Homeless People, Peopleless Homes
Tucker, William
William Tucker HOMELESS PEOPLE, PEOPLELESS HOMES No vacancy in New York City. T n 1937, Fitzroy Maclean, a British New York City today practices its buildings containing about 50,000 vacancy...
...nfortunately, this kind of market produces very different results for different classes of people...
...Soon they will try to get the daughter's name onthe lease so that the apartment will stay in the family for another generation...
...Jean Stein, heir to the MCI fortune, pays $1241.39 for ten rooms overlooking Central Park...
...3. As a result, rich landlords write off their losses...
...But basically rent controls don't hurt me that much...
...They can't even add or subtract...
...Satan may be mighty, but God is almighty- Honey, I've got news for you—I'm just learning to use my power...
...They say, 'I never owned nothin' from nothin...
...A roving patrol from a neighborhood organization thought he was trying to muscle in on their territory...
...The neighborhood groups—all government funded—are basically in the housing business themselves, often operating a dozen buildings at a time under 7-A...
...Katherine Ricks found this out...
...The city's Department of Hous- city is going to fix up these buildings But n the meantime, the whole himself standing in Red Square observ- ing Preservation and Development to help alleviate New York's monstrous problem of putting real people in real ing the annual parade...
...Washington hasn't given us enough 11 1, I , .,4-,' -,, Ai 1 I 14 N .' Sri I III...
...For $37,000 couldn't 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 somebody build them a house...
...What I lose here I make up somewhere else...
...One of the Manocherian Brothers' possessions is 135 Central Park West, a magnificent ocean-liner of a building with stunning museum-sized apartments that could easily command five to ten thousand dollars a month on the open market...
...1-.,..,r...
...Here you have hit upon the nub of New York's housing problems...
...He has ..;;Itki /, i 111," -1 1 I 1 iq V: -_ „7,-', ,i ,,, _ , ,47,-,,,_,'-‘‘ir^ November when President Reagan ‘',I .,.-` II 1I• ,411...
...In many areas, the politically powerful neighborhood groups do not want any more private ownership, period...
...A t the other end of the spectrum you will find someone like Katherine Ricks...
...dowsills...
...Although tenants are allowed to buy their apartments for theridiculously low price of $250, they can't resell them without turning 40 percent of the profits back to the city government and another 30 percent to the cooperative corporation...
...The city is already investing billions in upper-income housing...
...They would carry their wrenches in their back pockets...
...Consequently his rent roll looks like this: Carly Simon pays $2208.75 for ten rooms overlooking Central Park...
...State Senator Manfred Ohrenstein pays $1704.22 for eleven rooms overlooking Central Park...
...Tenants, it is argued, will care for their buildings where landlords will not...
...This is no idle threat...
...After all, it's our home," they will say...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 19 Manocherian's tenants are all rent regulated...
...The city government—plus the hordes of tenant organizers and community activists—are slowly strangling private housing...
...Tenant ownership here means giving away city-owned buildings to their tenants...
...All this is done to protect buildings from "absentee owners" and "speculators...
...A 1986 report by the city's Department of Investigation found that 50 percent of the rents collected by 7-A administrators were unaccounted for...
...Why should I buy my apartment?' Here we're offering them this golden opportunity—this Golden Opportunity—and the damned fools won't take it...
...The showcase is the Tenant Interim Leasing Program (TIL), already carried out in about 350 city-owned buildings...
...As the 7-A program reveals, even the city government itself cannot maintain these buildings on the regulated rents...
...As soon as her tenants heard the news, they ran down to the Junction College Development Corporation, one of New York's ubiquitous "neighborhood preservation companies" that spend their time organizing tenants and starting rent strikes—with a continuing flow of city, state, and federal funds...
...The day after her building was put into 7-A administration, she came back to find that Toby Sanchez had already taken over her apartment...
...Even then, according to deputy commissioner Harold Schultz, who supervises the program, "the rents almost never provide enough money to repair the building...
...After all, with vacancy rates at 2 percent, building rental housing in New York should be one of the safest investments in the country...
...One person I met almost got beat up one night when he plastered a vacant building with a sign advertising a rock concert...
...President...
...In fact, 80 percent own fewer than fifty units and 45 percent own fewer than ten...
...I found the place was a flophouse," she said...
