New York State housing courts typically deal with landlord repairs as a third-party. But now the Harlem Community Justice Center (HCJC) will understand what it means to be a tenant.
The problem-solving court operates out of the Harlem Courthouse, a federally-registered landmark in East Harlem undergoing extensive repairs from the city — the building’s owner — due to age and deterioration. On-site programming offered by the HCJC was shuttered during the COVID-19 pandemic. Just two services, an eviction prevention help center and a reentry program for healthcare referrals, returned and remain today as “only a small corner of the building is presently usable.”
But the New York State Chief Judge Rowan Wilson sees an opportunity to overhaul the HCJC as construction continues. The state’s top justice recently appointed a working group tasked with restoring and reopening the community court “to effectively respond to the justice needs of Harlem residents.”
“Because the physical plan is in such terrible shape, it also gives you a chance to re-imagine how you lay out the space in the building,” said Wilson over a video call interview. “And you can lay it out in a way that reflects what you want the space to be. So you can think, first, programmatically, what is it we’d like to do here?
“And you’re not constrained so much by what’s in the building, with a couple of exceptions. There are two courtrooms on two different floors and it makes sense to keep those courtrooms as courtrooms. They’re both beautiful courtrooms. They’re in bad shape [and] one of them is being rebuilt now.”
A court for the community
The HCJC moved into East Harlem on 121st Street at the turn of the century as one of several problem-solving courts jointly established by the non-profit Center for Justice Innovation (CJI) and the state’s court system.
As the name suggests, problem-solving courts attempt to solve the problems causing people to fall into the criminal justice system. Some, like the Midtown Community Court, directly hear criminal cases in order to divert those accused of low-level offenses toward services like treatment and mediation. But all in all, the goal is to invest “at the front.”
“We have a lot of flexibility in what cases we send to a court and then in how we handle them,” said Wilson. “Obviously, if you shoot somebody, you’re probably not going to wind up in [a] Manhattan Community Justice Center, but not out of the question that you’re arrested for possessing a firearm that you might be diverted that way…it really [is about] not using the criminal justice system or the court system more generally, to make people’s lives worse than they already are.”
The HCJC only handles civil cases and is best known for housing assistance, but offered prevention and entry programming like Men’s Empowerment and Youth Project Reset to similarly address underlying factors contributing to crime before the pandemic.
“These community courts that have came into existence around the year 2000 — some a couple years before, some a couple years later — really helped to show that a problem-solving approach to justice that focuses on helping people address the needs that are bringing them into the system is the answer for making sure that they then don’t come back,” said Jessica Yager, CJI’s senior director of Housing Justice Initiatives.
Yager says Harlemites still frequently enlist HCJC services despite the current renovations. 3,151 visits were logged last year, mostly resolving lease renewals and tenant grievance issues or assistance with navigating the court filing process.
Due to the construction, the HCJC’s housing court is held downtown at the Manhattan Civil Court in Chinatown. However, the “free-standing” part still exclusively hears cases from the East Harlem and Harlem catchment area. They are making it work. But it certainly helps to be physically located uptown.
“There’s still value in the judge, seeing the same tenants, the same landlords [and] understanding the community,” said Yager. “And that can certainly happen even if you’re not physically located there. but it certainly helps to be physically located. First of all, much easier for people to access. And a lot of the folks that we have coming into the Justice Center now for help with housing, are people with mobility issues, people who are elderly, people for whom it’s hard to go downtown.
“And also people are busy so making it easier for people to show up in court is a real value that our justice centers bring to our work…but the other benefit of having the court on site is that you then have the benefit of the wraparound services right there.”
Meet the working group
April 1 marked the working group’s first meeting. Wilson appointed former New York Supreme Court judge Rolando Acosta and current New York Supreme Court judge Ta-Tanisha James to co-chair the taskforce. Both once presided over the HCJC part.
