Compensate Lower East Side For Rivington House Sale, Locals Urge

LOWER EAST SIDE, NY — Neighbors and elected officials gathered at a former HIV/AIDS care facility slated for luxury condos in the Lower East Side, demanding the city take steps to return the nursing home to a community use and meet the needs of the neighborhood's aging community.

Local activists have advocated to re-open the Rivington House since it shuttered more than two years ago after the Allure Group purchased the building from VillageCare, only to sell it to Slate Property Group for a condo conversion once the city lifted deed restrictions ensuring the site offered health care services for the community.

Protestors at the Wednesday rally scrawled on some 219 ribbons representing the number of nursing home beds lost to the community with the facility's closure. Activists scribbled chalk phrases on the building and sidewalk including, "Stop selling out our community" and "Bring our beds back."

Dozens of demonstrators joined hands and surrounded the six-story, 119-year-old building with caution tape that read, "Gentrification in progress."

It's "heartbreaking" to see the building vacant when there are so few nursing beds in area, said one organizer with the group behind the rally.

“The people who worked so hard to turn this community around now need care and it doesn’t exist for them and that is criminal. It's just criminal," said longtime Lower East Sider Debra Jeffreys-Glass, with Neighbors to Save Rivington House.

The area's certified long-term care beds have drastically shrunk over the last decade. Only two nursing homes remain in the Lower East Side: a 255-bed facility within the New Gouverneur Hospital on Madison Street and the 58-bed New East Side Nursing Home on Willett Street.

Locals are forced to place family in far-off nursing homes and endure arduous commutes to reach their relatives, others wonder where they will go when the time comes for them to enter a home.

Longtime resident and activist Sally Roldan with the social services group University Settlement, which is part of the Neighbors to Save Rivington House coalition, was forced to place her 84-year-old mother in the Bronx where it takes her more than two hours to visit — one way.

"I’m the only one that can go visit her regularly. Once in a while one or two people go visit, but it’s not the same," said Roldan, whose mother lived in the Lower East Side for 45 years. "I want her to live longer and be happier, I don't want her to go into [depression]."

One former Rivington House tenant, who was evicted during the scandal and now resides in a Harlem home, said it is the neighborhood's sense of community that he most misses.

"It’s the neighborhood, the building, but most of all the people I miss the most," said Richard Rosenberg, 70, who was diagnosed with AIDS in 1994 and told he had two years to live. "I'm still very angry and upset about what happened ... Basically, I think Allure should be punished for what they did to us."

The office of the former Attorney General Eric Schneiderman reached a settlement with Allure Group last year following an investigation into the sale. Allure is required to build a new health care facility in the Lower East Side and to pay $1.25 million to local non-profit groups, and $750,000 in fees to the state.

Allure has since reached out to Neighbors to Save Rivington House to set up a meeting. The for-profit health care provider and Slate Property Group did not return requests for comment.

The building's owners have filed an application for a permit to renovate and the convert the building for residential use with the city's Department of Buildings. Plans were rejected on Feb. 15, as the application was incomplete, according to Department of Buildings spokesman Andrew Rudansky.

Local Councilwoman Margret Chin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer wrote a March letter to Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen and the Department of Buildings urging the city reject future applications to build on the site.

The buildings department has yet to return their request for a meeting to discuss the building's future.

Photos courtesy of Caroline Spivack/Patch