project Bread. "It's a huge loss. This is money that would feed people - and it would cost the state nothing."

Another issue so far unaddressed, advocates say, is whether the state should continue to use the federal poverty line, $18,100 for a family of four, as the threshold for government aid. Many advocates and lawmakers consider the 40-year-old federal benchmark an outdated measure that doesn't account for the specific costs of living in certain areas.

Last year, Acting Governor Jane Swift vetoed a bill that would have replaced the federal criteria the so-called self-sufficiency standard, which measures costs of housing, transportation, and health care, among other factors, in a specific area. Using the self-sufficiency standard, for example, a family of four would be considered impoverished if it earned less than $43,000 in Boston or $34,000 in North Adams.

"We've been trying to get this onto the candidates' campaign agendas," said Mary Lassen, president of the Women's Educational and Industrial Union, which lobbied the Legislature to approve the self-sufficiency standard. "But it hasn't picked up steam."

Neither has a discussion of welfare reform.

This year, as the nation's landmark welfare reforms expired, Congress has debated how best to refine the law, which has cut welfare rolls in Massachusetts and other states in half.

For the Commonwealth, the changes in federal law could be drastic. Nearly all the current proposals suggest increasing the number of people required to work. With only 7 percent of all state welfare recipients working today, far below proposals for 50 to 70 percent to work, advocates and employees of the state welfare agency say they were expecting more of a debate on how Massachusetts would adapt.

"We're heading into a critical period, and I haven't heard the topic come up," said Dick Powers, a spokesman for the Department of Transitional Assistance, which oversees the state's welfare programs. "With more people coming to see us for services and less resources to help them, the next governor and Legislature are going to have to make some dramatic changes to our state laws."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

A Shelter Hoards Cash, Cuts Services

2005-05-27T17:47:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
6/10/2002

As the region's largest homeless shelter bemoans proposed state budget cuts, warning it may be forced to slash an array of vital services, it's sitting on unprecedented cash reserves and providing six-figure compensation packages to its top five officials.

Unlike most social service providers, the Pine Street Inn took advantage of the past decade's boom to save money - so much that the shelter's cash reserves ballooned from about $2.5 million in 1994 to more than $15 million last year. The heady times also enabled the shelter to pay its president, Lyndia Downie, $134,500.

Although the shelter serves as a last line of defense against rising homelessness and hunger, and Downie and other officials foresee cuts in services as steep as 25 percent, they say they have no plans to use the reserves to offset the shelter's coming cash crunch. Nor do they have any intention of cutting salaries, which are in line with those paid elsewhere.

"We have to think about the long-term interests of the organization," Downie said. As for salary cuts to senior staff, she said, "It's the last place we would want to go."
With such significant reserves and salaries, Pine Street is facing a quandary more common for universities and museums: When do the immediate needs for money outweigh the benefits of investing in the future?

Because Pine Street is a provider of emergency social services, critics say the shelter may be remiss for cutting services while sitting on so much cash.

"It's definitely a questionable practice when there's such a demand," said James Stergios, a specialist on social services at the Pioneer Institute, a fiscally conservative think tank in Boston. "It seems to me hard to argue that the future is not now. Any other policy seems to me weird or hard to justify."

When it opened three decades ago, Pine Street served as a small shelter, providing little more than the proverbial "three hots and a cot" to a few hundred homeless men every night. Today, employing more than 400 people, serving more than a half-million free meals annually, and housing and training some 8,000 Bostonians a year, it has a $30 million annual budget and has become the largest shelter in New England.

About 60 percent of the shelter's budget comes from state dollars, with private donations, foundation grants, and revenue from shelter businesses filling the balance. Tax dollars go to paying salaries, Pine Street officials say, but only make up a small portion of the reserves.

With the fiscal crisis casting a cloud over budgets for the next few years, Pine Street officials argue they're not being miserly, but that they're taking prudent steps to protect the shelter's future. Since 1999, as state aid remained flat, the shelter has used 4.5 percent of its reserves - or $800,000 a year - for operating expenses, the limit set by Pine Street's board.

"If we thought this was a one-year state budget issue," said Terry Gagne, the shelter's chief financial officer, "it wouldn't be a problem to find the funds."

