Jean Carlos Cano, 11, a 5th grader at PS #12 darts passed opponents at a recent practice en route to a “try,” or a goal.

With city unemployment at a 14-year peak, and against the backdrop of the sweltering sun, all you keep hearing in streets of Jersey City is how this is going to be a “long, hot summer.” In the ghetto, that’s an omen for untold gang violence — the gravest one in years, advocates say.

“People are hot, miserable, and they ain’t got no money,” says Annette Joiner, executive director of Friends of the Lifers. “It’s going to run rampant out here.”

Gang-related violence has steadily increased over the past five years, according to Michael Lyons, a police officer in the city’s gang unit. To some community leaders, addressing the current gang situation is such a broad issue that it evokes finger-in-the-dam hopelessness.

Jersey City is currently home to about 40 gangs, including every major “super gang,” such as the Bloods, Crips, Latin Kings and Dominicans Don’t Play. They are fewer in number than in years past, but the networks are larger, more organized and cast a far wider net for recruitment, according to Lyons.

Gang leaders are also younger in age than ever before. The current “suppression approach” in law enforcement — not just in terms of gang activity, but for minor criminal acts as well — focuses on strict enforcement of all laws and throwing offenders in jail to keep them off the streets. This has knocked off a generation of older members, and the reins are left to kids, according to Ben Wilson, director of the Gang Awareness and Intervention Network.

“Insanity,” Wilson says, describing the current randomness and volatility of gang violence.

City residents meanwhile are held hostage to the streets.

“These corners,” says a 68-year-old Greenville resident, ominously, sitting in Audubon Park at 3 pm. “At night, I don’t come out. If I need anything, I get it during the day.”

And kids are wracked with adult woes.

“At school you’ve got frustrations, while you’re at home, while you’re outside,” says 8th-grader Jonathan Cano. “Everywhere.”

Over the course of this long, hot summer, we will take a closer look — story by story — at some of the tragedies, triumphs and issues resulting from the current gang epidemic in Jersey City.

Chapter 1: A Crack in the Pavement: How the City’s First Youth Rugby League Was Born

School kids are counting the days. Summer break — the great freedom — is almost theirs.

But summertime is a mixed blessing in tough neighborhoods, especially for young people trying to stay out of trouble. You can’t throw a rock in the summer and miss mischief, and there are plenty of rocks to try.

“It’s really tough out there,” says the 13-year-old Cano. “At times you can’t avoid gangs because you have friends involved in them.”

The trick is to stay busy or lay low at home, he adds.

But that’s easier said than done. It’s hard being cooped up in some oven-hot apartment. And a lot of summer programs don’t occupy kids in the late afternoon, or the “witching hours,” says Sgt. Frank Williams, executive director of the Police Activity League of Jersey City, and a 15-year veteran of the city police force.

For the past five years, Williams has battled juvenile delinquency and gang recruitment with a stunningly simple tactic: exhaustion.

“Completely exhaust them with some sort of extracurricular activity,” he says, standing in a hallway of a darkened, sneaker-squealing YMCA gymnasium on Bergen Avenue.

But Williams had a problem on his hands only a short time ago.

This same time last year, his roadmap for keeping kids on the straight and narrow had a pothole in it. From March to August, during those long, hot days, there was a gap — a sinkhole, really — in youth sports offered by his organization.

He’d seen kids in his program slip through the crack, but the stakes had just gotten higher.

The haunting text he received last month from a PAL coach is still fresh in his memory.

“Did you see Anthony Alvarado?” the message read.

Williams had already seen the news. An alleged killer — only 16 years old at the time — was on the run, and the gruesome homicide was linked to local gang activity, the Jersey Journal reported four days before Christmas. In May, Alvarado was finally caught, his face slapped on the front page of the tabloid.

“He played PAL football for me,” says Williams about the standout athlete, who at 12 years old, lured by the streets, had stopped coming to practice.

It was the “worst-case scenario.”

Youth activities aren’t the end-all solution to solving the gang problem, says Williams — only “a piece of the puzzle.” But he was bent on sealing the crack he saw in the pavement. The only question was: what would he fill it with?

The answer he ultimately reached, today, makes him chuckle amusedly.

On a late Wednesday afternoon, young Jonathan Cano and 17 of his school-age peers run drills in preparation for their first tournament in a sport they barely heard about before, let alone played. Together they are partaking in an odd slice of history, becoming members of the city’s first ever youth rugby team.

“Nobody was expecting us to play,” says Luis Guzman, 11, in the 7th grade.

The thought of naysayers — “what could inner-city kids possibly know about an import sport like rugby?” — seemed to motivate the team.

“We’re just coming up,” says Evan Wade, 12, an 8th grader.

Their stutter steps, the distinct way they cradle the ball in the crux of the elbow in transit — you can see hints of the NFL in their rugby game. The way they shoot layups with the oblong rugby ball between whistles reveals kids who grew up honing wicked jump shots.

But raw athleticism and competiveness are part of a universal language of sports, according to their coach, Dominic Wareing of Play Rugby USA.

And this team has both — which helped contribute to their successful debut earlier this month at the Mayor’s Cup on New York City’s Randall’s Island. Battling 56 teams — many of which have played in an organized rugby league for the past three to four years — the team reached the semifinals.

