Randy Dillard

Zacca Thomaz: Today is April 14, 2023. This is Diana Zacca Thomaz from The New School. I’m interviewing Randy Dillard from CASA in Mount Eden, in the Bronx. This interview is for the Parsons Housing Justice Lab’s Oral History Project. Randy, let’s get started by talking about where you were born and raised, what that was like.

Dillard: I was born in the South. What it was like? I really don’t know how to describe what it was like. I grew up in a time where people was prejudiced in the South. You stayed on your side, they stayed on their side, there was just certain rules and lines that you didn’t cross because of the color of your skin, you know ow what I’m saying?

Then I left the South and came to New York in 1974. I lived in Manhattan, that’s where I met my kids’ mother. We had five kids. Things happened—which I really don’t want to mention in this interview—but caused me to become a single parent with five kids: four sons and a daughter. Everything went well, the schooling and growing up and being a single parent in Manhattan. Until we had an electrical fire. We had an electrical fire, and we went to the hotel, and we went from the hotel to the shelter. The shelter was in Brooklyn, and in Brooklyn the shelter was awful. When you leave and take your kids to the playground or go to the laundry, they used to rob your apartment. I used to take my sons to go play basketball, I used to buy them a basketball, they used to fight to try to take the basketball away from them. So, I had to fight to get out of that shelter to get back to Manhattan where we lived, because Brooklyn was awful bad. So we moved back to Manhattan.

When we got out of the shelter in Manhattan, we got located into the Bronx. So I winded up in Bainbridge, 2847 Bainbridge [Avenue]. That was in 2000. Everything there was going well. Most of the low income people, because of the changes in Manhattan, was pushed to the Bronx. Because I came out of the shelter system, they pushed me to the Bronx. So, that’s the reason why I winded up in the Bronx, because they was really pushing it. I would like to have found something to live in Manhattan, but at that time they was pushing low-income people to the Bronx, relocating us.

In 2012, I got sick, and I went to the hospital. My lungs had collapsed, and I almost died. So when I got out of the hospital, the doctor put me on bed rest. While I was on bed rest, my landlord served me with an eviction notice. When I got served with the eviction notice, I had to go to court within three days to answer this eviction notice. I didn’t understand why I was being served with an eviction notice, because I paid my rent. Section 8, which is a program that I had, which is a voucher, was paying a portion of my rent. They came into my apartment and did an inspection, and my apartment didn’t pass inspection, so Section 8 stopped paying my landlord. So, I winded up in court. What I did in the neighborhood, they had this organization called POTS–Part of The Solution–I went to POTS, I got a lawyer. As I was coming out from the interview with the lawyer, they had a flyer on the desk, which was CASA, you understand? And it said “Workshops.” So I picked it up and I went that Saturday to the workshop when you talk to attorneys again. Because I had these five kids. I didn't know what I was going to do, and I didn’t want to go back to the shelter, because I just came not that long ago from a shelter, because of an electric fire.

Now I'm getting ready to be homeless again, because of eviction of rent that I don’t owe. I didn’t understand why I was going to housing court. But when I got an attorney, the attorney explained that to me. He said, “You don’t owe rent. It’s the city that gives you the voucher that owes the landlord until the landlord does these repairs.” That’s when the city will release that money to my landlord. But I didn’t know that my landlord was trying to get rid of everybody because he was selling the building, you understand? So that’s why he refused to do the repairs, I think.

So I went to CASA, and I went to the workshops, to the legal clinic. I sort of liked what I was hearing after I came out of my interview at the workshop with the lawyer. I stayed around and I became a member. Then I learned about the different campaigns that they was starting. The first campaign was the RGB–Rent Guidelines Board. We was fighting for everybody to get a rent freeze. But the Rent Guidelines Board only held hearings in Manhattan. They didn’t have any hearings in different boroughs. So, Susanna [Blankley], the director of CASA, did workshops to teach us what to say and how to speak at these hearings. Then we started a campaign on how we can get the Rent Guidelines Board to go to each borough so people can be aware that these hearings was going on. A lot of people in poor communities didn’t know that these hearings was going on. It was a success, because we got the Rent Guidelines Board to go to all the boroughs. We got a college here, which is called Hostos [Community] College, and we filled their auditorium up with people speaking why landlords shouldn’t have a rent increase. Everybody got to tell their stories at a different time in each borough instead of in Manhattan with one borough. So that was a victory. We got the first rent freeze in 40 years.

Then the next thing I worked on was the rezoning. They wanted to come into Jerome Avenue and rezone about 70 blocks. We fought, CASA did, to stop the rezoning. We wasn’t successful in stopping some of the rezoning, but we stopped a lot of the blocks that they was rezoning. So that was a victory.