The shelter's savings primarily come from its investments, which remain healthy despite the stock market's instability.
Pine Street also has boosted its reserves by saving money the state provided for certain services. To promote efficiency, the state allows social service providers like Pine Street to keep as much as 5 percent of surplus cash from a contract. And the shelter has set aside money from a doubling of foundation grants and contributions over the past decade, including an anonymous $1 million gift.

As for salaries, Downie and Gagne insist Pine Street Inn pays its top employees wages similar to other nonprofit organizations, including some social service providers in Boston. Before setting Downie's salary, the shelter's board surveyed 33 other nonprofits in the area and found her salary ranked 18th, behind Bay Cove Human Services and The Home for Little Wanderers.

"This is a big organization; I don't think the salaries are out of whack," said Patrick Walsh, director of housing at the state Department of Transitional Assistance, which this year provided about $13 million to Pine Street - $2.4 million more than the Massachusetts House budget for fiscal 2003.

"As far as the cutbacks, we would strongly urge them to look at whatever means they can use to fill the gap," he said.
Other homeless shelters in Boston make do with small or no cash reserves.

While donations increased by 8 percent in the past year at Pine Street, St. Francis House, which serves about 600 meals a day and offers a range of other services to the homeless, is facing declining donations, no reserves, no increase in state dollars - and they have no plans to cut services, officials there say. Rosie's Place, the nation's first women's shelter that now feeds and cares for some 150 women and children a day, survives without any government money and an endowment of only $400,000.

At Pine Street Inn, which today runs four emergency shelters, two transitional homes, and 18 permanent residences, officials say they're waiting for the final budget before deciding which programs to cut. But Downie says some cuts are inevitable.

Programs likely to face the chopping block, she says, include a job preparation course that helps hundreds of people a year and an emergency outreach van that roams the city taking the homeless off the streets and into shelters.

While building a hefty reserve may be fiscally prudent - with interest over the long-term expected to earn on average about $1 million a year - critics contend that putting the future in front of the present is dangerous for an emergency shelter, which provides services that often mean the difference between life and death for the most downtrodden.

"That they haven't made the gesture to cut their salaries says something - like we're not willing to make the sacrifice, and let the poor people suffer," said Pablo Eisenberg, a senior fellow at Georgetown University's Public Policy Institute, who specializes in philanthropy issues. "I think there's a moral obligation to spend their reserves to maintain services. What else are they there for?"

David Abel can be reached by e-mail at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

The Joy of Paying Taxes

2005-05-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
4/15/2002

It may come as little surprise that in more than three decades as director of the Massachusetts Society of Certified Public Accountants, overseeing hundreds of accountants and thousands of clients, Theodore Flynn has never come across someone actually eager to pay taxes.

As another tax day comes and goes, he calls the prospect of such a discovery "slim to none."

"People just don't like to write checks to the government. No one is enthusiastic about that," he said.

Flynn has never met Stephen Webb.

Unlike the vast majority - surely an understatement - of the millions of Americans sending checks to the IRS today, Webb is savoring the moment.

"It feels great," he said. "I'm really very excited about it."

At 50, Webb is writing a check to the government for the first time in his life.

It's not much - $326.58 - but he's proud finally to be giving something back. When an accountant helped the Allston resident organize the complex forms and apprised him of what would strike virtually everyone as bad news, the Dallas native said, "Well, I guess I'm really one of you all now - a taxpayer."

For years, Webb has been on the opposite end, receiving instead of contributing cash to the nation's treasury. But like a growing number of welfare recipients coaxed off federal and state aid in recent years, Webb has managed to find a decent job.

Many of the newly employed still earn too little to pay any tax.

But, between 1994 and 2001, the number of families on welfare nationwide plummeted from 5.1 million to 2.1 million. In Massachusetts, over roughly the same period, the state's welfare caseload dropped from more than 103,000 families to approximately 46,000.

Liza Veras, a community organizer at the Dudley Street Neighborhood Initiative, has seen a steady increase in recent years in the number of former welfare recipients seeking assistance filing their taxes. Veras said her office has helped more than 300 families file this year and a surprising number of them are exuberant about doing so.

