Posted on 02/02/2002 9:08:55 AM PST by Excuse_Me
The couple who walked in and offered me money
By Zoe Heller
(Filed: 02/02/2002)
I WORK in an empty apartment in my building. It's a rather filthy place with an ominous amount of rat droppings on the floor. It's also freezing cold so I usually write in a Parka, with a little space heater pressed against my legs. Into this charming scene, earlier this week, stumbled a man and a woman carrying clipboards. I was not alarmed. People are always wandering in off the street looking for something to steal or somewhere to pee. This particular pair looked rather more wholesome than most of my visitors.
"Hello," I said. "Can I help you?"
"Well, no," they said. "We thought we might help you. We wanted to see if you've suffered hardship since September 11 and if you feel you could use some Red Cross money."
There was a brief period just after September 11 when members of some southern religious fraternity started going about offering cash compensation on the spot to local businesses in TriBeCa and Battery Park City. Burly ministers with Georgia twangs would walk into stores and restaurants, make instant calculations of how many thousands they thought the owners deserved and then write them out cheques.
This was so bizarre a phenomenon for New York - so antithetical to the no-free-lunch spirit of the city - that people couldn't quite believe it. The local newspaper carried pictures of various small business proprietors looking stunned, as they shook hands with their surprise-benefactors. The old moo who runs a children's clothes shop down the road was photographed cracking her first smile in at least a decade.
Until now, this strange episode has been fondly regarded as a fascinating aberration in the neighbourhood's history - a golden moment out of time. But the Red Cross housecalls have rather trumped the ministers from Georgia, I think.
In the wake of September 11, you will recall, the Red Cross raised vast sums - unprecedented sums - for the victims of the attack. So many hundreds of millions were raised, in fact, that Bernadine Healy, then president of the organisation, decided to earmark a substantial portion of the money for future disaster funds.
But this decision, when it became public, caused a great outcry. People felt that money that had been donated to a specific cause ought to be spent on that cause and not on other things. Bernadine Healy was sacked and the Red Cross committed itself to spending all the September 11 millions on exclusively September 11-related causes. This is how the Red Cross now finds itself going door-to-door in a neighbourhood not known for its dire poverty, pressing money on ordinary, that is to say, rather well-off residents.
Like most people, my eyes tend to light up when I am being offered cash. Sitting in my office, listening to the Red Cross representatives, I racked my brain for examples of personal hardship that might merit my accepting their offer. Hardship hardship OK, maybe there had been no hardship. But surely there had been inconvenience? Stress? I thought some more.
Nope, it was too bad. I couldn't come up with a single credible instance of suffering for which I deserved compensation. "Thank you," I told the Red Cross agents with a tinge of regret. "Thank you, but actually, I'm doing fine." With that, I made a move to resume my tip-tapping.
My visitors were not convinced. "Are you sure?" they said, glancing shyly at the rat droppings. "We've been helping people with their mortgages, for example. Money is also available for mattresses and furniture that may have had to be replaced."
"No," I said. "I don't actually live in this apartment. I live upstairs. It's very nice up there." Again, I experienced a moment of doubt. It's not every day that two sweet people walk in off the street and pressure you to accept their money. If these people really wanted to enrich me, who was I to turn them down?
I pulled myself together again. "I'm just dandy," I said firmly. "Really I am."
"Well," they said. "OK. If you're sure." And then they trudged disconsolately from the room.
That night, a neighbourhood friend rang me. "Listen," she said breathlessly. "Take down this number. It's for the Red Cross. They're going round offering cash compensation."
"It's all right," I said. "They already came to see me today. I told them I wasn't needy."
There was a short pause on the other end of the line. I rather thought my friend had been silenced by my exemplary high-mindedness. But she was only speechless with exasperation. "You fool," she said, presently. "What are you being so prissy about? They've got to get rid of this money, you know. Everyone else is taking it. Why shouldn't you?"
"No, no," I said. "I couldn't possibly " I stopped. "What do you mean everyone else is taking it?" It turned out that several of my neighbours had been only too happy to relieve the Red Cross angels of their dosh. Ms X across the road was going to be getting $12,000 for three months of mortgage payment. Mr Y on Hudson Street was having all his medical bills for his dicky eye paid for. The Zs on Reade Street were getting money for a new mattress and two spiffy new air filters.
"But the Zs are rich!" I shouted, outraged. "And so is Ms X!"
"Exactly," my friend said. "Here, take the number, call the Red Cross back. Tell them they spoke to your idiot sister this morning and that you are in need, after all."