...As the battal- (HPD) currently owns 5,324 vacant housing shortage—which has lowered buildings is too complicated plicapted and unhyions of soldiers marched by, Maclean t gienic...
...In fact, the rule of thumb in many parts of New York has become that you really can't make money renting a building...
...So HPD permits itself to "restructure" the rents in order to cover basic operating costs—once again, without making mortgage and tax payments...
...These developments will continue to make New Yorkers not only the most highly taxed and indebted but the most thoroughly socialized people in the nation...
...Runyon is a feisty 72-year-old with a legendary reputation among New York housing activists...
...I - 17^i7 ,,, ; (/ ) /11 %-,•p.-,.4k 4t four ') N \', '.1...
...In this little scale model of urban land reform, tenants in buildings that have been through the 7-A process are eventually allowed to buy their apartments as cooperatives for $250 apiece—after they have demonstrated for two years that they can run the building...
...It's much better to keep up the appearance that everything is going well and hope that in a few years some sucker will come along and take the building off your hands...
...This MX missile-sized effort will be financed completely out of taxes and the various city and state banking corporations and development authorities that operate off-budget and create a tremendous burden of public debt (it was the collapse of one of these authorities in 1974 that led to New York City's bankruptcy...
...Phillip Langer, a Broadway producer, pays $1196.36 for six rooms overlooking Central Park...
...I told people they were going to have to start paying rent or get out...
...Even Sanchez is willing to admit that Ricks's tenants were a "wily bunch," thoroughly familiar with the state housing laws that allow tenants to withhold rents if a building contains even a few minor housing-code violations...
...Rent control, however, drives a number of marginal landlords out of business...
...Make no mistake, there are thousands and thousands of winners under rent control...
...Jim '--111111 - mmmmmm I mm IOW MEI 111111111111MIMINIMLIIIV" ^441111111.1111 IMIZIAIWWWW^11...
...In general, the people who make out best are those who have exploitable landlords—the kind who can carry their tenants year after year without going under...
...It is the poor landlords' buildings that end up with the painted flowerpots in the windows...
...101111111110 ii I' f ' 1111111 1111 -11111111111111-1The dead-in-the-water, Soviet-style stalemate in New York's housing economy is a strong lesson to the 200-or-so other American cities that are already tiptoeing into rent control...
...T he 7-A administration program now plays such a large part in New York's housing—and typifies so much of the city government's housing philosophy—that it is worth describing here at length...
...On May 1, he found, reality...
...It works for us," they will say...
...I couldn't even find anybody who had a lease...
...All they know is welfare," she said...
...He is Jeffrey Manocherian, the second generation of the Manocherian Brothers, one of New York's oldest families of developers...
...In addition, he is not subjected to the rule that rent cannot be collected while there are housing code violations...
...I never owned a building before," said Ricks, who is black...
...They're going to hear from me again...
...Why shouldn't it work for everybody...
...Typically, they are affluent tenants with small families who have been able to stay in the same apartment for many years...
...The Battery Park City project, just completed, has provided subsidized housing for people with incomes up to $75,000...
...You see, it isn't just that New York City has the country's oldest and most highly evolved system of rent controls...
...Obligingly enough, the tenants had made a habit of breaking windows and stealing lightbulbs just to make sure there would be plenty of violations when the housing inspectors finally came around...
...The city government itself is already New York's largest landlord, owning 15 percent of the housing stock...
...But they do not produce just housing shortages...
...Vacant buildings are strung with huge banners proclaiming ownership by the various organizations...
...While the ownership provides little equity build-up, the "restructured" monthly maintenance fees are higher than the old regulated rents...
...By then—in 95 percent of all cases—the landlord has fallen hopelessly behind on property taxes and the city has taken the building in rem ("as a thing") for back taxes...
...They aren't even required to carry general insurance on the building...
...In selecting trainees, HPD prefersthat they "bring a building with them"—meaning they should already be involved in a rent strike or tenant action that can quickly lead to a 7-A takeover...
...The reason is simple...
...Councilwoman Miriam Friedlander, an overt socialist who represents the Lower East Side, has announced there will be no more sales of city-owned buildings to private owners in her district...
...Thus, the TIL program contains no real advantages and several disadvantages...
...But I'm handy...