Wareing, an ex-pro rugby player from England, describes the sport as a cross between football and soccer. He hopes that press from the 2011 Rugby World Cup, as well as the Olympic revival in 2016, will finally help the sport take root in the United States’ playgrounds.

“You don’t need a lot to play rugby,” says Wareing. “You need a rugby ball.”

And Williams, too, is a believer.

“Kids carrying a basketball, kids carrying a football … a kid might be carrying a rugby ball,” says Williams. “That might not be uncommon in a couple of years.”

For more information about how to participate, contact the Policy Activity League of Jersey City at director (at) jerseycitypal.org or 201-434-3366.

The homes along the Palisades of Hudson County offer some of the most striking views of Manhattan.

Carmen Maysonet, 48, won her slice of the skyline the hard way. She became homeless for the first time a year ago, and she now resides among a hidden community of cliff dwellers on land bordering Jersey City, Union City and Hoboken.

Maysonet lives in a 4-foot-high shack made of wood, tarp and blankets, large enough for a bed and a small night table. There is a calendar on one wall, a morning prayer posted on another. Votive candles are lit all around the room — that’s the trick, she says, for keeping warm on cold winter days.

The encampments, known simply as the Palisades by locals, have existed since the 1980s. It is home to as many as 60 people, mostly transient. Fifteen people reside there permanently, according to April Kuzas, vice president of local neighborhood group, the Washington Park Association, and chairwoman of the organization’s homeless committee.

Few people in the region have forged such personal relationships with the Palisades community as Kuzas, who makes weekly treks down the cliff, bearing food, clothes and even appointment dates to social services. This type of bond is the secret to successful outreach, she says — especially at the Palisades. She has come to learn the intricate social infrastructure and diverse categories of homelessness that exist here. Many residents are chronically homeless and resist housing resources, but not all. Kuzas feels that, stoked by economic collapse, not only has the Palisades become a symbol of the county’s current crisis in affordable housing, but it represents one of the most unique homeless outreach conundrums. It is the best housing option for some of its residents.

Maysonet defies traditional profiles of the Palisades population. On one hand, she is actively seeking housing.

“I’m just hoping someone will help me get out of here,” she says. “I don’t have anywhere else to go. If I knew where else to go to get help, believe me, I would have went.”

But in the meantime, Maysonet resists shelters. Part of the reason is personal; part is practical. She’s been to shelters before and found the experience harrowing.

“I’ve had bad experience in shelters,” she says. “[Some] people, they kind of [use] abusive language talk, and they push you around, they take your things. I didn’t like it at all.”

Also, some of the shelters in Hudson County, like Hoboken and PERC, require residents to leave early in the morning. But in the bitter winter months, hitting the streets at that hour is not just a comfort issue, Maysonet says, but also a medical issue. She suffers from a chronic infection, for which she receives regular medical treatment.

“They get you up at 7 in the morning,” says Maysonet. “Where am I going to go at 7 in the morning, unless you’re working?”

Maysonet is working. She is a part-time cleaning lady and earns $50 to $60 per week. But in the current economy, she has difficulty finding enough hours. Employment prospects are only aggravated by a nagging back injury and side effects of her medication.

“I get all sorts of medication,” she says. “Sometimes I’ll be up [on the street] and I get dizzy and I have to come back [down] here.”

As she sees it, if she slept overnight at a shelter, she would only have to return back to the Palisades in the morning. So why leave in the first place?

Maysonet is stuck between a rock — the economy — and a hard place — the affordable housing crisis in Hudson County. She never bothered applying for Section 8 housing subsidies because she knows the deal: There is currently a 10-year waiting list, and that waiting list is closed.

“I ain’t got no where to go, and rents are high,” says Maysonet. “I wish I had Section 8. It takes too long. By the time I get Section 8, I’ll be an old lady.”

She can’t even afford a single-room occupancy, which averages about $125 dollars per week. She knows that if she splits the cost of single room, as many of her neighbors have before, that a roommate might not come through, and she’d get beat for the total rent.

Hudson County’s affordable housing agenda is “very active,” according to Susan Mearns, director of the Hudson County Division of Housing and Community Development. In her 21 years in the field, she has overseen the creation of 3,000 affordable housing units. A county-wide coalition has also released a 10-year plan to end homelessness, with a wish list including 650 units, specifically for the chronically homeless; 178 for a sub-population of the homeless; and 400 for homeless families. It also helped fund a $1 million 8-unit permanent housing project, designed for the chronically homeless, which broke ground earlier this month.

But county government often encounters challenges in achieving its active agenda. New Jersey is a home-rule state, meaning municipalities are self-governing, Mearns adds. The county can only offer incentives through tax abatements, zoning or board of adjustment ordinances, and by providing resolutions needed to apply for state funds.

And not all elected officials in the region feel the need for more affordable housing. Councilman Michael Lenz of Hoboken’s 3rd Ward feels there is already enough and building more will not alleviate homelessness.

“It’s not unlike parking. People say you can solve the parking problem in Hoboken by building more garages,” Lenz says. “But to the degree that you build more garages, more people bring cars into town. Homelessness is not a local problem.”

Suzanne Byrne, executive director at the York Street Project, could not disagree more.

“Homelessness can be addressed locally,” Byrne says. “[It can be done] simply by passing local ordinances.”