I didn't call in the end. (Although I confess, I was tempted.) I recognise the perils of excessive piety about this. And I don't want to begrudge my neighbours their windfalls. But I do wonder if the much-maligned Bernadine Healy might not have had a point after all. The Americans who gave so generously to the Red Cross last year surely did not imagine that six months later their dollars would be paying the mortgages of wealthy TriBeCans.
... The Americans who gave so generously to the Red Cross last year surely did not imagine that six months later their dollars would be paying the mortgages of wealthy TriBeCans ...Let the New Yorkers have it. All of it. Hand it out on the streets. Disperse it from low flying aircraft. Slip into peoples' pockets or purses as they shuffle past. I can think of far worse ways to dispose of the excess cash than to simply give it away.
Excuse me?? (no pun intended) Thats exactly what NYC is, they love welfare, they love leftists who give away other people's money, they love unions where 1/3 of employee's are always on break.
It just worries them when people give their own money away.
Something's really fishy about this story. On the one hand, the author is saying about how wealthy a neighborhood she lives in (TriBeCa.) On the other hand, she manages to write in a filthy unoccupied apartment in her building. How does this writer manage to use this apartment? Why isn't this apartment rented out? Is she saying that the apartment manager would rather let her write in this place than rent it out? With the housing market the way it is in Manhattan, there is no way the apartment manager would keep an unoccupied apartment open, especially in this trendy neighborhood, for the benefit of some writer to use. Not when the market value for that apartment is a minimum of $2000 a month!
I think you found exactly the right reaction to this. I admit that, while reading the article, I was irritated with the folks looking for the windfall, but that's really secondary to the real lesson of this. Confronted by the mind-boggling horror of 9-11, we were stunned (for about a day), began to greive (still going on), but at the same time got to work and fought back, and dug into our pockets to send millions of dollars to New York. More money, in fact, than the gross national product of a lot of nations. And we got really bent out of shape at the hint that less than 100% of that money would go to New York, and further, we would like it distributed Right Now. We know that there's no way to "fairly" distribute that much money that fast (and the Red Cross is the last outfit to be trused with that task in any case). No, this is a uniquely American attitude, a full-throated, red-blooded, belly-rubbing affirmation of life and possibility. It's going to take a lot more to get us down Osama Bin Skyhook and his cronies.
I wondered about that, too. But if you live in New York, and are willing to pay those kind of prices for an apartment, you've got to be a little bit twisted, IMO. So, I just shrugged it off. As for the apartment, with the damage caused by the collapse, perhaps the owner doesn't have the money to fix it up yet.
You've hit the nail on the head. I'll bet there is no good reason for this situation. Could be she lives in rathole on the sly and sublets her own place to somebody else and pockets the difference. Or uses the rathole as her "office" for free (having found working utilities and phone lines but no nosey owners) and pockets savings that way.
Unless I missed it in the article, it didn't say that the apartment was damaged in the collapse. Manhattan is a place where the housing market is so tight that people scan the death notices to look for available apartments! I just find it very hard to believe that this apartment would be 1) unoccupied, 2) have working utilities (it may have been cold, but the author had a space heater going), and 3) be easily occupied by the author.
And one other thing -- there is rent control in New York, which means that people living in palatial apartments for many years can be paying a pittance in rent, but rent control does not go into effect until after you rent a place. This gives the apartment owner even more incentive to get an apartment on the market, as he'll be able to charge hundreds a month more than he would to longtime tenants. In summary, there are way too many holes in this writer's story; it's a good thing she published it in a British newspaper as it wouldn't make it past a Manhattan editor's bs detector!
Because of one author's fishy story? That's a pretty sick comment to make.
I don't know what this author's real story is, but what she wrote definitely doesn't add up.
This sentence doesn't fit her neighborhood either.
Meanwhile,the greedy, attention starved junior senator from NY (I hate to mention her name) is crying poor mouth and begging the feds for more money to give away.
This money should be put in an account for the college tuition for children of the victims. The rest should be put into a fund to pay future medical and disability benefits to volunteers and workers who were exposed to dangerous respiratory irritants and other related effects from ground zero.
No money should be paid from the federal gov't to victims. We have given enough.
I just figured that the reason they were wandering around that neighborhood giving away money was that there was damage caused in the area. Perhaps you should post a letter to the editor of the Telegraph, asking for clarification, or telling them that it doesn't pass the smell test.
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