...When HPD does occasionally auction a few properties back to private owners, it will not let them go without freighting them with social purpose...
...But in New York, in rem buildings have become a prized asset, with neighborhood organizations and the city government constantly fighting over how they should be utilized...
...Here, buildings are likely to be owned by a retired plumber or a beautician who has scraped together his or her life savings to buy a single building...
...The competition with other landlords keeps their self-interest under control...
...Fifth, the 7-A trusteeship usually lasts only about two years...
...Courageously, though, New York is now planning to go it alone...
...When New York extended federal wartime rent controls in 1947, it was just to give tenants a chance to get back on their feet...
...They bought a building because it was the one thing they thought they could do...
...Mrs...
...Typically, she soon discovered that few of her tenants were used to paying rent...
...Thus, even though New York City landlords are probably the most highly regulated entrepreneurs in the country, there is hardly a bureaucrat or politician in New York who does not sincerely believe that landlords are the cause of their own problems...
...Still, she said, she was privately exasperated with the difficulties of trying to get her buildings through the TIL program...
...If tenants don't pay, HPD helps the administrator evict problem tenants...
...T n 1937, Fitzroy Maclean, a British New York City today practices its buildings containing about 50,000 vacancy rates to 2 percent and turned .1...
...It isn't just that landlords have been turned into a pariah caste, blamed for every social ill...
...iticians, of course, have a ready answer...
...We feel that's what we need to run a building...
...One day, of course,the 50,000 i homeless people into the streets...
...All around Red )I, 'liar% ,..,, pearance is reality...
...The government will allow almost anyone to play landlord...
...That's what rent controls do—they push some rents down butpush others up...
...middle-class landlords grin and bear it...
...They'd tell me, `I'm going to be my own plumber, electrician, carpenter, janitor—I'm going to do it all myself.' Many of them were right off the boat...
...Finally, buildings frequently go downhill under 7-A administration anyway...
...Ironically, rent control also becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy...
...oi t.r.‘,_,i\: ,n The reason—now and forever—is that ----- -, .--'-'' ) IL, - - , 41:.-i- A t,'X'f,6-•''t t- , ,L,,c, secure spectators...
...Now—as the city's largest developer—the government will try to use the "profits" from this venture to house the poor and middle-class...
...4.-14- ---" finished writing a book on rent control ---,ii.....,_:- !--=-------__ -;`' F- 0. 47' "" ' . questioned why New York City spends and is looking for someone in New & --, -: ,A4 _..---'--- , /4.L0...
...But with housing getting tighter and tighter, your building will be worth much more in only a couple of years...
...Rich people have rich landlords, middle-class people have middle-class landlords, poor people have poor landlords...
...All of Ricks's belongings disappeared—including her dog, which she has never seen again...
...journalist, wormed his way into the own version of this Potemkin-village apartments...
...Mia Farrow pays $1870.31 for ten rooms overlooking Central Park...
...The owner must also live in the building himself for three years, even though he may have another house...
...Department of Housing and Urban Development...
...Then the building won't be salable...
...There has to be some way to collect property taxes...
...2. Under rent control, a municipal government declares, in its wisdom, that all tenants, rich and poor, are allowed to exploit their landlords...
...At this point, the city itself usually finds the rents insufficient as well...
...A 62-year-old retired nurse, Ricks invested her life savings in 1984 to make the down payment on a six-family building in an East Flatbush neighborhood called Junction College...
...To put these rents in perspective you have to realize that newly arrived college graduates in Manhattan are now paying $1500 for a one-bedroom apartment with a view of a brick wall...
...On the other hand, people with landlords who cannot subsidize them for long are likely to experience very different consequences...
...Now landlords can practice "deferred maintenance'!—as John Lindsay's administration actually suggested during the oil crunch...
...That is the people who have spent their own money—or put themselves hugely in debt—to buy a building...
...In addition, the neighborhood preservation companies are always well represented on the planning boards...
...Soviet Union...
...AE 1 111 , i .._ \ ' ' ', ^„'-, ,,, 50,000 people roam the streets is a It was then that I grasped that the cheer- ,i i r = i• :,, .--' '%,, ,,, , / . mystery that genuinely perplexes New ing was potted synthetic cheering, issuing !,1 l...
...Her tenants—all poor and black—didn't really give a damn about owning their own apartments...