In the meantime, while I was doing this with CASA, I was still in court. I was in court with my case for two and a half years. Finally, my landlord just said he didn’t want no more money. He just wanted me out. But what happened in the meantime, in two and a half years, it played a toll on my family. My landlord was a police officer, and he harassed us. My son was working part-time, and he was going to college. When he got off the bus to come home, they arrested him, they threw him on the ground, they put their knees in his back and had his face on the concrete. My neighbors came and got me and said, “The police is arresting your son.” When I came out there, there was nothing I could do. My son is looking at me from the ground up with these polices on top of him. I’m asking, “What did my son do? Why are you arresting [him]?” They said he was breaking into cars. But he just got off the bus and walked between the cars to come across the street to come into the apartment where we was living. Thank God that we had cameras in the neighborhood, because I told them that we had cameras. I went to my neighbor and looked at the camera: it showed my son getting off the bus and coming straight through, that he wasn’t breaking in cars. We took that down to the police station. When they looked at it, they released my son. But they had took his pictures, mugshot, they had fingerprinted, they had thrown him on the ground, you understand? But that’s because my landlord had the police to harass my family. My daughter, she was a B student. She dropped from Ds to F, because she didn't want to go to a shelter. She thought we was going to go to a shelter. So that’s the toll, at that time that it was putting us through.

Susanna, the [CASA] director in 2012, she knew that there was a problem with evictions in the South Bronx. So, CASA went in and did a survey of the court system, and we found out that the Bronx, out of all five boroughs, had the highest eviction rate, which is about 11,000 [estimated number of households evicted in the Bronx in 2012]. So, we started a campaign to try to change the court system. We put out a report, which is called Tipping the Scales [a report by CASA and the Community Development Project at the Urban Justice Center published in March 2013]. What we went in the first changes that we had the court to do—because when you go in the housing court, you don’t know the court. All you know is you got the notice to show up. You don’t know who you're going to talk to, who you’re supposed to see. So we start meeting with the judges in the court and telling them that the people in the court need to wear name tags. So when tenants come in, they can identify who they’re speaking to. Then there’s got to be something to explain the court system to tenants so they can understand how the system works. So we had the judge to put in monitors explaining the court system on their bench, and then the judge to explain the court system when it was time for her to talk and to call people to court. So that was the low-hanging fruit that we won.

Then after we put out the Tipping the Scales, we formed a coalition [for the Right to Counsel], and we got two city councilmen to sponsor our bill. Mark [D.] Levine was the sponsor of the bill, a city councilman, and Vanessa [L.] Gibson was the co-sponsor of the bill. The coalition was made up of clergy, lawyers, AARP, union. We used to meet two or three times a month, and seeing what we could do after we took the survey and put out this report Tipping the Scales. Because in the report we found out that 90% of the landlords had attorneys, and tenants didn’t. That’s what started us with building the coalition for the right to counsel. And we found out that tenants was humiliated when landlords called them in the hallways and speak to them any kind of way. So that was part of some of the things that was in Tipping the Scales.

So then we put on this forum at New York Law School. We had tenants to come and testify. We had judges to come and testify. Everybody to come and testify of why we needed the right to counsel for tenants to have lawyers. It was a three-year campaign, and we won it in 2017. The mayor usually signed his bills at City Hall, but he came all the way up to the Bronx and signed a bill for the Right to Counsel. Starting out, we went to the community boards. We went to tours of the court, taking elected officials through tours on the court to show them why we needed the Right to Counsel. We had, I don’t know if you’re aware of Matt Desmond, who wrote the book _Evicted, _we took him through tours of the court. We got everybody on board. We took the attorney general, the public advocate, just about any elected official that we could catch, you understand? And they all signed on to support the Right to Counsel. Just about half of the community board said, “This is what we needed.” With the city council, I think we had a veto-proof. So, if the mayor [Bill de Blasio] didn’t want to go for it, he couldn’t, because we had a veto-proof. And I was there, me and my grandson, we were standing beside him [the mayor], and when he signed it into law, I got one of the pens. That was a precious moment for me. All that I had went through.

I wanted to make sure–that’s why I’m still here, with CASA now–because I don’t think no family should ever go through what I went through. Even when I was with CASA, CASA brought Channel 11 News into my home and highlighted the conditions of my apartment. You would think that the landlord would have came in and fixed it, but he didn’t. So that’s what makes me dedicated to do this work, because I don’t think anybody should go through what me and my family went through. With my son being harassed by the police, my daughter’s grades average dropped. My son today, he didn’t finish college, but he do have a good job. He works for the union Local 79. But I believe that act with the police is what caused him not to finish college, because he was on the right track until that happened. So, I think that played a key role. I’m making it my mission to make sure that that don’t happen to anybody else. In the Bronx, it’s mostly Black and Brown people. This happens to people of color more often than any other race. So that’s about it right now.

Zacca Thomaz: That’s wonderful. There’s so much detail there. Do you mind us going back just to follow up on some of what you said?

Dillard: Let me see if I left anything out first. I think I covered everything.

Zacca Thomaz: I have a question about what happened to your apartment in the end.

