Community Feels Grip of "Free Money"

By Carl Glassman

"Tony Manhattan Enclave Gets Post-Sept. 11 Help," trumpeted a Wall Street Journal headline.

"My rich neighbors got $30,000 from Red Cross New York," proclaimed a London Daily Telegraph columnist who lives downtown.

"Trumpery Below Canal," the New Yorker called the charity’s largesse, as it mused over the tale of one well-heeled Tribeca recipient whose Sept. 11 trauma consisted of a painful trek home from 72nd and Madison in a new pair of shoes.

The image of rich Tribeca residents doing up their million-dollar lofts and buying designer clothes with handouts from the Red Cross’s $850 million Liberty Disaster Relief Fund made good copy last month. But it hardly told the story of the community’s complex response to the rare offer of free money.

Nearly three-fifths of residents refused the payouts altogether, according to the Red Cross. Many gave it away to worthwhile causes. Others had legitimate expenses and losses they were grateful to recoup. And still others reported near-Biblical-scale struggles of conscience.

Stung by the bad press, the charity announced last month that it was turning off the tap—or at least reducing the flow. Its agressive policy of outreach, with offers to all residents of three months’ rent or mortgage and maintenance payments, plus expenses, came to an abrupt halt. The opportunity to call for an appointment with Red Cross workers (877-746-4987) ends March 8 and volunteers are instructed to authorize reimbursements only for the time that residents were out of their apartments.

Mitch Hibbs, a Red Cross spokesman, acknowledged that "public perception" helped change the policy. But he defended the charity’s work among the well-to-do. "People are just as traumatically affected regardless of their pay scale," said Hibbs. Besides, he added, "Nobody got rich from the Red Cross." Nevertheless, some rich did get richer, and there was anger and confusion when it was learned that the richest could get the most help of all. Suddenly, neighbors viewed neighbors in a cold moral light. A Reade Street resident who turned down the money said she hadn’t wanted to know who met with the Red Cross and who didn’t, "because I didn’t want to judge them," but she found out anyway. "I know I filed it away in the back of my mind," she said. A neighbor scrawled "For shame" on the note

Yellin said that Red Cross workers told her that a man in the building lectured them on the immorality of giving money to "rich Tribecans." The result, according to Yellin, was that all the residents who applied for the aid (five out of 15 apartments) were turned down.

"I’ve been living in this building 18 years," said Yellin. who remains fearful of entering tunnels after being evacuated from the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel when the terrorists struck. "We are not the rich Tribecans."

Rich or not, some residents struggled with the question of whether their special 9/11 hardship morally qualified them for some soothing compensation. As one Hudson Street resident put it, "It’s hard to know what a victim is."

Elizabeth Gottlieb, a filmmaker and theater director living at 6 Varick Street, decided she was not one. There was the play she was to begin directing that got cancelled, and the neck pain that started on Sept. 11 has yet to be cured after visits to five doctors. But, said Gottlieb, "I kept thinking of the nice people in Iowa who gave money, and I didn’t think they meant it for people like me."

"I see it as pain and suffering money,’ said Fraya Berg, a food writer and Thomas Street resident who called herself a "basket case" after the attack. Her check was modest. But more important than the money, she said, was the feeling that people cared about what residents like her had been through.

"Just having them come here and talk to me and acknowledge that we lived in a disaster area, that made me feel better."

Some residents reached a moral compromise and put the money to use elsewhere. Elaine Schweninger, a real estate agent who lives in Independence Plaza, gave away her $8,000. It went to, among other places, an organization that helps Afghan women. One family in a building on Broadway gave most of its $15,000 check to Catholic Charities to help undocumented families affected by the disaster. Their neighbors sent money to Turkey to set up a literacy program.

Another resident kept the money in the community, sending thousands to Washington Market Park and Feedco, an organization that helps small businesses downtown. He didn’t want to be identified in this article because he feared being criticized for taking the money—or being seen as criticizing others for the decisions they made.

Such has been the moral turmoil stirred up in the community that even acts of kindness can be called into question. And for some, like Bonnie Yochelson, a long-time Jay Street resident, Red Cross generosity may have deflated the spirits of a recovering neighborhood more than boost them.

"Their presence and the offer of money," she said, "went against our efforts to put on the best face, to count our blessings, and to carry on."