Gannett News Service
Elena Colombo, 39, could be eligible for Red Cross Liberty Fund money despite saying that she doesn't need it. She lives in the Tribeca section of New York, about a mile from where the World Trade Center once stood.

Where aid money flows freely

Sept. 11 windfall lands in posh area

GREG BARRETT, GANNETT NEWS SERVICE

Originally published Sunday, March 10, 2002

NEW YORK -- Elena Colombo is struggling with her conscience. Smoking a Camel Light in the low lights and posh confines of her $2,000-per-month, rent-controlled Manhattan loft, she admits she is no symbol of suffering.

In no threat of bouncing a rent check.

Even if she were, there's always her beach cottage on Long Island.

And yet ...

"I might take my $6,000 and donate it," she says, warming slowly to this idea of tapping a bloated vein called the American Red Cross Liberty Disaster Relief Fund, which is nearing $1 billion in donations six months after Sept. 11.

"Maybe I'd use it to go and eat a lot downtown. I think that is the easiest way to put it back in the community."

Colombo, like others in the New York district called Tribeca, where John F. Kennedy Jr. lived and biked, where Billy Crystal owns a condo and Robert De Niro a film company, is eligible for Sept. 11 charity. Up to three months of rent or mortgage if at least 80 percent of her income was lost (yes) or she was temporarily displaced because of the smoke or emotions (no).

There are advantages other than living trendy when you reside 1.2 miles north of the World Trade Center site -- close enough to witness the horror and feel its ripples; far enough to escape physical harm.

"The country is going to pot ... and (President) Bush gives a tax cut. Now the Red Cross wants to give me a couple of months' rent," Colombo says, rolling her eyes. "It doesn't make sense."

Defining 'victim'

At some point during this half-year reign of terror, the definition of "victim" became highly subjective and somewhat contentious. Because of a Red Cross pledge of fairness, some affluent New Yorkers have received aid alongside the poor. From Colombo's street alone, neighbors have received $30,000 toward rent and expenses; others $20,000, and still others a few thousand dollars, reports London columnist Zoe Heller, who lives one building over from Colombo.

If Colombo's 2,000-square-foot loft did not have a fixed rent, a decided perk in any other circumstance, she likely would be eligible for far more than $6,000. The Red Cross will reimburse some rent, groceries and living expenses of residents who were not injured and did not lose family members on Sept. 11, but who were otherwise "economically impacted."

"We don't discriminate between a limo driver who makes a living similar to a taxi driver ... and the janitor or a stockbroker," says Red Cross spokeswoman Carol Miller. "It all comes down ... to individual needs."

That has triggered a good bit of talk south of New York's Canal Street, the northern boundary for some of the most bountiful giving. If the guiding principle of welfare -- the poorer you are, the more aid you require -- has not been inverted in these cases, it certainly appears compromised, even to some who stand to receive it.

"I find it wildly generous, but generous in a way that is not fiscally responsible. This area is extremely wealthy," says Colombo, 39, an interior and exterior designer and free-lance director of TV commercials. She is single and typically earns $100,000 annually.

"It's the people who don't live below Canal Street who need the help," she says. "Not the people who live in JFK's building."

Giving continues

The Red Cross tried to tell America. On Oct. 31, after its Liberty Fund had reached $547 million, and after the news media and public wrenched a promise that all Liberty Fund money would be used exclusively for Sept. 11, officials announced they had raised enough money. Stop giving.

Yet the giving continued. It continues today, like a faucet left on, some $933 million and growing as of March 5. That's an increase of $12 million from the week before, when children from 31 states donated $84,000 raised during 79 car-wash fund-raisers.

"Early on I was on the record saying let's catch our breath and get an accounting of what is needed, but people were just giving money as fast as they could give it," says Daniel Borochoff, president of the charity watchdog American Institute of Philanthropy, who sounded a warning on Capitol Hill in November.

"Ordinarily, nonprofit organizations find a need, develop a plan or budget, then raise funds for it," he told a congressional subcommittee overseeing Sept. 11 charities. "In this crisis, everything happened in reverse. The money poured in so quickly the charities are scrambling to figure out what to do with it."

That could explain in part why the Red Cross went door to door in the Tribeca area, despite having an advertised hot line and being affiliated with two crisis centers in the district. Heller and others say Red Cross workers came unsolicited to their homes in February.

"We knew there were people who still may need assistance who hadn't come in for whatever reason ... so the decision was made to try outreach, just to be sure that people weren't missed and were aware of our services," says Lois Grady Wesbecher, job director for Red Cross New York's response to the World Trade Center disaster.

To date, the Red Cross has cut 7,671 checks totaling about $169 million for 3,266 direct victims of the attack, meaning those who were injured or lost family members. That's an average of $51,715 per beneficiary.

"Clearly, it was not in any way intended to push people to take something they didn't want," Wesbecher says of the Red Cross house calls, which have ceased. "Really it was just to say this is available to you if you have a need."

Finding a need

Eleanor Lang had such a need. She had not considered asking for help until the Red Cross set up tables in February in the lobby of her apartment building, an exclusive high-rise abutting the Hudson River and the World Financial Center.

At the time of the World Trade Center attack, Lang, 40, was an unemployed public relations professional, but she was hopeful. She had a job interview scheduled for Sept. 11.

The job prospect dissolved, and her boyfriend's company soon folded. Together, they are caring for his daughters, ages 10 and 13, two cats, a dog and a foot-long pet rat named Mercy. "We had gone into serious credit card debt just for the air purifiers and dry cleaning," Lang says.

This didn't count the $1,700 monthly rent, the $300-per-month mobile phone bill (reliable land-line service was lost for two months) and groceries. Within 10 days Lang had received $9,560 from the Red Cross.

'Like the lotto'

On a cold morning in March, Colombo is applying for Red Cross aid in a blocklong tent of social services set up outside New York's Federal Plaza, on the fringe of Tribeca. She is wrapped in a winter coat and expecting a long wait.

Five minutes later she has an appointment to meet with charity officials on Monday, exactly six months after that first hijacked jet descended over Tribeca.

Already the money is being spent.

"I could go to Century 21," she says of the popular discount department store. It had reopened with a ribbon cutting in Lower Manhattan the day before.

She pauses to consider the statement, then catches herself.

"Listen to me. It sounds like the lotto."

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