...1.1, 'IP '1' , ), -, '''- '\ -.,,,/> , i(1 ^411 i ili...
...I'll give Ricks credit," said Sanchez...
...1.,14 ,1 ,,,, A , • ,..b),,..,- , \ -/..'' Yorkers...
...Tell them that their good fortune produces very different consequences at the other end of the economic spectrum and they will look at you in utter bewilderment...
...and poor landlords go broke and lose their buildings...
...Here is how the program operates: First, the court-appointed administrator is given complete control of the building...
...Warren Rubin, owner of the Workbench chain of furniture stores, pays $1490.93 for ten rooms overlooking Central Park...
...But in New York, the process has become an end in itself...
...It tore me apart to lose everything like that...
...Last winter, almost by accident, I ended up interviewing Marie Runyon, a long-time Manhattan liberal and former State Assemblywoman who now heads the Harlem Restoration Project...
...Nevertheless, a month after Ricks installed the new tenants, Sanchez and HPD succeeded in persuading a housing court judge to take the building out of Ricks's hands and put it into the city's "receivership" program for privately owned buildings, called "7-A administration" (after section 7-A of the housing code...
...ly obviating the need for unhygienic, in- 1,„r} - --0-'11",/, 1 ,457...
...But these innocuous little price controls do have a way of getting out of hand...
...All sales must be approved by the Community Planning Boards—which are appointed by the local City Council member...
...I used to see them come in my office all the time," said Charles Mehlman, former director of the Rent Stabilization Association (which administers rent regulations), who now works for Sam LeFrak, New York's largest developer of middle-class housing...
...HPD now trains administrators right off the street...
...The city's Democratic polfrom loudspeakers, discreetly sited at the I 1 1 ',h., ,-1 i ' 4(4,74...
...ft i' ''s-, ,i...
...Instead of private ownership, HPD advertises "tenant ownership" as the solution to New York's housing problems...
...They collect management fees (plus whatever rents can be pilfered) and also use the buildings to provide apartments for their members and affiliates...
...Thus, in addition to 50,000 abandoned apartments, HPD also owns 35,000 occupied units, subsidizing them every year with $200 million in Community Development Funds from the U.S...
...Time and time again, 7-A administrators simply take the money and run...
...Whitney Ellsworth, publisher of the New York Review of Books, pays $1587.22 for ten rooms overlooking Central Park...
...Toby Sanchez, executive director at Junction College, immediately became the tenants' representative...
...Yet—to HPD's chagrin—even this trickle back to the private sector is meeting political opposition...
...He keeps it for sentimental reasons (he lives there himself), plus the ever-faint hope that one day one of his tenants' great-grandchildren may die without an heir and the rights to the apartment will revert to one of his own great-grandchildren, who may be able to re-rent the apartment at something resembling market value...
...Just last spring Mayor Koch announced a $4.5 billion Ten-Year Plan (that's two Five-Year Plans) for rebuilding New York's housing stock...
...We don't go in unless the landlord has completely walked away," said Deputy Commissioner Schultz, although he later modified that to "the landlord is no longer providing essential services...
...But dignity and self-determination die hard, even in a quasi-socialist republic...
...But I've been studying the Bible and I believe God did not leave us here without power...
...A lot of times it doesn't even pay to try to collect rents," said David Zincovage, a 32-year-old Yale graduatewho helped a college friend run a dozen buildings on the Lower East Side for five years...
...This is bad news for those who lose, but good news for those who remain: They no longer face as much competition...
...The program was even advertised at times as "helping landlords do what they couldn't do for themselves...
...asked the President...
...In most cities, in rem buildings are recycled back into the private sector within a year...
...We like to get the rents up to about $35-45 a room," said Ned York, of HPD's Division of Alternate Management...
...J...;,...,:ji money to fix them up...
...1_,-..-1-....:, _,-,,,_ , ._ .- -_, _ cni.- - a welfare hotel...
...As HPD ' , lili Except for the Diplomatic Corps and some" Commissioner Anthony Gleidman said heavily guarded school-children, there was / ,' , ' \ ,t 1...
...The other kind of tenant ownership—where landlords convert their buildings into cooperatives and condominiums—is opposed by both tenants and politicians and is constantly impeded by legislation...