Dillard: I moved out.

Zacca Thomaz: You moved out?

Dillard: Yes. Another thing that I left out is that my son, when he got old enough to get an apartment, he couldn’t get one, because the court had blackballed me. My name was on the list, and because my son’s name was my name, Randy Dillard, they thought that they was dealing with him instead of looking at the date of birth. It was just that name. I had to use the same lawyer that helped me to help him, just saying that this is not the same Randy Dillard. But what I didn’t understand is: I won my case, so why am I still blackballed? But I found out they don’t say whether you won or lost; they just tell you you’ve been in housing court, you understand? And they send that information out to the real estate people and the people that you put in your applications for. That happened to my son, but he basically got an apartment, and the lawyer that he had, which was my lawyer from the beginning, straightened it out. But what if he couldn’t straighten that out? A lot of tenants that goes through court, they don’t even know that the’'re blackballed, you know? Anything else?

Zacca Thomaz: Yeah, I’d love to hear more about this whole trajectory that you just shared with me from the South to Manhattan, to Brooklyn, to the Bronx. So, you were born and raised in the South, where exactly was that?

Dillard: That’s in Gainesville, Florida. We moved to a place called West Virginia and it was something my father, when he was speaking to a white person, he would have to look at the ground. He couldn’t look a white person in the face. And the way that they used to talk to my parents then, me coming up as a child, I didn’t understand it. It was hard, you know, but when they started passing laws and desegregating schools and stuff, it got a little bit better, the changes and stuff that was made.

But when I come to New York, I didn’t really see that type of prejudice, it was there, but it was more hidden. In the South, they’ll call you the n-word, a n*****, you know to expect that. You expect to be called “boy.” But they don’t do that up here in the North, you understand? But this is another way that they hold you down and poverty is one of them. When I grew up [in the South], they had plumbing, electrician; for the women, they had typing, home economics, where they learned how to cook and stuff. They had all of these different trades in the school. Here in New York, they don’t have that type of trades because everybody’s not geared to go to college. But they can learn the trade. In the South, they had that, but they didn’t have it here when I come to New York. I believe that’s part of the poverty that’s in our communities because there’s nothing in our communities for our children to learn, to have a trade, a craft to take on and to learn. Like now, with the construction, you have to go to Ocean [unclear], go to school and have it, but usually you can come right out of high school into a trade or you went into the service. That’s how things were, but it’s not like that now. So, I think that’s what plays a big role on our poverty in our neighborhoods for people of color. There’s nothing for them to do in the neighborhood.

Zacca Thomaz: And what was it exactly that made you move from the South to New York?

Dillard: Well, I wanted to move. I wanted something different. I had been to New York before and I kind of liked it. A little leery because of the subway, a crowded subway, crowded buses, that’s different than in the South. I kind of enjoyed that, the crowdedness, the sounds. New York at one time was a beautiful place to live. People played in the park, they played chess in the park, they played music in the park, checkers. Now, you don’t hardly see that anymore. You used to walk through the park. Some people have a blanket down and they’re napping. Now, you're getting robbed in the park, you’re getting raped in the park. Do you see what’s going on now? These young kids, fourteen, fifteen [years old], now they’re robbing and killing. The city has totally changed. Make me think about going back down South now because it got bad.

Zacca Thomaz: And, when you moved to Manhattan, where did you live? How did you find a place there?

Dillard: Well, I lived on 123rd Street, and it was a kitchenette. I shared it. I had a room, and a lot of people in there had rooms, and we shared the kitchen and the bath. I started construction work. I’m a bricklayer by trade, and I used to go on jobs, and they wouldn’t let me on jobs. Finally, they let me on the job, and I started work, and then we had to fight to get into the union. We used to have this organization called “Fight Back” and we used to take bats and chains and go shut the jobs down for them to hire people of color. That’s how I started in construction. I was in Local 59, and I got my union book. When I got my kids, I had to stop work because I had an asthmatic kid, I had an autistic son. They had disabilities that I had to tend to. So, I had to stop work to take care of them. But right now, they’re all good. Autistic son wrote a book and he’s into poetry. My asthmatic son just moved to Texas. His job located him in Texas. He’s doing good. His asthma, I don’t know if he’s outgrown it, but we’ll see, because the humidity here and Texas is different. So that attests whether his asthma still will be affected to where he’s at. But other than that, my kids turned out to be all right, even under the circumstances what we all went through.

Zacca Thomaz: I’m glad to hear that. When you were describing Manhattan earlier, it sounded like you enjoyed living there?

