Barbara Caporale Support Letter

Howard Brandstein is a founding member and Executive Director of The Sixth Street Community Center.

Howard Brandstein began his work at Sixth Street Community Center as a volunteer back in the 1980s. As a lifelong New Yorker and urban homesteader, he assisted Lower East Side and East Harlem residents in homesteading and sweat equity & helping establish HDFCs. His building is the twin to my subset of HDFC but his was able to get his stabilized. We both had HUD 312 loans and were incorporated under Article 11 of the not for profit housing finance law, He helped teach me to file NYC tax assessment appeals to keep the taxes down on my low-income HDFC, and helped my building navigate through the process with HUD when we were being foreclosed on and auctioned, and we worked in collaboration with him and UHAB and Brooklyn Law school.

Howard was at the forefront of the community garden movement in our Neighborhood (EV, Loisaida) and helped establish the first Community Land Trust (CLT) in NYC.

He is passionate about saving our planet and communities from racial capitalism, fights against displacement in our low-income working class neighborhood and is actively organizing a new CLT to be established on East 6th Street.

He helped me to obtain scholarship so I could participate in the Community Supported Agriculture program that he runs at the 6th St Center. He also helped my garden (6B Garden) obtain a discount from that farmer (Hepworth farms) for the free organic food that we cook for the community at our annual HarvestFest Feast, and contributes a free CSA share annually as a raffle prize (we sell raffle tkts for 1 buck, but that is our largest fundraiser.

Howard has been at the forefront of Climate Justice, and contributed valuable testimony and the community’s alternative ‘ecological plan’ for East River Park to stop its destruction in the name of ‘saving us from flooding’. He has longer term visions which he included into the ERPark plans such as decking the FDR to help truly adjust our impacts on the environment. He also provides meeting space for all healthy food, and clean power organizing initiatives and serves on statewide coalitions influencing public policy.

Howard is very easy going and has an amazing sense of humor. His gentle and supportive nature makes him great at enlisting volunteers to help with community initiatives. He talked me into making banners and posters for the SAVE East River Park Rallies, and recently got me to volunteer to help save the Sixth Street Center from foreclosure on the loans he obtained to make necessary upgrades and restoration of the landmarked (?) historic facade of the 1890s synagogue that houses his center. I am making fliers and helping with a campaign to raise 1.2 million dollars before they are sent for auction in June of this year.

He provides free meeting space for my garden, and a great discount for our annual volunteer recognition holiday party. This year he was voted in to serve as a community member representative on the Sixth Street and Avenue B Garden Board of Directors.

Howard is a visionary and is always helping our community. Even during the pandemic when his organization was forced to shut its doors and cease programming and earning $s, he still helped organize a free food box providing 80,000 food boxes to our mostly Asian families, and food for homebound seniors; for which he organized volunteers to distribute and deliver.

He and his late lifelong partner Anette, began the ‘organic soul cafe’ teaching non vegans like myself how delicious that food can be. They build a beautiful chef kitchen, and I leaned to and helped prepare healthy meals there, along with other volunteers. This was my first direct witnessing of a for-profit/NFP partnership. He has opened his centers doors to EV Loves. That very kitchen is now being used by EV Loves team of volunteers, and although he could be renting that space on Sundays for greater profit to support the Sixth Street Community Center, he is more passionately committed to addressing food insecurity and they serve several thousand meals each Sunday, especially essential now that we have new immigrants on the next corner of his center waiting for relocation (however I too do try to get a box or two). He has also used the center to collect and distribute. clothing and toiletries for those families and individuals.