...She cleaned out the drug dealers and finally got the top floor rented to two very good tenants for $400 a month...
...In a normal housing market, landlords try to earn a living by offering reasonably attractive housing at reasonably attractive prices...
...There were drug dealers in there, people coming and going all the time...
...The truth is, everyone in New York, from the most skillful politician to the man-in-the-street, sincerely believes that private ownership has caused New York City's housing problems and so government action is the only solution...
...Quite simply, it is better to have a landlord to exploit than to have the city give you an apartment...
...Fourth—and here comes the incredible part—even after the administrator has stopped making tax, insurance, and mortgage payments, the rents usually don't provide enough money to cover the basic maintenance costs of the building...
...I figured I could fix it up myself...
...Third, the administrator is mandated to use the rent monies to operate the building and make necessary repairs...
...Instead of private ownership, HPD advertises "tenant ownership" as the solution to New York's housing problems...
...it seems, can't be used to construct permanent housing...
...If you pressure tenants you only get them riled up and you may end up with a rent strike...
...I thought I'd be able to take in a little money and give myself a place to live as well...
...NM\ .-""11 I 1 .111 ^-^ THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 21...
...Meanwhile, Runyon—like so many other Manhattan politicos—has her own great deal from rent control...
...The idea is to pretend that 2 , , }) ,1 II, happy people are living there...
...z,,-,,, l'' 4,i ' ,1,,,,, , 1,, '1 x ,.--z_--, i ,. ?-==-"" / l'''' doves of these vacant buildings with "At first it did not occur to me to look ' -74 _, i.', ,i, ,,0,11, -. -, . ,,, , ; qi , vinyl decals showing cute little shutters, and see who was cheering," he later _ ' - ' ----- 0-- rii,,, . curtains, and flowerpots on the winwrote in Eastern Approaches...
...Square stretched a grim, silent line of At, if/ 4' ,,r...
...Thus, the logic of rent control works like this: 1. People generally have landlords of their own economic class...
...It is only when we get down into the nether reaches of the population that the adverse effects of rent control begin playing themselves out...
...Using the apartment less and less these days, they are now letting their daughter and her friends live in it while attending college...
...Generally, these people tend to be rather affluent themselves...
...She moved onto the bottom floor and started renovating two upstairs apartments...
...The landlord isn't even allowed on the premises...
...But there is one group that is not allowed to play landlord...
...20 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 H PD claims 7-A is saving buildings that would otherwise be abandoned...
...William Wicker is The American Spec- (if I) 111 1 I '111...
...Thus, 7-A has simply become a fast track whereby HPD uses the neighborhood preservation companies as shock troops in an effort to get more and more real estate into city hands...
...I ,,, in announcing the policy in 1983, "Apno one there to cheer...
...Ricks paid a $5,000 down payment and took a private $33,000 mortgage with the previous owner...
...Unfortunately, there is one small catch...
...Instead, 7-A appointees were drawn from the ranks of tenant organizers and community activists—plus the political cronies of housing court judges...
...Every city, of course, has a process for taking buildings in rem...
...The program is—in a phrase repeated everywhere in New York—a "license to steal...
...As every freshman economics student knows, rent controls produce housing shortages...
...The landlord must continue to make all these payments out of his own pocket if he ever hopes to reclaim his building...
...The neighborhood groups have reportedly divided up the territory by blocks in order to avoid clashing over buildings in 7-A takeovers...
...If you can just hang tough against your tenants, you will probably come out ahead...
...7, ' _y...
...James Levine, music director of the Metropolitan Opera, pays $1156.50 for six rooms overlooking the park...
...Toby Sanchez, for example, became 7-A administrator of Katherine Ricks's building...
...Unrealistically low rents practically guarantee sustained losses...
...Their rents will be more reflective of 1968 than 1986...
...Seventy-five percent of New York's landlords are in this category, owning only one building...
...Let me introduce you to a highly successful New York City landlord...
...The uniform whine from the politicians was, once again, "You haven't given us enough money, Mr...
...Tenant leaders can play landlord, church groups can play landlord, political cronies can play landlord, community organizers can play landlord—all will get generous subsidies plus kid-glove treatment from the courts and bureaucracy...
...By a system of natural selection, it soon produces a breed of landlords who are just as predatory as everyone fears...