Dillard: Manhattan was good. Yes, I enjoyed everything about Manhattan. The food is great, the people was nice when you come out in the morning. The people said, “Good morning,” “Good evening.” It’s not like it is now. I mean, it’s crazy now. It’s a whole new—I don’t know—would you say breed of people? I don’t know. I don’t know if it was the pandemic that touched these young people that’s got them so crazy because they was cooped up for a while. I don’t know. If I had to go back in time, I would like to be in Manhattan when everything was nice. That would be nice. The schools was better. You didn’t need these charter schools. It’s put together against the regular schools and people trying to get into the charter schools, talking about how you can get a better education. But my kids, they got a good education in a regular school. The teachers in there was dedicated. Everything just changed. I think it has to do with a lot of politics that’s going on now.

Zacca Thomaz: What was it like when you had to leave Manhattan? You spent some time in a shelter in Brooklyn?

Dillard: Brooklyn and_ _in Manhattan. Amboy was the name of the shelter in Brooklyn, and the shelter that we went to in Manhattan was Harriet Tubman. That’s another reason why I do this work, because when you go into the shelter, especially for no fault of your own, it’s like people coming from a prison to a halfway house. You’re under a lot of rules: you got to be in at a certain time, and you have, maybe, one or two guests, and maybe you can’t have no guests at all. Being in at a certain time, I didn’t like that. Signing the book every time you go in and come out. If you stay out two or three days, then they can kick you out of the shelter, because they said you got somewhere to stay. So it was kind of rough. It really was. That’s another reason why I liked Manhattan. I had to fight to get to Manhattan. And all my kids’ doctors and schools were in Manhattan. I didn’t want them to go to different schools and stuff.

Zacca Thomaz: What was it like when you moved from Brooklyn to the Bronx? What was the Bronx like? What year was that?

Dillard: That was in 2000. It was good starting out. The clock had just turned to 2000, and everybody was waiting on that. It was good. It was good up to the point that my landlord started to become a greedy landlord. He didn’t supply heat. We used to have to turn the ovens on, put pots of water on top of the stove. When we used to go to use the bathroom and the ceiling was going to fall down on you, we got garbage bags taped to the ceiling because you know that they leak. Sometimes you’re using the toilet, you might have to have an umbrella over top of you. The kids, when they had to shower, had to make it real quick to get out. We was scared that the fire department would come up there, that the water might leak into the outlet to start a fire or something. That’s how bad it got. Starting out was good until the landlord decided that he didn’t want to be a landlord anymore to that building. He wanted to get rid of it, so he didn’t care about it no more. But that’s the only fault I had in the Bronx.

We wasn’t aware of community boards in that neighborhood. We wasn’t even aware of CASA. I had to go to a law office to see this flyer. So that means one of the organizers from CASA must have went in there because they do the legal clinic and left their flyers, like you see over there on that table there. CASA, since I’ve been in it for ten years, I’ve educated a community and a city. Everybody knows CASA. We all know. We’re well known for our work that we’ve done.

Zacca Thomaz: What was the year that you ended up finding the flyer of CASA and joining them?

Dillard: That was in 2013.

Zacca Thomaz: 2013. So I’m wondering for you what were the differences between living in Manhattan and moving to the Bronx. The neighborhood itself, did you enjoy it?

Dillard: Yes.

Zacca Thomaz: Do you think it’s changed since?

Dillard: Yes, it’s changed, and it’s still changing, but it ain’t changing for the good. When you walk out now, you have to pay attention. At least I do. I cannot speak for nobody else. Because you don’t know. When you listen to the news, a lot of elderly people are being robbed. A lot of young people are being robbed and taken what little money and their cellphones from them. So you have to be more alert when you go out now. As far as me right now, I don’t go out after five or six [p.m.]. Back before then, you didn’t mind going out or standing out and talking and communicating. Now that they done legalized marijuana, the kids are smoking in front of the building. They smoke in the building. That’s the changes that’s going on right now, which is not good. But everybody blame the parents. The parents do play a big role in the kids, but the environment plays a bigger role on the kids. I had a chance to move into the projects, and I’m not downing the projects, but I didn’t move into the projects because I was afraid I would lose my kids in the projects, you know? With so many kids coming out of the projects that don’t make it, then you got a few that comes out of that does that make it, and I really wanted my kids to make it. So that’s another reason why—as far as you say “changes—that housing doesn’t get any better.

Zacca Thomaz: So, when you joined CASA in 2013, you were in the middle of that case with your landlord?

Dillard: Yes. The apartment I live in now, I’m blessed by God because we was taking the commission of HPD [NYC Housing Preservation and Development] around showing them different buildings that needed help, that was in bad shape, and the conditions that tenants was living under. When you put in for housing on this application, it said HPD. You got to get in touch with them and they’ll direct you. I was telling the commissioner about that. She said, “We don’t put that on applications anymore.” I told her the date on my application. I said, “Well, you see, I just got this, so it’s on there.” She really didn’t know that it wasn’t on there anymore. She thought they had got rid of it. Once she’s seeing that, she called the director of 100 Golden Street [sic; 100 Gold Street, address of the HPD] and gave them my name. That’s how I winded up in the apartment that I got today. Because the money for the application that I was paying for to find me an apartment, I didn’t know that I was blackballed. And I kept spending this money doing these applications. Then when I found out I was blackballed, I was going to try to straighten it, I ran into the commissioner, which I believe is God’s work, and I was blessed to get the apartment I’m in. So, it works out.

