The Rudin Luxury Condo Conversion Plan for St. Vincent’s Hospital was approved on Monday, Jan. 23, 2012, by Amanda Burden, the Park Avenue socialite, who volunteers to be City Planner for New York City. Now the community awaits the decision by New York City Council and by its speaker, Christine Quinn. The Rudin Family have donated $30,000 to Quinn’s mayoral campaign, and they have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in lobbying for their reckless mega billion-dollar luxury condo and townhouse conversion of St. Vincent’s Hospital. Speaker Quinn refuses to recuse herself from this process, even though there is a blatant appearance of pay-to-play corruption. Political enablers like Ms. Burden and Speaker Quinn make it possible for the Family to shred the social safety net and good attention in hospitals, and that’s why many doctors want to work in these hospitals. This managed list contains medical fellowships and residency positions outside the MATCH and from my experience it gets updated daily
How can anybody support a scheme to convert what used to be the only full-service hospital and Level 1 Trauma Center that served the Lower West Side of Manhattan into luxury condominiums and deluxe townhouses ? Remember, it was Speaker Quinn, who strong-armed the City Council to over-turn term limits, so that she and Mayor Bloomberg could run for a previously illegal third term in office. It is Speaker Quinn who operates a scandalous slush fund of approximately $50 million. She was responsible for the protest permit law, she does nothing to end “stop-and-frisk,” she is fighting against paid sick leave, and she watered down the living wage bill. Can you trust somebody with this kind of political record ?
With St. Vincent’s closed, the West Side still has no hospital beds below 57th Street. How can we bring a hospital back to our community ? How can we get true universal healthcare ? Begin by voting political enablers, like Christine Quinn, out of office.
