So, three decades later, has the dream been realized?
Yes and no. The Taino Towers suffer today from some of the same problems that often dog subsidized housing. Many residents complained about elevator service and maintenance, with one recalling that over the summer, when a resident died, the body had to be carried down the stairs. And some of the more ambitious projects described in the original article were never finished or have not been properly maintained.
Ellie Sanchez, CEO of the Boriken Neighborhood Health Center, which is located in the complex, laments that the planned pool and a small theatre were never completed. “The dream was there but it never materialized because of lack of funding,” she said. According to Maria Cruz, executive director of Taino Towers, the complex’s Red Carpet Theatre is also currently in need of general repairs.
In other ways, however, today’s Towers achieve what was hinted at in the 1979 article. Resident Shenette Taylor, a mother of six who lives with her husband in a three-bedroom apartment, routinely gets her teeth cleaned at the Boriken center’s dental clinic. And she recently attended a Christmas party at the Towers’ Magic Johnson Computer Learning Center, where one of her daughters received a free toy doctor’s set, complete with a stethoscope. According to Sanchez, the health center, which also provides women’s services, pediatrics and diabetes care in both Spanish and English, attracts Latino patients from as far away as Queens, New Jersey and even the Caribbean.
The Towers also house the Harlem Day Charter School, the workforce development group STRIVE, a branch of the New York School of Career and Applied Studies, a hardware store and a pizza parlor, among others. – Alex Cotton, Dec. 2008
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City Limits Magazine, February 1979, Vol. 4, No. 2
Taino: “Dream” Housing For Poor Set To Open
By Susan Baldwin
“It’s like a dream, and I’m going to be in there. I just know it,” says Dorca Santiago, who, along with her husband Pedro, is the last tenant in a tinned-up, squalid building around the corner on Second Avenue from Taino Towers, the majestic 35-story glass and concrete Federal project in East Harlem that she expects to call home in a few weeks.
Born out of rent strikes and City Hall promises in the early 1960’s for better housing and health care for the poor, Taino Towers has become a reality to 656 low income families who will be vacating their substandard, often overcrowded, housing to move into this four-tower complex. Federal subsidies will keep the rents they pay at no more than one-quarter of their income.
The complex, which occupies the square block bounded by Second and Third Avenues between 122nd and 123rd Streets, has non-residential space for a supermarket, a bank, and several other shops. Future plans call for the completion of a swimming pool, greenhouse, amphitheatre, vocational space and classrooms that will be open to community use.