"The enthusiasm comes from a sense of independence," she said.

For Maria Trudelle, a divorced, 30-year-old mother of three, the joy of her first tax filing comes from the symbolism, as well as a healthy rebate of $1,680. Over the past three years, the Newton resident had collected more than $1,000 a month in welfare. The support has declined, however, since she found a job a few months ago as a receptionist at a local school.

"It's nice to finally take control of your life," Trudelle said. "But I haven't earned enough yet for me to owe the government money; I'm getting a refund this year."

In a new job after several years of collecting welfare, Sandra Lopez Teo, also a divorced mother of three, said her pride in paying taxes for the first time is the result of a decade-old dream about to come true: The 31-year-old Guatemala native expects to become a US citizen in the next few months.

"I feel like I'm actually legitimate now," she said.
Yet feelings of empowerment may be fleeting, especially because the working poor today are more and more likely to be audited by the IRS.

In the past five years, according to the IRS, audits of the working poor have increased by 48.6 percent. For taxpayers seeking the earned income credit reserved for the working poor, the odds of an audit last year were 1 in 47. The odds for those not seeking the credit were 1 in 366.
Such statistics don't worry Stephen Webb.

After years of living in homeless shelters and fighting alcoholism, he recently completed a training program at Boston's St. Francis House. He has found several jobs doing data entry. Though he is still sick and collecting aid from the government, he said he is happy to be giving back.
Flynn speculated that the enthusiasm won't last.

"I would say the waves of idealism are ofttimes dashed on the hard sands of reality," he said, "and they'll quickly become like the rest of us citizens - looking at taxes as a necessary chore, rather than an exciting adventure."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe

Where 'Managers' Make Bagels

2005-05-27T17:31:00.000-07:00

By David Abel
Globe Staff
8/28/2003

The ad in the Sri Lankan newspaper promised "Free! Restaurant Training in the USA."

Of thousands of ambitious hospitality students who responded, Dev Srilan and 14 others won slots in what was described as an 18-month "training course" with Finagle a Bagel, the award-winning Boston-based franchise, which said it was seeking managers to run new sandwich shops in Asia.

Instead, after obtaining special visas for training programs and moving into company-provided housing here last September, Srilan said, he and the other Sri Lankans were required by the company to work as much as 75 hours a week for under $300 - less than minimum wage - at jobs ranging from cashiers to bagel makers.

When he and others complained about the lack of training, they said, the company fired two of them, and threatened to call the Department of Homeland Security to deport them if they did not leave the country immediately.

"I was made to feel like I was their slave - we couldn't question anything," Srilan said.

Yesterday, he and three other Sri Lankans filed a class-action lawsuit in federal court against Finagle a Bagel, alleging the company broke minimum wage and overtime laws, unfairly terminated their employment, threatened them and their families in Sri Lanka with retaliatory action, and violated the terms of their H-3 visas, which specifically prohibit "productive employment" or a position "in the normal operation of the business."

They also filed complaints against the company with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, the Wage and Hour Division of the US Department of Labor, the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, and the state attorney general.

Company officials yesterday denied the allegations and called the four employees who filed the suit "dissidents" in an otherwise well-regarded program.

"We believe we were in accordance with the law," said Nancy Sterling, a spokeswoman for Finagle a Bagel, which has net sales of about $18 million a year and in 1998 was named the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's small business of the year.

Working in the bagel shops, Sterling said, provides a valid educational experience for the participants. "The only way you can learn how to operate a bagel facility, whether it be a production facility or a store, is through hands-on training. That's the training they received."

That's not what the Sri Lankan plaintiffs say they signed up for.

As evidence, they cite a petition for their visas the company filed in August 2002 with the US Immigration and Naturalization Service. In it, the company described the training program as three six-month phases, each of which would include "formal instructional exercises" and "classroom lectures."

"The trainees will not engage in productive employment," wrote Heather Robertson, the company's director of marketing and human resources, in the petition, which was reviewed by the Globe. "The trainee's level of knowledge and experience would not permit his or her active participation in or contribution to the work of the employees."