Zacca Thomaz: Tell me about when you joined CASA, and you started participating in the workshops and the campaigns, what was that like for you learning more about your rights?

Dillard: It was amazing, because I thought that when you find an apartment, all you’re supposed to do is pay your rent. As long as I pay my rent, I got a roof over my head. I didn’t know all the things that my landlord was responsible for. He’s responsible to make sure I have locked doors. He’s responsible to make sure I have lighting in the hallway, going up the stairs, in the elevator. He’s responsible for the elevators to work. He’s responsible if the mailbox gets broken to fix it. He’s responsible to give me heat and hot water, and heat for my apartment in the wintertime. He was responsible for all that. When I don’t have that, I’m supposed to demand that because that’s my right to have these things. And I didn’t know that because when we was boiling water and asking the landlord to give us heat, I didn’t know that I can call 311, put a complaint in, and HPD would follow up that complaint to try to make that landlord do what he needs to do. So these are some of the things that I learned while I was with the CASA that I didn’t know.

CASA educated me in a lot, especially that part, the 311 and DHCR [New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal]. I didn’t know that whatever repairs that a landlord puts on a building is called a MCI—Major Capital Improvement—and that you had to pay for that right along with your rent. I didn’t know these things. And that they send you a piece of paper if you disregard it, you have thirty days to say why you shouldn’t have to pay this. And we at CASA fought and got it extended to ninety days, from thirty days. So, CASA educated me in dealing with officials, politics. And how to advocate for myself, and how to teach my kids how to advocate for themselves. I learned. I’m still here ten years later, still doing this work.

We’re trying to get this statewide Right to Counsel passed. We almost had it passed last year. We got a little bit more to work on. And once it gets statewide, then I’m no longer a CASA member. I want to get this done. I believe that no person in the United States should ever go before a judge without an attorney. If I’m a criminal, I can rape you, I can rob you, I can kill you, but I still have the right to an attorney. But I don’t have a right to defend my home and my family against a slumlord, that he got the right to throw us out whenever he gets ready. From my understanding, that housing court was created in 1975 [sic; 1972], and it was created for that reason, because landlords used to just set people out and set their things out. So now he can’t do that. He has to take you to housing court. So once they learned that system because they got money, they had attorneys and tenants didn’t. The work that we’ve done, we’re the first [city] in the nation that got the Right to Counsel passed. Seven other cities have followed what we are doing, and twenty other cities are thinking about the Right to Counsel now. That’s from the CASA’s work, our work. So that’s a beautiful feeling knowing that you’ve made a change, that you did something that’s going to help people. Your purpose in being born, all we are is but servants, and we serve humanity.

This is for humanity, you understand? Capitalism is what got this country messed up, and poor people need a chance. Once we passed this law before the pandemic, eighty-five percent of tenants got to stay in their home. That’s a nice number. That’s a number to be proud of, eighty-five percent. What if this eighty-five percent of tenants didn’t have lawyers? You see what I’m saying? So, it’s a proven fact that the law worked. That that’s something to be proud of, knowing that families ain’t going to go through what I went through, and knowing that they can take a landlord to court and fight for the repairs and not have to live in the conditions that me and my kids lived at one time. That’s what I’m proud about. And that we had a director at that time come through there with the smarts and the vision to see these things and to help educate us leaders. We’re seeing these things, and then we ask, “Can we start a campaign to change these things?” Change is not easy. You’ve got to fight for it.

You think that when you vote a politician in, and because you’re that politician’s constituents, because on the platform that that politician is running on is saying everything that you want to hear, that he’s going to help do for your community. Once they get in office, they change on you. That’s the job: to change a politician’s mind about something that he ran on. Because there are other things that he has to do to get whatever he or she got to get in a bill to move on, that they might not even look at the bill that’s needed in their community of the people that they voted on. So that’s my only problem right now: it’s politics. I don't know. Politics is something else. To change that would be a blessing. But I know we’re not going to be able to change it. So, am I finished? [Laughs]

Zacca Thomaz: Do you want to be finished?

Dillard: No [laughs]. Do you need anything else?

Zacca Thomaz: Yes. There are so many fascinating things about what you’re telling me. I feel like I could be asking you questions till the end of the day, but I promise I won’t keep you for that long [laughs]. But I wanted to hear more. You told me about first participating in a campaign for rent freeze with the RGB.

Dillard: Yes.

Zacca Thomaz: How was that campaign like? Was it your first one?