“This has to be an organic process [from the] bottom up,” said Acosta. “The community has to be in a position to identify the issues they want us to focus on … back in the 2000s when I started, we focused on a re-entry program particularly involving youth that [were] returning to the community [which] can sometimes be controversial, but these are our kids. I [have] lived in Upper Manhattan since I immigrated.
“[In] the Upper Manhattan communities, Black and Brown kids need help reintegrating into our community and we got to do our share of the work. So that’s what that building could be doing.”
Acosta and Judge James will oversee a wide range of stakeholders from Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, State Attorney General Letitia James to Neighborhood Defenders managing director Piyali Basak and Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice director Deanna Logan.
But they maintain input from the East Harlem and Harlem community will dictate what HCJC’s reopening ends up like.
“As a public defender office for Harlem, [I] can sort of say what is needed based on what we’re seeing,” said Basak. “But I think this whole project needs to be shaped by the community. I proposed that at the first meeting, and we are thinking about ways to do that and engaging with community forums.”
According to Yager, Harlemites can currently reach out to involved representatives like assemblymember Eddie Gibbs or state senator Cordell Cleare to provide input.
D.A. Bragg told the Amsterdam News he is excited to participate in the working group, but echoed the need to design the services around community feedback.
“Having resources running in a community that’s been deeply affected by the system presents great promise,” said Bragg over the phone. “Particularly the process of the chief judge has set forth to get meaningful, sustained input from the community as to various needs. I think it’s got great promise, so I’m excited to be a part of it as district attorney and also as a lifelong Harlem [resident].”
“We are excited to explore with our stakeholders the reimagined use of the Harlem Community Justice Center to a space that offers a more robust operation for the community,” added Logan over email. “We look forward to strengthening access to justice within this beautiful historic location, which will service the needs of the community inclusive of justice-impacted individuals — as well as younger and aging New Yorkers alike — regardless of court involvement.”
‘One of the most impressive buildings in East Harlem’
While the HCJC intends to prevent incarceration, the Harlem Courthouse once housed a jail that remains largely untouched since the building first went dormant in 1961. Architecture firm Thom & Wilson designed the structure in Romanesque Revival-style sometime between 1891 and 1893 with a red brick facade trimmed with bluestone and terra cotta over a granite base.
The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission describes the Harlem Courthouse as “one of the most impressive buildings in East Harlem.” But age comes before beauty and significant portions of the building were unusable even before the pandemic.
“There were parts of it that really were completely uninhabitable,” said Wilson. “There’s asbestos in the building, and it shut down for a substantial period of time until 1999-2000. And then what they did is they started using some of the spaces that were still usable. They put up makeshift walls to create office spaces and there was one courtroom that was usable.
“It was almost like the court system and CJI were squatting in the habitable parts of the building, and that ran as long as it could. Then once COVID hit, almost everything shut down.”
The reimagining begins
While Wilson maintains community input will dictate much of the programming, he provides clear intentions for the HCJC. He says most people do not want to go to a traditional court, so “the first piece of this vision is to make this building a place people in the community would like to be.”
Since the courtrooms are on the upper floors, Wilson believes fashioning the ground floor as a multi-purpose space for community-related events would help make the building feel more publicly accessible. If successful, most people will not feel like they’re at court and those who do will see the building as a space “where they can get their problems resolved.”
Acosta sees his role as a facilitator and does not “want to put limitations” on the working group despite his alacrity for the HCJC. He says the taskforce boasts many idealists who have already provided him with ambitious ideas. But he knows many traditionalists are still out there hoping to “do things the way we’ve always done it.”
“Let’s deal with the underlying causes of criminality, rather than react as a system once a crime has been committed,” said Acosta. “I know it sounds a little simplistic, but the definition of insanity [is] you keep doing things the same way and expecting a different result…we should all be engaged in a proactive approach to dispensing justice, rather than continuing to do the things the same way we did 200 years ago.”
Tandy Lau is a Report for America corps member who writes about public safety for the Amsterdam News. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep him writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://bit.ly/amnews1.