Byrne is referring specifically to inclusionary zoning ordinances — currently in place in Bayonne and Weehawken, but not in Jersey City, Hoboken or Union City — that require a percentage of all new development to be affordable.

Still, Mearns admits that for some people, particularly those living at the Palisades, affordable housing may not be affordable enough.

“We prioritize all of our projects to those earning 50 percent of area median income — that’s the county’s public policy,” she says. “Is there a population that is lower than 50 percent of area median income? Absolutely.” (Hudson County’s median household income is just over $40,000.)

Additionally, some of the restrictions that come with using federal money can further complicate housing for people such as the residents of the Palisades community.

“When you are dealing with federal dollars, in order to place them in an appropriate unit for their earnings, they need to document their earnings for you,” Mearns says. “Typically, an undocumented population or intermittent working population, like those living in the Palisades, is best served at the shelters.”

But Maysonet’s world does not converge at the shelter.

Part of the enclave’s charm is its secrecy to the world above. The land is heavily wooded and fenced in by cement retaining walls and metal gates. The descent is treacherously steep. But to those who brave the climb and, more importantly, can wrangle past gatekeepers who protect against intruders — visits are by invitation only — an almost magical world emerges. Tiny homes, some two stories high, some painted bright pinks and blues, are built in the side of the cliff. The trees are adorned with ornaments; art is carved into the barks of the wood.

But what keeps people in the Palisades, more than just its exclusivity, is the rich social network it offers to its inhabitants.

Maysonet’s feelings about the Palisades are complex. In the same breath she longs to leave, but she has undoubtedly grown sentimental about her life here. She feels like a mother to her community, she says. Just outside of her shanty door sits a makeshift kitchen, fueled by firewood, replete with boilerplates and adorned with a vase of fresh flowers. Each night she feeds four other people.

“I make quick stuff, chop meat, rice for everybody — it’s too cold to be cooking out there,” Maysonet says. “I like cooking. When I have my own place, I can do all kinds of meals for myself.”

In return, the others perform chores, like fetching water for drinking and cooking, and gathering wood for fire. One of the men is also her means of protection, keeping away unwanted visitors and volatile drug addicts who convene a ways up the hill. Unfortunately, much of the drug activity that takes place at the Palisades happens within a small segment of the population that has come to misrepresent its other residents, Maysonet says.

In response to growing community opposition to those who make the Palisades their home, Hudson County Police Chief John Bartucci appeared at a recent Washington Park Association meeting to address the situation. Homelessness, it seems, isn’t a local problem, until the homeless become a problem to the locals. Some were concerned about the drug use, others about the fires Palisades residents build to stay warm. The result was a county-sponsored “clean-up” that removed many of the homes along the cliff.

“We didn’t want to create any problems,” Bartucci says. “Rather than have law enforcement people in uniforms speak to these people, Tom Harrigan went and spoke to the people living there.”

Like Kuzas, PERC director Harrigan has developed close relationships with the Palisades residents. He feeds many of them nightly at his shelter’s soup kitchen. He said the clean-up was “very tactful.”

“Carol Ann Wilson [Hudson County director of Health and Human Services] made sure that all of these people were treated well, that none were abused or mistreated,” says Harrigan. “But many of the people living there refuse shelter. They resist a lot of the restrictions.”

Kuzas, however, has mixed feelings about the benefits of clean-ups.

“When you’re making choices like that for the community — people do pay taxes and have a voice — they have a right for that removal,” she says.

While she is mindful of the potential safety risk the homeless can pose to the surrounding neighborhood, Kuzas sees little use in the county-sponsored yearly clean-up, as residents usually return shortly after. She also feels the locals misunderstand the unique outreach–a more patient and circumstance-based kind–the Palisades requires.

“It’s been a long, slow process to get them appointments, to get them resources, to get them social service, to get them Medicaid,” Kuzas says.

There are also plans to rebuild the 14th Street viaduct over the next three years, and construction will begin next year, according to Ward D councilman Bill Gaughan. The city of Hoboken also has plans to create a public park beneath the viaduct. Gaughan says that the homeless community will not be displaced by the construction efforts. But Kuzas fears that once the land becomes a public space, more community members, who don’t understand the complex needs of the Palisades population, will become alarmed. The announcement of the construction project, for her, is the starting gun in a race to secure housing for people such as Maysonet. But in the midst of crises in housing and the economy, it is an uphill battle far steeper than the Palisades themselves.

“[Local elected officials] can help. They can help more. They really can look in the subject,” Maysonet says. “There’s a lot of us out here that really want an apartment and change [in] lifestyle. There’s a lot of them that don’t. What can I say?”

Jaclyn Cherubini (pictured above) is not being evasive when she tells reporters that she doesn’t know who the “new homeless” are. She hates the term. For one, it’s presumptuous.

“I don’t know what your question is. What is ‘new homeless’?” she says. “Homeless is homeless — upper, middle, lower class. It can happen to anyone at any time.”

Cherubini, through bubble and bust, has been the executive director of Hoboken Shelter for the past five years. She first heard the term last year in a news report about nationwide appearances of “tent cities,” or recession- and foreclosure-related homeless enclaves. But tent cities, Cherubini scoffs, are nothing new to these parts. There’s been one along the Palisade between Hoboken and Jersey City since the ’80s.

