Crain's New York Business
Legal Aid carrying on without the mod cons: Still displaced,
lawyers make do with boxes, leaky storage rooms
Monday, September 9, 2002
Stephen Gandel
In her storage room-turned-office, Jennifer Baum works under an
expanding leak that is causing the ceiling to turn brown and
crumble. Mold grows in the buckets positioned to catch the
water.
She shrugs it off. Outside her office she has taped up a clear
plastic suit, and a sign that reads, "All employees must don
protective gear before coming in."
Such is life in limbo. Nearly a year after Sept. 11, the Legal
Aid Society-the lawyers for New York's poor and homeless-remains,
well, homeless.
Contaminated space
The nonprofit has been barred from returning to its 90 Church
St. headquarters, across from the World Trade Center site, because
of environmental concerns.
Legal Aid has uncomfortable company. More than 11,500 New
Yorkers continue to work out of temporary space, according to
analysis by Manhattan-based real estate brokerage TenantWise.com
Inc. and Crain's New York Business. That's 8% of the 137,000
workers who lost their offices or access to them when the Twin
Towers collapsed.
Legal Aid's 450 displaced attorneys and staffers have spent the
past 12 months spread among previously unused spaces-some unused
for good reason-in the nonprofit's other offices. It could be
another year and a half before they return to their old desks.
They have contended with difficult working conditions as demand
for Legal Aid's services is on the rise because of Sept. 11 and the
deteriorating economy. The civil division is spread among a few
boroughs. Their papers and documents, some 20,000 boxes worth, are
stuck in a storage facility in Linden, N.J.
"I am counting the days till we can have all the parts back in
one place," says Steven Banks, Legal Aid's associate attorney in
chief.
In the memories of the exiled workers, the old office has
achieved mythical proportions. They say the wood paneling and rugs
had the ability to cool emotions and lift spirits.
The Legal Aid office on Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights,
where 65 displaced workers have cobbled together space amid the
faded and scratched walls, looks more like a bargain basement.
Jammed into small rooms, the staff is still trying to piece
together a sense of place.
Ms. Baum replaced the wind-up chattering teeth she lost, and she
has established a new emergency drawer of Motrin, pantyhose and
tampons. But it took years to collect all of the squishy, bendable
toys she used to relieve stress.
Elisabeth Benjamin was able to salvage some things from 90
Church St. But fears of what wafted into her office are causing her
to throw out almost all of them. A Rolodex she crossed barricades
to retrieve in the days after Sept. 11 is headed for the trash.
"I keep saying, 'That's from 90 Church-wash your hands,' " says
Ms. Benjamin, the supervising attorney of the health law
practice.
The wanderer
Sam Davol is a nomad. When he moved to Montague Street, the
staff attorney shared an office with a colleague. But confidential
client meetings or phone calls continually forced one of them to
leave the room. Fed up, Mr. Davol agreed to wander, inhabiting the
offices of vacationing staffers.
He and his three boxes have moved in and out of three offices in
the past month and a half alone. Part caretaker, part squatter, Mr.
Davol has developed a green thumb with office plants and has become
accustomed to working in front of pictures of other people's loved
ones. He has also become a connoisseur of grade-school art.
"Some offices have lots of finger paintings," says Mr. Davol,
studying a work of diagonal and vertical red smears on brown
construction paper. "I've seen better."