Dillard: Yes, yes, yes. It was good. The reason why I say it was good is that in order to change something, I’ve learned, a lot of people has to be in the same harmony with you. They have to be able to believe and feel the change that you’re fighting for and that it’s worthy. A rent freeze catches tenants’ attention. Don’t nobody want to pay rent. We already know rent is too damn high. The bulk of your money, if you’re working, goes into rent. If you’re living in messed up conditions, why do the landlord get to get a raise every year? For what? He’s not doing nothing. Nobody’s looking at the conditions or the way that the tenants is living. You got this Rent Guidelines Board that’s going to do this to vote and going to vote for them to [not] get that rent freeze because they’re going to talk about hardship. We know they [the landlords] don’t have hardship. Like my landlord right now, he owns 186 buildings. So, you think he got hardship? Okay. So, I have to go to the Rent Guidelines Board every year and say why this landlord of my building, who owns 186 buildings, why he don’t deserve an increase.

Then when I look over the year, what has he done as far as my apartment and what has he done for the conditions of the building? Right now, if I go in front of the RGB—that’s why I would say my landlord don’t need a rent increase. Because in front of my buildings, they have lights that when you go in, for you to be able to see, but there’s never no bulbs in there, either they burn out or somebody didn’t put a stick up there and broke it. But regardless of who is doing that work, if that’s what’s happening, you still have to put the lights in. The building is mopped, but it’s not clean. It’s just dirt moped over top of dirt. So why would I say to give him an increase every year when this is a condition that he’s letting me live? Every time the elevator break down, it takes two or three days to repair it. You got to use the stairway. So why would I give him a rent increase when we’re living under conditions that he has the power to change, but he don’t? When he do change it, it’s when he wants to change it.

So the Rent Guidelines Board, I think they need a couple of tenants on that board. I think it’s not fair of a certain few people that sit on that board that makes a decision. I don’t think that the mayor should be the one that appoints who goes on that board. I think there should be a committee of tenants from the community to have a say of who’d be appointed to that board right along with the mayor. We tenants need some type of power in the decision making. Anything else? [laughs]

Zacca Thomaz: Yash [laughs]! So, you got the rent freeze. That was 2015, 2016?

Dillard: Yes, somewhere in there, yes.

Zacca Thomaz: Yes, and were you part of the hearings?

Dillard: Yes. I testified. I testified about some of what I talked to you about, about the conditions that me and my kids lived up under. We marched down there, different organizations, and we go into buildings when we formed the tenants’ associations, and we bring them people that’s in those buildings to come out and testify. So, it’s a change as far as waking people up in the community. We have one million rent-stabilized buildings here in New York, and we got 2.5 million rent-stabilized tenants in that apartments. And what we tried to do as far as CASA, the rest of the organizations, is to reach them people, to bring them people to testify why their landlord doesn’t need that [rent increase]. And that’s a job, because when you pass out flyers, people tend to not want to take papers, so that’s something you have to figure it out, how to communicate now. Like you said, what’s the difference then and now? When I was coming up, if someone handed you something, you took it. And maybe you might have skimmed through it, but now people might take it and then instead of reading it, just throw it in the garbage and drop it on the street.

So, that’s some of the challenges, of doing this work, trying to educate people about something that they need. I got a habit that might not be right: when I’m passing out flyers, I say, “This is to help you, but not to help me, because I know you got a landlord you’re having problems with. Everything can’t be pretty. That’s what this flyer is for.” So, I kind of talk like that sometimes when I’m passing them out, when people rejecting it. I know it’s a lot of material that people be giving out, religious material and everything. Now it ain’t safe to grassroots, knock on doors the way we used to be able to do. So that’s part of some of the change that you’re talking about, that you want to hear in this documentary, that we’re up against in getting the messages out. I’ve learned in getting the message out, whatever campaign, you have to control the narrative. If they control the narrative, you don’t get nowhere. You have to control the narrative. You have to get people to believe in it. When it comes to conditions in the way you live, people knows that you just got to be able to have a conversation with them to get them to get started. Okay? [laughs]

Zacca Thomaz: When you talk about controlling the narrative, how did that play out in the campaign for the rezoning of Jerome Avenue? Because I think that was a big one too, right?

Dillard: Yes. See, what the rezoning is—and this is what I don’t like—before you come in and do the rezoning, you already know basically what our communities need. When you bring your rezoning in, it’s not for the people in the community. It’s to change the community for the type of people you want to now move into the community and get the older people out of the community, you understand? The average income in our community might be $30,000. And the income that you might want to bring in is from $60,000 and up. So what happens to us? You push us out. But you already know that our parks need to be fixed. You already know that we need lighting. You already know that we need you to bring fruit and health stuff in there for us to eat in our community. We know the changes that you need to make in our community, but you never discuss this with us until you’re trying to change our community. So that’s what, as far as the rezoning, that I had a problem with. If you bring programs into the community, you can build wealth in the community, but you don’t have to push us out.