But that is the danger, she points out, that comes with terms like new homeless — it creates a class of “old homeless,” as if there were such a thing, who are pushed off the radar and out of public dialogue.

“How does a stockbroker become homeless?” Cherubini says. “That’s what people think about.”

But no one thinks about those already living on the fringe. Like swimmers in a riptide, they are getting sucked back into a cycle of substandard living. Meanwhile traditional lifelines, like housing subsidies, are long gone. The only thing “new” about homelessness, in these times, is how nearly impossible it is to escape.

There are three shelters in Hudson County that have, in total, 170 beds. There are 80 beds at St. Lucy’s Shelter in Jersey City; 50 at the Hoboken Shelter; and 40 at Palisades Emergency Residence Corporation (PERC) in Union City.

But according to the last Point-in-Time count, an annual census of the homeless sponsored by the Department of Housing and Urban Development each January, there are 1,779 individuals without shelter in Hudson County. And that number is a gross underestimate: The true number is at least double that amount, according to Kristen Green, program director for Housing Assistance in the Hudson County Division of Housing and Community Development.

“You have to consider the circumstance of last year’s count — that it took place during a snowstorm,” Green says. “But you also have to factor in the places we went to and the amount of people you can find in one day.”

A scarcity of beds in the region is made even scarcer when residents stay longer. The maximum time residents are allowed to stay varies at each shelter. The average stay at St. Lucy’s and PERC is about two to three months; at the Hoboken Shelter, it‘s six months. But extensions can be granted for good behavior, which is a trend, according to Thomas Harrigan, program director at PERC. He estimates that there has been about a 13-percent increase in the need for shelter beds in the last year.

Part of the reason residents are staying longer is because they’re stuck in a Catch 22 of a plunging job market and a skyrocketing cost of living.

“We live in such an unaffordable area,” says Brenda Pulaski, director of St. Lucy’s shelter. “There’s hardly any place to refer our residents.”

George Jacobs had his own apartment by the time he was 17 years old, a house when he was 18. Now, at 66 years old, he has been homeless twice since 2001. As a retired bus driver, separated from his wife 35 years ago, Jacobs relies mostly on the help of friends for part-time jobs and housing. But good graces run dry.

He returned to St. Lucy’s Shelter three months ago because surviving on retirement benefits alone doesn’t cut it. At his age, with his heart condition and in this job market, supplementary income isn’t easy to come by.

“You don’t get really nothing from retirement. You work your 50 years, and they don’t give you nothing,” Jacobs says. “Life is hard, but when you get my age, ain’t too much you can do to make it easy. Nobody wants to hire you.”

The shelter’s no life at all, he says, but he can’t afford to go elsewhere. Even a single-room occupancy, which costs about $125 dollars weekly, is out of reach. He only earns about $700 dollars in benefits each month, some of which goes to pay for his health insurance.

He dreams of qualifying for a housing subsidy, known as Section 8, offered by the Jersey City Housing Authority. But everyone knows, he laughs, that’s a far-fetched dream: There’s a 10-year waiting list (with 8,000 names) for Section 8 vouchers throughout Hudson County, and the waiting list is closed, except for some specific populations, such as war veterans, according to an employee at the authority’s application selections department.

The reason, partly, is the effect the recession has had on the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) new formula in issuing subsidies. A person receiving a Section 8 voucher now pays 30 percent of his or her gross income toward rent. But because so many people have lost their jobs and have less income to contribute to the formula, housing authorities are paying far more in subsidies and many are unable to take on new clients, according to a source at a local homeless organization who preferred not to be named.

Occasionally, Section 8 vouchers are returned to the Jersey City Housing Authority when recipients begin earning too much income, or for non-compliance or rule violation. But such vouchers must be reserved for people who have been displaced by a massive federal public works project, known as the HOPE VI program, the source says.

HOPE VI, which was created by Congress in 2002, calls for the demolition of “severely distressed” high-rise-style projects, and redevelopment of townhouse-style public housing. But housing units are not replaced at a one-to-one ratio — Congress eliminated that provision of the Housing and Community Development Act in 1998.

According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, a person living in Hudson County has to earn $19 to $20 dollars an hour, working full-time, to afford a studio or single bedroom apartment, while a person earning minimum wage, $7.15 an hour, would have to work 106 to 112 hours a week. But the homeless — many of whom lack education, skills, clean legal records, or, like Jacobs, are living off of insufficient benefits — find it difficult to make close to that, much less find full-time positions.

“Sometimes [employers] give you ten dollars an hour, but you only work four hours. Then you have to worry about transportation to get back to where you’re coming from,” says Dennis Darby, 48, who has lived at St. Lucy’s for the past eight months. “Then you want to buy cigarettes — the money’s gone right there. The next day you’re broke. You’re right back where you started.”

In the past, residents have transitioned out of emergency housing to single-room occupancies. But tenants don’t have the same legal protections, according to PERC’s Harrigan.

“If you only worked a day or two that week, and you don’t have rent by 6 o’clock, by 6:30 pm they can lock you out,” Harrigan says. “I see a lot of people here who get locked out.”

Residents at PERC have traditionally found employment through temporary staffing agencies. But some agencies are no longer accepting applications, and those that do offer considerably less work, Harrigan says. Instead, the homeless often find work off the books, unloading trucks and assisting superintendents. But that can run the risk of getting swindled for a day’s work without recourse, as well as losing general welfare assistance if caught.