...For this vast majority, building ownership has been the first step in an attempt to move up the economic ladder...
...Nowhere was there - ,-, I...
...A s an intelligent person, you are probably already asking: What ever happened to private enterprise here...
...This dead-in-the-water, Soviet-style stalemate in New York's housing economy is a strong lesson to the 200-or-so other American cities that are already tiptoeing into rent control...
...Therefore, the administrator is exempted from rent regulations for new tenants...
...Despite its impressive name, I soon found the Harlem Restoration Project's entire agenda consisted of managing two buildings under the 7-A program...
...Aren't there any private investors willing to build housing...
...The program, originally set up in the 1970s, was conceived as a "trusteeship," whereby responsible, government-appointed officials—lawyers, accountants, and real-estate brokers—would step in and "rescue" a building from an unprincipled landlord who couldn't or wouldn't properly maintain it...
...m- f, - -.9...
...One of these buildings had recently been wrested from the hands of the Willing Workers Baptist Church...
...Harry Helmsley, who is the second largest, owns only 3 percent and is quitting the business...
...I...
...Very quickly, the professional requirements went by the boards...
...It's the little guys who only own one or two buildings who are ruined by the system...
...New owners must rehabilitate their buildings within two years—eventhough it is difficult to get loans...
...Even when they stick around, they often rob the buildings blind...
...Her eight-room apartment on Morningside Heights costs her only $94.09 a month...
...Often they have been able to use their savings to buy a second home in the country...
...Sure I hate to lose money on this building," said Manocherian when I interviewed him...
...I'm lucky to own enough of both kinds so I can- cross-subsidize my tenants...
...s \ - who looked like a member of the Why almost 50,000 city anyone -owned security troops...
...They just don't know how to run a building...
...Why almost 50,000 city-owned apartments sit vacant while another 50,000 people roam the streets is a mystery that genuinely perplexes New Yorkers...
...Eventually they create a culture in which "screwing your landlord" becomes fashionable...
...37,000 a year to put a single family in -, '''' - - 04,--..:,.._,_-_ ____5 York who will publish it...
...On the Lower East Side, where almost a dozen neighborhood groups are operating, the competition has reached the point of house-to-house warfare...
...I --, N / apartments sit vacant while another E.- ,,r , ‘''t ‘ general public...
...It isn't just the government that opposes private enterprise in New York, it's everybody...
...A nd so, in brief, you see why New York has homeless people and peopleless homes...
...Paul Crotty, the new HPD commissioner, has announced the city is going to try to take over buildings even faster in the future-J`before they run downhill...
...Even after sponsoring rent strikes, putting buildings into 7-A, driving off the private owners, foreclosing in rem, and instituting tenant-owned cooperatives, the city government still can't quite bring itself to let go of these buildings...
...So the city has filled the winheard the continual roar of a crowd...
...Yet it is obvious that landlord neglect or incompetence is not the problem...
...The administrator collects all the rents...
...Some could barely speak English...
...A lot of landlords are plain incompetent," said Harold Schultz, deputy commissioner of HPD...
...Thus, in many neighborhoods—the Lower East Side, East Harlem, the Clinton area west of Times Square—the private housing economy is slowly grinding to a halt...
...After all, nobody ever really expectedthings to work out this way...
...They can let their buildings run downhill or fall apart and still be confident that dozens of desperate people will be beating at their door...
...corners of the square and convenient- , i. k I •,- , I '.' , ,- ,,, A, ., . , '-k,,-..4...
...No one ever thought it would lead to an inexorable socialization of the entire housing economy...
...Manocherian says he loses $100,000 a year on the building...
...The funds for emergency shelter...
...Second, 7-A administrators stop making mortgage payments and paying property taxes...
...In a lot of my newer buildings I'm collecting rents that are well above market value...
...r ,i1 • .,„v,..T., ; 4-,,_ i.,/,,,,) ,) di/ 1 , ' \ ill 'II ' il.--A - / , ,..., ,,I) , The matter came up once again last 4q i 1 ' ` ov-..,,, -,;', ,, = ,,, ,,.._-__z tator s New York correspondent...
...There are long lines of applicants, since the word has gotten around that 7-A is a risk-free way of getting into the real estate business...
...I worked on that building with my own hands," Ricks told me recently...
Vol. 20 • February 1987 • No. 2