But we don’t have the money, so we’re not there in the decision making. If you’re ignorant to what rezoning is about and don’t have no organization, they come in and do what they want to do. I’m thankful they got CASA, Banana Kelly, Northwest Bronx, these different orgs that’s in the Bronx. Because without them, how will we be able to fight what they’re doing to our community and how they’re changing our community? I believe that if you keep families in their homes because they have an attorney and not go to the shelter, it’s a safety because kids won’t commit crimes, the young girls won’t go into prostitution, the young men won’t go into gangs. Because that’s what happens when they go into the shelters here. So, it has to be a real big change if we can keep families in their homes.

That’s the part of why CASA is so strong, and the Right to Counsel is so strong, it’s because we know what we’re fighting for. We’re not only fighting for lawyers, we’re fighting for people’s lives. We’re fighting to help that generation of people and the next generation of people long after we’re gone. If we pass the statewide Right to Counsel, long after I’m in my grave, people are going to be having lawyers. So part of my purpose in my existence, to me, will be complete because I did something. Most people don’t get a chance, only politicians and well-known people have a legacy. We that do this work, our legacy is quiet. People don’t know nothing about it.

Zacca Thomaz: Hopefully, now they will. More people will learn about it.

Dillard: Yes. Well, I’m hoping that out of this, of what we are doing here for people to look at, that it inspires somebody to get involved in this work and to keep it going, because that’s what we need. We need people to always be out there. No matter how smart or how dumb you are, is to always try to educate somebody in knowing something. That’s what I’m hoping they get out of it. This is the only reason why I’m doing it, if I’m being honest with you. Because they come to me and ask me to do this–CASA–because a big portion of my life has been a part of this right now. Ten years is a lot of time. So, I hope whoever sees my photo and hears my voice that they carry on this torch. Because people will always need help, especially poor people.

Zacca Thomaz: When you think, looking back at those ten years of experience here with CASA, and when you think about the future of the Bronx, of CASA, what are your main hopes and concerns?

Dillard: [Sighs] Listen, I don’t want to say this, but I have a lot of doubt right now. I am hoping and praying and trying to have faith for the future. But when I look at–I don’t know if I’m allowed to say this–politics? We had a president who refused to step down. We had an insurrection in this country. And what’s going on now is a division between race, and it’s a division between Republicans and Democrats. We have $33 trillion in the hole. What future that is for our kids? I didn’t think I would see a pandemic. I didn’t think I would walk into a grocery store and there’s nothing on the shelves. I didn’t think that I would go to Costco and stand in line for four or five hours just to get groceries. I didn’t know that I would have to wear a mask and see these things because people—I don't know if something happened in a lab that killed a lot of people all over this world. So, to be hopeful? And you see the people that’s in control, some of them it seems like they’re fools. Instead of going on with the business of making this country the way that it needs to be made and going about doing the business for us all to function as human beings each and every day. That’s not happening.

I don’t know what to expect for the future. It’s hard to see the future when you see so much chaos and madness going on. That silver lining—I don’t know. It’s hard for me to see. My grandson–like I told you that I had to watch today, my daughter is watching–I don’t see his future and that’s bad. So many changes that every day that we are living, that we’re going through, that we have to accept, and that we have to learn about them. Changes that people are going through personally in their life that affects our lives, too. Some people don’t know who they are and what they want to be. It’s time that they have to figure that out. While they’re figuring that out, I’m supposed to try to understand that as I come in contact with them and accept them, who they are and what they are.

It’s a lot going on in this day and time. Where I don’t see no hope right now. I don’t know from minute to minute. I know my rent is paid. I know my lights is paid. I know my cable is paid. My phone bill is paid. I got food in my house. I’m able to wash my clothes. And this is the thing that’s within my power that I can deal with today. Anything outside that right now, I don’t know because I see too much chaos. We saw yesterday, there were three police shootings in three different boroughs, you know? But only one killing. So I don’t know how to really answer your question when it comes to that. I have faith in God, that’s what gives me hope and strength, hoping that sooner or later we have enough patience that people will see their ways and change from their ways. I don’t know. That’s a hard question for me to answer, because of what I see and because of what I understand.

Zacca Thomaz: More recently, since the pandemic, CASA has this Eviction-Free Bronx campaign. Can you imagine what it would look like to have a Bronx without evictions?

Dillard: It would be lovely [laughs]! But we know we live in a capitalist society. So as long as there’s capitalism, I don’t think we would ever have that. As long as people got more than what they’re supposed to have. I was watching this movie one time, and this kid asked this guy, this rich guy, this billionaire, he said, “What’s your number?” The guy said, “What do you mean, what’s my number?” He said, “Most of you rich people have a certain amount of number that you want to reach for your money.” And you know what? He told that kid, “I don’t have a number. All I want is more and more and more.” I believe that’s the way it is. They don’t have a number. They want more. I mean, you got a trillion dollars, you got billions, and you can’t take none of that with you, but you still don’t want to help the poor. Somebody has to have their foot on your neck in order for you to stay where you at. Simple [laughs]. So, eviction-free? Is that going to be in my lifetime? I would love to see it, but I don’t believe I would see it. In my grandson’s time, will I see it? No. For him, will I see it? Unless technology plays a role in a massive change in the way we live, that way it might not cost as much. Maybe. Does that make sense? [Laughs]

Zacca Thomaz: Yes. Absolutely.