The stigma of living in a shelter still impacts job and housing prospects, says Darby, who became homeless eight months ago.

“If you’re [living at] a shelter, they’re not going to hire you because frankly they think you’re up to no good anyway,” he says. “They think you’ll last a couple days, then you’re not going to come in.”

But some of the employment issues that the poor face may be systemic, according to Susanne Byrne, executive director of the York Street Project, which provides housing and education to women and children. She feels the current welfare system, which emphasizes working instead of higher education, is a bit behind the curve.

“People are not being trained for jobs that pay a living wage or offer opportunities for advancement,” Byrne says. “People with college educations are taking many entry-level jobs that used to be occupied by people with high school diplomas.”

“People who were doing sophisticated work, they’re [now] doing the job that I would have done,” says Robert Ortiz, 54, a resident at St. Lucy’s. “I can’t even find job as a dishwasher.”

In September 2006, the Hudson County Alliance to End Homelessness announced a 10-year plan to address the region’s mounting need. The plan includes development of affordable housing units, a homeless trust fund that provides matching funds for homelessness projects and a homeless court that tries those living below the poverty line for misdemeanors, such as hopping turnstiles, replacing monetary fines with community service.

Some homelessness prevention funds are increasing, says Hudson County’s Green. The county recently received $1.5 million in federal stimulus money to help keep people in their homes, with programs like rental assistance. Jersey City, which manages its own fund, received $2 million.

Still, many organizations that serve the homeless are worried about what the Gov. Chris Christie has in store for them, after pledging to cut the state budget without raising taxes.

“On a personal level, not raising taxes is great,” says Byrne. “But on a professional level, my concern is, where are these cuts are going to come from? Are they going to come from programs that serve the poor?”

But the gravest concern of all is the ever-dimming hope of those left teetering on the edge.

“You got a lot of people [at the shelter] much smarter than me and you,” Darby says. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with smartness — it’s about getting a break, and that’s not going to happen. I don’t think it is.”

Photo: Steve Gold

Two Fridays ago, news of a yet another corruption probe, this time led by the Jersey City Police Department, broke (almost satirically) on the same day City Hall held an ethics workshop.

Joseph Castagna, the resigning city health official arrested by the FBI in July, is being investigated for potentially issuing more than 100 illegal food vendor permits — a startling twist in the strange-as-fiction Pushcart Wars plaguing the city for the past few years.

A Battle Brews

For some food vendors, a grueling fifteen hour day leaves only two shots, lunchtime and dinner, to make it all worthwhile.

Just around noon they come to claim their spots, transforming a barren, almost eerie business district into a lively makeshift street market, where vendors greet customers by name. Scents of Indian spices, sizzling tacos and homemade soups suffuse the otherwise cold, briny air howling in from the waterfront.

But on any given day, often at the very peak of lunch, a patrol car slinks ominously by.

“Forty minutes! I’m clocking you!” the officer snarls. That’s lunchtime’s fat lady singing. Hungry and bothered, the crowds disperse. Profitless, the vendors scuttle away.

According to city law, street vendors can stay up to forty minutes in one location and must remain 300 feet away from established eateries. But over the years, law enforcement has grown more lenient as pushcarts and food trucks became almost institutional to the city.

But at some point last year this slumbering, rarely enforced ordinance rose from the dead and began ravaging street vendors with fines and sweeping them out of time-honored locations.

“I’ve been here for four years and never had a problem, now suddenly they start cracking down,” Frank the Flowers* says. “There’s something going on, but when I go to shake the trees in City Hall, I get sent from one to the other.”

Other vendors wonder why a big-city police department is worrying about them in the first place.

“I think the police department has much better things to look into and deal with than other people making an honest living,” Morris the Florist* bemoans. “We are not selling drugs, just food.”

Still others point out the toll the stepped-up enforcement has on patrons.

“It’s wasting the time of the people who come to have lunch here, because they have to go somewhere else,” Chris, the owner of Lucinda Burritos & Tacos, says.

None of the vendors knew exactly why this was all taking place — but they all agreed about who was behind it — the local restaurants.

“They think we are taking their business, so they complain to the cops,” Mohamed Manzoor says, whose brother Abdul owns the Banana Leaf truck.

The economic downturn was likely the tipping point, as budget-minded folks began skimping on lunchtime luxuries, turning to food trucks who offer quality food at cheaper (and gratuity-less) prices. To leverage poor sales, restaurants could shin-kick their newfound competitors — the food trucks — by breathing life into this obscure zombie ordinance. The ensuing crackdowns have crippled street business and wracked the minds of vendors who feel more like vermin than small business owners.

But things weren’t always this way. There once was a time when restaurants and street vendors peacefully coexisted. Quick, cheap street grub in those days couldn’t compete with the culinary flair and high-quality service the restaurants could offer.

Fast-forward to the present: these food trucks aren’t the ones your daddy once knew. They can rival the eateries, utilizing large, commercial kitchens (which foster incredible culinary ingenuity), Twitter pages (providing foodies with regular location updates) and, for larger ones in New York and Los Angeles, even public relations firms.