Srilan and the others said the few hours of training they received was limited to meetings about preventing sexual harassment, helping a person who is choking, and keeping the restaurants clean - the basic training required for all the company's managers.

Sterling disputed that, saying the training was more extensive.

"Managers do go through similar training," Sterling said, "but there was more emphasis on customer service, financial service, and cash handling - things people from Sri Lanka are less familiar with."

The Sri Lankan plaintiffs, according to time sheets provided to the Globe, spent as much as 75 hours a week working, without overtime. No matter how many hours they worked, they said, each earned just $287.50 a week.

Before recently moving to a job cutting vegetables and making change in one of the bagel shops, Srilan, 28, said he spent most of his time on an assembly line in the company's South Boston factory, adding poppy and sesame seeds to bagel dough.
Vindu Gayan, 25, also fired, said he worked as an assistant manager in nine restaurants. Kevin Dirckze, 25, said he often worked 75 hours a week as a manager. Thanuja Kumari, 24, who says she was suspended and threatened with dismissal after making a math error, worked mostly as a sandwich maker. "They didn't treat us as human beings," said Kumari, the only woman in the program.

All the work, their attorney said, is banned by the terms of their visa.

"The visa explicitly prohibits them from doing the same work as other employees - and any on-the-job training must be `incidental' to the experience," said Shannon Liss-Riordan, an attorney referred to the Sri Lankans by the state's Department of Labor and Workforce Development. "The bottom line is the company used these well-educated, English-speaking employees as cheap labor, because they come from a country where the wages are much lower than here."

The H-3 visa's prohibition on productive labor, immigration-law specialists said, means a trainee may only serve as an observer to the labor process. If the trainees help make bagels, for example, the bagels can't be sold.

"Trainees shouldn't be doing anything to bring financial benefit to the employer," said Greg Siskind, an attorney in Tennessee who specializes in such visas.

Sri Lanka, an island off the southeast coast of India, is home to about 19 million people who earn, on average, the equivalent of $3,700 a year. Finagle a Bagel, or Finagle Lanka, as it's known there, employs nearly 200 people at a large bakery in Colombo, the capital, where bread products are baked and sold locally.

In the Boston area, the company employs 450 people at 17 locations.

The company's owners, Alan Litchman and Laura B. Trust, who have relatives in Sri Lanka, plan to eventually sell bagels there, too. Many of the 15 Sri Lankans they brought to Boston were hoping to open sandwich shops upon returning home, and signed up for the program to learn how to do so.

But after Srilan and the others complained, company officials told the trainees they planned to end the entire program. The company has not taken that action.

Still, many in the program remain hopeful of future employment with the company and express gratitude for the opportunity. In interviews conducted this week in the presence of a company lawyer, who did not allow the employees to be interviewed alone, two Sri Lankans denounced their colleagues who filed the suit, and praised Finagle a Bagel.

"We are treated very well - they give us everything we want," said Mahesh Wigetunga, 32, noting that the company provided them housing in Quincy.

He and Vishwaka Binduhewa, 22, said they do perform the same job as other managers in the company. But Binduhewa said: "I want the hands-on experience."

The Sri Lankans suing Finagle a Bagel said they didn't mind the hands-on experience, either. But they said they expected to gain more management experience, beyond serving sandwiches or making change, and say it's unfair that they earn significantly less than employees who perform the same jobs.

In the past few weeks, since they hired an attorney, conditions have improved, they said. The Sri Lankans said they have been told to work only 40 hours a week, and they've heard the company is preparing seminars and may provide more training.

Still, the workers feel their status is uncertain. "I'm working under the constant fear of them trying to frame me," said Dirckze, who said he was recently accused of stealing and mishandling cash. "They obviously don't want me."

As for Dev Srilan, who now lives with scores of other homeless men at Father Bill's Place in Quincy, everything rides on the lawsuit. Without employment, he worries whether he'll be sent home and forced to pay a $12,000 bond.

Participants in the program, and their family members, signed an agreement stipulating that the participant would successfully complete the program and return home to Sri Lanka upon its conclusion or the family would pay the company the value of the bond.

"My life, my future, has been put on hold," he said. "There's just a lot of anxiety and uncertainty right now."

David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.

Copyright, The Boston Globe