Dillard: But other than that, they always say, “Look for the worst and hope for the best.” So, if you get the best, you’re good. So that’s what I do. I hope for the best. And what I’m seeing is the worst right now [laughs]. Because winning the statewide Right to Counsel and the work that we’re putting in it now, it should be a no-brainer, but it’s work, and we’re working hard to win it, and we shouldn’t have to work as hard. If you see something that was already working, that 84% of the tenants got to stay, why are you all making this complicated? Why are you y’all still evicting families? Why did these families got to stand before a judge without an attorney? It doesn’t make sense. What that shows me is we don’t care. It’s business as usual. There’s people like us, you, the school, that’s got to get this word out here to wake up another class of people. That’s what I’m hoping this do. If it touches one, five, ten people, it might be a little spark to start a fire to help make greater change. I don’t know. That’s why I’m in this room [laughs]. Am I good?

Zacca Thomaz: I think so. Is there anything else about your story that we didn’t touch on that you’d like to talk about?

Dillard: No, I think you all covered about everything. One thing I can say as far as staff, for CASA and us leaders and our membership: they are a beautiful, beautiful set of people that over the ten years that I’ve been so proud to work with and the Right to Counsel with Susanna and everybody that sits on that steering committee with me. They have jobs, and I mean, that requires them to work hard on their job, but they take time to do this work, and they don’t have to put their all and all into this work. Knowing the amount of stress and work that they do for their own jobs that they have. And that’s why I’m so proud of all of them, because they go above and beyond. And that gives me that energy to do this work when I see them work hard on their job, and then work with us hard to get the job done. So that’s the bright side of my life. It’s the people that I work with that I come in contact with, who’s on the same page and getting this done and already got a lot on their plate but make time to do this when they don’t have to. I’m happy and grateful for that. If you don’t get nothing out of this interview, [know that] that’s my happiness. It’s the people that I work with that I’ve seen come and go, and that are still here no matter what. Is that good?

Zacca Thomaz: Amazing, yeah. Thank you so much, Randy. I think just one small piece of information, so I have your story rounded up. I missed when you moved from Manhattan to the shelter in Brooklyn. When was that?

Dillard: When was that? Oh, God. When was that? The New York Times did a story on me. Because I saved my kids’ lives. I brought them all down from the fire escape one at a time, from the fire. It was this charity group–I forget the name of the charity group–but they helped me find the apartment that I was in. I only wish then that we knew he was going to turn out to be a slumlord. And that was in—lord, have mercy. That was so long ago. I don’t even remember them numbers. But I think I got the article at home. We have the dates from The New York Times. All I know, I had to fight to get out of Brooklyn into Manhattan, and then from the Manhattan shelter to the Bronx. I have to get that information for you, okay? I don’t have it. [The fire happened in 1999.]

Zacca Thomaz: No worries about that, we can add that in later.

Dillard: Okay.

Zacca Thomaz: Do you remember for how long you were in the shelters in Brooklyn and in Manhattan?

Dillard: You’re going to think this is crazy. I was supposed to stay in Brooklyn, and my kids were supposed to go to school in Brooklyn. Because when I got to the shelter in Brooklyn, they said there were anywhere from forty to forty-five families ahead of me trying to get moved out of Brooklyn, and that I was on a long waiting list, and it would be impossible for me to get to Manhattan. But I was president of the Parents’ Association of my son’s school in Manhattan. My principal was Dr. McFarlan [phonetic]. I called him and told him that they wanted me to take my kids to put them in school in Brooklyn. I didn’t want them to go to Brooklyn. He told me, “If you can get the kids from Brooklyn to Manhattan to school and not be late, on time every morning, I’ll use all in my power to keep your kids in Manhattan.” And then I went to my kids’ doctor, and I told them my situation. They sent letters to the mayor and to the shelters saying that we needed to be in Manhattan instead of in Brooklyn. So, I think I was in the Brooklyn shelter for two months and was able to move out of there over top of forty-five that was waiting because of the people that I had behind me helping me. So, I think I was in that shelter for two months, and I think I was in the Manhattan shelter for six months.

Zacca Thomaz: Okay. So, it was probably in the late 1990s?

Dillard: Yes. I’ll get that for you. Well, you brought back memories [laughs]. I thought this was just going to be about CASA [laughs].

Zacca Thomaz: [Laughs] Well, you’re a part of CASA, so it’s good to hear your story too.

Dillard: Yes. So, do we get to hear this?

Zacca Thomaz: I think we’re good. Thank you so much for sharing your story. I really appreciate it.

Dillard: Yeah. Thank you. Okay.