Over the years, many city ordinances (in New York City, for instance) have evolved along with the food vendor’s entrepreneurial wit to manage the friction between the two interests. That has not been the case with Jersey City, whose ordinance governing “itinerant eating and drinking establishments” dates back to 1971. With the exception of a relatively minor amendment in May 2006, the bulk of it has remained unchanged.

Taking on City Hall

One vendor, Abdul Manzoor, decided to take a stand. He and his brother began showing up at City Council meetings, pleading to legislators to reform the ordinance. Doing so, they became de facto spokespersons for the others vendors, who until then, fearing repercussion, only bit their lips and blustered in the dark.

At several meetings since April 2008, the City Council said all the right things, as politicians are apt to do, but the vendor’s entreaties bore no real fruit. Council members were being pulled with equal force on both sides.

The restaurants cried that reform would unfairly rig the system in the vendors’ favor. Furthermore, they argued, by subsidizing the vendors, the city was only shooting itself in the foot, and would miss out on tax revenue (namely, sales tax) and other economic perks their eateries uniquely provide.

“It’s not fair, and it’s not fair for the township itself,” Abha Azrawal, who owns the downtown Indian restaurant Amiya, says. “We are paying sales taxes, we are paying rent. We provide a lot of employment for the township.”

She says that the city is absolutely right to enforce its tough food truck ordinance. But Frank the Flowers thinks that’s bologna — something he doesn’t happen to sell.

“We have our expenses too. The only thing is, we have found a way to sell cheaper than they are,” he says. “And at the same time, if you talk to the people, the food is not good at those restaurants and people love our food.”

None of the vendors have so little sympathy for the restaurants as Mohamed Manzoor, who used to own one, until rent inflation, not food vendors, drove him out of business. He owned, incidentally, a Banana Leaf on Lexington Avenue, where he waged in “healthy competition” daily with an Indian food vendor parked at the corner of his street.

“We could not tell him he was obstructing our business. If he did well, then he did well,” he reasons. “I had to be confident in what I am serving to the people. If restaurants make really good food, the customers will come.”

This political tug-of-war finally seemed to tilt in the vendors favor at the July 15 City Council meeting (notably the last meeting held before the FBI’s corruption net was cast).

Adbul Manzoor’s plea took on a whole new volume and light, now fortified by a petition — started not by the vendors themselves, but a city resident — which was distributed to each council member through City Clerk Robert Byrne. It raised eyebrows.

Niyant Dalal, a Jersey City resident, works for an international broker in Exchange Place. He first started noticing some food trucks disappearing in May. By June, they had become such a regular occurrence, it drove him to spark what he calls a “hyperlocal movement” by posting “Save the Food Trucks of Jersey City” at petitiononline.com and petitionspot.com.

“The food trucks are an essential part [of] Jersey City’s food landscape providing great food at affordable prices,” the petition, which has tallied 350 names thus far, reads. “In tough and uncertain times like these, shouldn’t we have only more of these options available to us?”

Triumph seemed imminent as the City Council set a September deadline for unveiling a new ordinance. A source from City Hall confirmed in early August that the city’s legal department was at work drafting a new ordinance, reviewing neighboring municipalities as templates.

But all of that has now gone up in smoke. With the news of the JCPD’s Castagna probe, the vendors’ plight is now in limbo.

“We are not in a place today to make any comprehensive change,” Ward E councilman Steven Fulop says. “That ordinance needs wholesale changes, ” instead of the “band-aid approach” the city was previously attempting, he insists.

At this week’s City Council meeting, Manzoor was back to see what kind of progress the city had made. Corporation counsel Bill Matsikoudis said there have been “some roadblocks” but the Law Department was working on something. “I’m hopeful that in the next 60 days we can come forward with a truly comprehensive ordinance,” he said.

The Counterfeiter

Castagna’s alleged dirty dealings are a watershed. Essentially, what he has done is turn the health department in a municipal mint, flooding the city’s streets with counterfeit permits, thereby depreciating the value of those legitimately obtained.

There’s substantial value in an itinerant license. A pushcart, for instance, might be worth about $1,000 on its own, but combined with an itinerant license it becomes a small annuity. It’s like putting a hotel on Baltic Avenue.

But, unlike in other cities, itinerant licenses do not designate spaces for food vendors. So, mobile as they are, they flock to where the money is. Downtown is now crawling with an absurd surplus of vendors. They have a difficult time finding profitable locations, not only within legal distance from restaurants, but within enough distance from each other.

“He started coming six feet behind me in Newport, which I did not like,” Frank the Flowers says of a food vendor who sells a similar style of cuisine. “If you want to make your identity go around the corner, but don’t stand behind me.”

This has created tension within the food truck community at the very time it needs unity to lobby for a revision of the ordinance.

For his part, Fulop proposes a way to help food carts thrive throughout the entire city — and perhaps bring in a bit more revenue for the city.

“The city should be taking an approach where we’re actually assigning vendors different locations, and selling those locations at rates that are consistent with what that location yields versus other ones,” he says.

City spokesperson Jennifer Morrill confirmed that’s just what the Law Department is working on — a process where vendors could bid on licenses for different locations around the city.

Aftermath

On Tuesday, Sept. 1, it came to light that Frank the Flowers’ permit was among the 100 illegal ones allegedly issued by Castagna.

