BRONX TIMES REPORTER, J BTR ANUARY 18-24, 2019 55
Older adults and clinical trials
BY SANDI LUSK
“The trouble with paternalists
is that they want to make
impossibly profound changes,
and they choose impossibly superfi
cial means for doing so.”
“There is no logic that can
be superimposed on the city;
people make it, and it is to
them, not buildings, that we
must fi t our plans.”
- The Death and Life of
Great American Cities,
Jane Jacobs
When Mayor de Blasio
came into offi ce he seemed to
understand certain major issues
that the Bloomberg administration
has created or
made worse: the homeless issue,
the education debacle,
and the dire need for affordable
housing. These issues
are huge and very consequential
for everyone who lives
in our city. Unfortunately, as
the Jane Jacobs quote above
explains, often the easiest,
most superfi cial response is
all we get. As far as the homelessness
issue the Mayor’s response
was more homeless
shelters along the same lines
of before: dangerous and inadequate
shelters, more money
funneled to landlords, and
not much else. As for education,
well not much was done
about dealing with those major
issues either. And now, to
the affordable housing issue.
Once again, only the superfi -
cial, albeit profi table to landlords,
is being done.
For affordable housing,
fi rst let me make very clear
that affordable housing is
needed in this city, as the previous
administration concentrated
exclusively on building
luxury housing. However,
from a community perspective,
are huge affordable housing
units to be dropped like
UFOs onto any location where
a landlord wishes to make a
profi t? Where is the planning
for these ready-made communities.
Where is the context
to make them welcome and
sustainable? There already
are several affordable housing
units in the area, and
they look like any other buildings
and fi t in with their surroundings
and can easily access
neighborhood amenities.
That is not so in several projects
proposed to be built in
the near future.
Example one: Blondell
Commons, a 9-story affordable
housing complex with
220-plus units and parking
for 220-plus cars has been proposed
for Blondell Avenue,
a building that will span 4
blocks on this narrow 1-way
already congested street.
The project came before community
boards 11 (where the
site is located), which voted
it down, and 10 in order to
request approval for a zoning
change from the current
M1 (light manufacturing) to
R7A, a residential rezoning
that would open up the entire
street to such development.
We also attended a public
hearing at the borough president’s
offi ce about this, during
which many of the questions
asked by the offi cials of
the project’s lawyer and architect
were not answered satisfactorily
concerning the cost
of the project (including remediation)
and the fact that the
location is a brown fi eld contamination
site (it used to be
an automotive junkyard) and
a fl ood zone with a 5 to 8 foot
water table. There are other
reasons that this is not a good
site: all school children will
be bused to a school 1.5 miles
away adding school busses
twice a day, delivery trucks
to their proposed stores on
the ground fl oor, and 220-plus
cars going in and out of a parking
garage all added to the current
traffi c and congestion on
Blondell Avenue every day.
Also the fumes from the
auto repair shops across the
street and the fact that it backs
on to the Water Street and the
IRT#6 train repair shops and
yard.
The project representatives
themselves said certain
windows would be ‘inoperable’
due to this. This site is not
hospitable or suitable to a development
like this, it does not
fi t the context of the street (it
will literally tower over everything
else for blocks around),
there is no nearby school, and
the traffi c congestion will
make it a nightmare for those
ambulances and emergency
vehicles that routinely use
the street to get to the hospitals
on Eastchester Road, not
to mention the people who already
live on Blondell. But for
this one, it is the zoning issue
we really are debating, a
change that will almost guarantee
developments like this
lining the street within a few
years no matter what contextual
problems (and there are
many) this will cause. We had
to ask ourselves where is the
planning for this?
Example two: Proposed
11-story affordable housing
unit at 2500 Westchester Ave,
next to and adjacent to St Peter’s
churchyard and Foster
Hall (leaving aside for the moment
the issue of whether this
is a Quaker burial ground as
we have always been told, eventhough
they apparently
scanned the site and said they
found nothing). This will also
have approximately 200-plus
units, and the artist’s rendering
makes it look like a hospital
in its massive scale.
This got me thinking. Why
is the city warehousing people
in affordable housing? It reminds
me of the 1960s urban
‘renewal’ low-income housing
projects. Whole neighborhoods
were wiped out to
make way for vertical tower
blocks of low-income housing,
and this did not work out as
planned. It created isolated islands
of poverty culture that
bred crime and other issues (I
know, I lived in a public housing
project in Brooklyn before
my marriage), and isolated
the residents from the community
at large.
It was stigmatizing and
made the problem worse, not
better. It seems to me that this
administration, in its haste
to attempt to deal with the
affordable housing crisis on
such a superfi cial level is doing
the same thing with these
affordable housing ‘projects’.
Why can’t affordable housing
be integrated into the
community? Why not put up
a neon sign saying ‘affordable
housing for people who
can’t afford market rates’
(and given the rent quotes
we received from the developers,
just how much below
market rate is debatable)? We
know there is big money to be
made in this housing market
from HPD, etc, for landlords
and developers (just as in the
homeless shelter game), and I
have no doubt that the bigger
the project, the more money
to be made. But please, can we
think a little about planning?
Adding 600-plus people to an
area is creating a whole new
community in the middle of
an existing one.
This approach has not
worked in the past, and I ask:
why can’t affordable housing
be created as part of the existing
community and not apart
from it?
TTFN.
Clinical trials are research
studies in which groups of people
get health treatments and
then their health outcomes
are examined. It is important
that clinical trials include persons
of different ages, genders,
races, and ethnicities. Then
fi ndings from the research can
be applied to and may benefi t
more people.
It is good to have seniors
in clinical trials so that scientists
can learn more about how
new treatment methods and
drugs, medical devices and lab
tests can improve physical and
mental health care for elderly
people. Having older adults in
clinical trials is also important
because they may react
differently to treatments than
younger people do.
Benefi ts to older adults who
are in clinical trials may include:
receiving a new treatment
before others, more frequent
medical visits, helping to
improve others’ health, and obtaining
information about support
groups and resources.
Many trials have two
groups of people: those who are
given the new treatment, medication,
or whatever is being
tested, and those in a control
group, who get standard treatment
or a medication that has
no real effect. There may be
some risks of side effects, and
the treatment not working or
not improving the health condition.
There are federal laws,
strict monitoring, and rules in
place to protect research subjects;
researchers have to follow
these when conducting
clinical trials. An institutional
review board of experts in the
fi eld at each study site makes
sure that the trial is safe and
ethical before approving the
activities and goals.
There is also an informed
consent process that helps protect
volunteers in studies. Researchers
must tell subjects exactly
what the study is about,
how it will be conducted, what
it is meant to do, and explain
if there are risks, including
things like possible side effects.
Prospective study participants
can then ask questions and
decide to participate or not. If
they do join the study, they are
always free to leave the study
at any time with no negative
impact on future medical care
and treatment.
There is usually no cost for
any treatment or medication a
subject receives during a trial,
and, in many cases there may
be a small payment for participating
and reimbursement for
travel expense.
Brought to you by Montefi ore
Medical Group, R.A.I.N. and
the Hartford Institute for Geriatric
Nursing @ NYU, based on
National Institute on Aging References
TORRES SPEAKS AT PPNA MEETING
Councilman Ritchie Torres, with the Pelham Parkway Neighborhood
Association’s president Edith Blitzer, was the guest speaker
at PPNA’s monthly meeting on Tuesday, January 8 at Bronx
House. Photo by Silvio Pacifi co