DNA INFO

By Jeff Mays

HARLEM — The merchant association that is using homeless people to help clean the streets of El Barrio won a $100,000 grant from the city Department of Small Business Services Wednesday to help turn the area near the Metro-North station into an "Uptown Grand Central."

Kwanza Smith, executive director of the New Harlem East Merchants Association, said the money will be used to fund the group's collaboration with the Association of Community Employment Programs for the Homeless. A group of 6 to 8 men will clean between Fifth and Second avenues, between 124th and 126th streets Monday through Friday.
 

NYC DEPARTMENT OF SMALL BUSINESS SERVICES

PRESS RELEASE

Neighborhood Challenge Encourages Business Improvement Districts and Local Development Corporations to Strengthen Neighborhoods Through Creative and Innovative Initiatives

SBS Commissioner Robert W. Walsh announced the six winners of the Neighborhood Challenge during an awards breakfast held at the Roosevelt House in Manhattan. Launched in September 2013, Neighborhood Challenge is a competitive grant initiative designed to encourage Business Improvement Districts (BIDs), Local Development Corporations (LDCs), Merchant Associations, and other local economic development organizations to find innovative ways to improve services, generate economic activity, and attract more jobs and investment to their local commercial corridors. Grants ranging up to $100,000 were awarded to organizations that presented the most creative and impactful economic development and revitalization projects.

THE NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

By Tanay Warerkar and Michael Feeney

An East Harlem merchants group has hatched a radical plan for easing a persistent garbage problem along the filthiest portion of bustling E. 125th St. — paying the homeless to clean it up.

THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

By Melanie Lefkowitz

When Taso Mastakouris, the owner of a grocery store on the Upper West Side, was looking to expand into a new location, he didn't really consider East Harlem.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

By Christine Haughney

For the decade that Milo Meed has lived in Harlem, he has been frustrated with the lack of healthy food.

Watching his 11-year-old son, Danny, grow up, he grew even more concerned, as he noticed far more obese children north of 96th Street.

For a few years, he tried to convince businesses to fix this problem. As a consultant to small businesses in Harlem, he suggested that they open a restaurant specializing in salads. Then he reached out to more than a dozen healthy food chains to see whether they would expand onto 125th Street.

But no one was interested.