He says that on Aug. 31 someone from the fire department made the rounds, and told him that he was only allowed to operate until his permit expired in January. After that, he was told he would not be able to reinstate, nor get reimbursed for, the $2,300 permit he purchased from the city.

“It’s not the people’s fault,” Frank says. “We came to the right place to get our permits.”

So what’s next for Frank? “Hallelujah, we sue!,” he exclaims.

To avoid the backlash of litigation, Fulop proposes an audit — which the city says it has already started — as a more deliberate way of dealing with illegal permit holders.

“The goal is to have all the vendors come in, and pick through when they were licensed and how they were licensed,” he says. “We need to understand who and where we want and how many, from there we need to recertify.”

As for Castagna, he has put in his request to resign. If his papers are approved, he’ll get a pension of $60,740 a year and one-time lump payment of $84,414. This, despite being under investigation on two fronts.

And there’s a lesson that surely wasn’t covered at the city’s recent ethics workshop — not only can crime pay, but it can offer a hefty pension.

* Frank the Flowers and Morris the Florist are both food truck operators who work in Jersey City; they asked for anonymity for fear of being targeted by the city and being further singled out by local restaurant owners. (For the names, a hat tip goes to Jean Merrill’s 1964 children’s book The Pushcart War.)

On July 1, public health activists breathed a sigh of relief as Hyacinth AIDS Foundation launched Jersey City’s first-ever syringe access program, also known as needle exchange. It is the fifth of six eligible pilot programs allowed under state legislation.

With little fanfare — a flyer pinned to a bulletin board — the Puerto Rican Family Institute, at 40 Journal Square, became the first vendor. Hudson Pride Connections, as well as Hyacinth’s mobile HIV testing unit, will soon follow suit.

The program, currently operating 1.5 days per week, is free and anonymous. Syringes, both intravenous and subcutaneous, ranging in barrel size, thickness and length, are available, along with containers for safe transport of injection equipment and harm reduction apparatus.

The program is sorely needed in Jersey City, which for a time in the mid-90s had the highest per capita AIDS rate in the nation, at 138.1 infected individuals per 100,000 residents. Currently, 38 percent of the city’s cumulative HIV/AIDS cases are a result of intravenous drug use, more than any other method of transmission.

For several decades, research has shown that programs allowing people to access free, clean syringes — without fear of prosecution — reduce transmission of blood-born pathogens and quell epidemics like HIV.

Jersey City’s high transmission rate for injection drug use mirrors the rate across New Jersey, which is twice the national average.

“The majority of our epidemic has always been rooted in injection drug use,” Axel Torres-Marrero, senior director of public policy at Hyacinth, explains.

The reason is due largely to the unique geographic landscape of New Jersey. Lacking one major metropolitan area like New York City or Philadelphia, our state proliferates in mid-sized cities. These urban centers, large enough to foster urban strife rampant in the 80s and 90s, have been devastated by dirty needles — and the subsequent HIV/AIDS infections those needles bring.

“You’d be hard pressed to find another state where you can name six or seven cites that were basically living out a plague,” Torres-Marrero says.

Some may wonder how Jersey City, with chart-topping transmission rates, became the last of five cities, in the last state in the country, to implement a needle exchange program. But most activists hold that to frame the question this way is disingenuous.

Willing municipalities had no real options until syringe access legislation was passed at the state level. New Jersey was the last state in the nation to pass such legislation in December 2006 — and it was a process fraught with challenges, as a 2006 report by JCI‘s Shane Smith shows.

Since the state finally came on board, five cities have already launched programs in only 2.5 years’ time — no small feat, according to Roseanne Scotti, director of the New Jersey Drug Policy Alliance.

“Pennsylvania, our next door neighbor, has had syringe access programs since 1992,” Scotti says by way of comparison. “To this day they only have two — one in Philadelphia and one in Pittsburgh — and that’s after 15 years.”

A Wing and a Prayer

Identifying resources has been the main obstacle to launching the Jersey City program, and continues to be moving forward. Lacking subsidies from the state and city, and with a federal ban on funding syringe access, a scramble to find more resources leaves little time to rest on laurels.

“We are starting this program on a wing and a prayer,” Hyacinth executive director Kathy Ahearn O’Brien says. “We have some initial startup money that will last us a year, but after that, who knows?”

The current budget for the program is “piecemeal,” according to O’Brien. Each day holds pending word from this or that foundation. The program is currently operating on a single one-year grant of $47,000 from the Drug Policy Alliance via the Irene Diamond Fund, as well as Hyacinth’s in-kind donation of staff-time.

But Jersey City’s trials are not unique. “We don’t have a set budget either,” Jerome King, executive director of Well of Hope, which operates Paterson’s program, says. “It all depends on how we get funds; it’s been sporadic.”

In essence, the same sites in different cites are competing for the same small pool of money, according to Torres-Marrero. What’s more, advocates say there’s a risk that funding may not meet New Jersey’s needs in the future.

“It really doesn’t [even] meet the need now as all the programs are running on shoestring budgets,” Scott says. “Our hope is that someday soon the state will step up and provide at least a little funding for the programs.”

After three years, syringe access pilots will be eligible for state funding, but even then there are no guarantees. Many states around the country continue to balk at this step; California, despite having offered services for a decade, only began funding it two years ago.

But to deny funding for harm-reduction programs like syringe access — even in light of ubiquitous state budget crises — is “pennywise but pound foolish,” in Scotti’s view.

“Syringe access programs are very cost effective,” she adds. “A clean syringe costs about ten cents. Lifetime AIDS care costs more than $618,000 per person.”

There may also be a grain of hope at the federal level, as President Obama has pledged support for repealing the ban on funding syringe access. While he has not yet acted on that pledge, you can expect strong advocacy from Thomas Frieden, head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and Obama’s drug czar Gil Kerlikowske, who supported needle-exchange as a police chief in Seattle.

City Politics

Even though it took Jersey City a few years to get the program rolling, it turns out that city politics was the least of all hurdles. The city has a long history of supporting syringe access that precedes the passing of state legislation, with a number of public health-minded city lawmakers leading the charge.

Assemblyman L. Harvey Smith, a city council member from 1993-2005 and a former drug and alcohol counselor, joined forces with current council president Mariano Vega to push local legislation.

Vega, who holds a graduate degree in human services, credits his days working at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey for shaping his views 24 years ago.

“The best medical minds were recommending this action in Newark,” Vega says. “I remember thinking that if I ever was in a policy position, I would support this effort.”

In 1999, urged by a resolution by the Hudson County HIV/AIDS Planning Council, the City Council unanimously passed a resolution to pressure the state government to act. It was only the second resolution of its kind in the state.

The city then was forced to wait seven years for the Bloodborne Disease Harm Reduction Act to pass. Some advocates credit local gay rights’ activists for keeping the issue out front during this time and holding politicians’ feet to the fire.

During the 2004 special municipal election, just as the gay community began branding itself as a voting bloc, Jersey City Lesbian and Gay Outreach (JCLGO) held the first Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Candidates Forum and made sure to include a question on needle-exchange.

“HIV/AIDS has so disparately affected the LGBT community, so we have historically taken leadership on this issue,” says Walt Boraczek, who was JCLGO’s director at the time and now heads the Hudson Diversity Action Council. “But our City Council was very progressive.”

The city ordinance to bring one of the state’s pilot programs to Jersey City passed unanimously in 2007 with little sustained opposition. But bungled deadlines and ham-fisted mayoral remarks still cast a lone shroud over that bold action.

Opposition to having city taxpayers foot the bill for syringe access (ill-conceived, as private sources were ultimately used) and to a state-sanctioned drug treatment mobile unit (Mayor Jerramiah Healy, despite his general support for needle exchange, compared the mobile unit to an ice cream truck for drug users in 2007) caused city government to flounder as the state’s application deadline passed.

Hindsight is 20/20

In November 2007, Atlantic City launched the first New Jersey syringe access pilot. Camden followed suit months later, with Newark and Paterson shortly in tow. Jersey City should benefit from the hindsight of watching its predecessors.

By and large, the communities that have syringe access pilots reported very little community opposition. But Jersey City’s advocates, like Hyacinth’s Veronica Sanders, are armed and resolute.

“As long as people try to make this a non-public health issue, we will have to keep fighting,” Sanders says. “We can prevent infection, save lives and save money for the state — we need to stay focused on that.”

Existing programs are also more or less pleased by how things have played out in the media. Only Atlantic City took the brunt of what that city health commissioner Ron Cash calls a “bogus” report in the Atlantic City Press that criticized the program for not linking participants into drug treatment facilities.

“The addiction service side is a wonderful part of it,” Cash says, “but our priority is stopping the spread of infection.”

Cash also recommends that program administrators work closely with law enforcement. “Start that early and quick and often,” he says, “so there won’t be any miscommunications about what their expectations are.”

Although registration cards are issued to identify participants to police officers, reports still linger of drug paraphernalia charges being issued — a potential barrier to successful programs.

Hyacinth has already met with Jersey City police chief Tom Comey, a strategy recommended by the New Jersey Drug Policy Alliance. But broader outreach would merit greater gains, as the paraphernalia charges rarely occur within host cities, but in outlying municipalities.

Genny Fulco, who manages the syringe access program at the Camden Area Health Education Center, says other cities’ officers just might not understand the particulars of the law.

“[They] may not know about the program, or not read the card carefully, or misunderstand that this a statewide law that allows people to carry syringes,” she says, “not just a local law that allows them to carry them in the city where the program is operating.”

A Bittersweet Victory

Despite the challenges before and beyond, each new syringe access pilot launched is a bittersweet victory that, in its own way, honors activists late and living, at-large and local, who paved the way.

Some may pause to honor the late state Sen. Wynona Lipman, who introduced the first syringe access bill in 1991-1992.

Or Riki Jacobs of Hyacinth AIDS Foundation, who barely missed seeing her fifteen years of advocacy bear fruit in Jersey City, passing away four months ago.

Or grassroots heroes like Diana McCague, who was arrested in 1998 for operating an underground needle exchange in New Brunswick.

Or state Sen. Nia Gill, who held up judicial appointments in her district to push the state bill. Or Assembly Speaker Joe Roberts, or state Sen. Joe Vitale, or Gov. Jon Corzine and countless others.

But not least to be honored are the 15,000 people needlessly lost to injection-related HIV in New Jersey and the 15,000 who are living with HIV/AIDS contracted from dirty needles.