News & Events
City Tech Apartment House Institute's Supers Club Honored by Continuing Education Association of New York
City Tech Division of Continuing Education Dean Carol Sonnenblick, center, with Continuing Education Association of New York President William McClure and Eileen Mandel, chair of the association's Resolutions & Awards Committee.
The Apartment House Institute's (AHI) Superintendents
Club of New York (Supers Club) was honored twice this fall by major
organizations. As reported previously, the Enterprise Foundation
and affiliated Enterprise Social Investment Corporation honored
the club and its founder Dick Koral at a ceremony in Manhattan in
September. More recently, the club was honored by the Continuing
Education Association of New York (CEANY) at its annual meeting
in upstate Geneva in late October. CEANY is a statewide association
of CUNY and SUNY continuing education programs.
Carol Sonnenblick, City Tech's dean of continuing education, accepted
the 2003 James C. Hall, Jr. Exemplary Program Award in Non-Credit
Program Development on behalf of the Supers Club. The award recognizes
innovative continuing education programs.
Established at City Tech in 1998, the Supers Club is a not-for-profit educational corporation and the first professional society in New York City for multi-family building superintendents and maintenance personnel. With a current roster of some 125 dues-paying members, the club holds monthly meeting at City Tech in Brooklyn, Hostos Community College in the Bronx, and in Manhattan. These meetings feature expert presentations on topics ranging from energy conservation to all aspects of building maintenance. Recently, club members benefited from a private tour of the Lower East Side Tenement Museum, providing them with a unique perspective on the history of housing in New York City.
The club has been the subject of feature articles in The New York Times, The New York Sun, trade magazines and other publications, and publishes its own monthly newsletter, Super! that is read by more than 1,000 supers, maintenance workers, building owners and managers, and other housing industry professionals throughout the city.
While the Supers Club is financed almost exclusively by member dues, the federal Department of Energy, in recognition of the important role the club plays in energy conservation and pollution abatement, early on designated it a Rebuild America Partner and has provided funding to spur its growth.
There are an estimated 10,000 multi-family residential buildings in New York City. The owners of most of these buildings employ a super and, depending on building size, a maintenance staff that may range from a single porter to several dozen maintenance workers. Top-paid supers in larger buildings may earn $100,000 per year and often have the benefit of free access to a training school and related educational programs through their union. But most New York City supers are not union members and have little or no formal training for their jobs. The result is that many buildings citywide are inefficiently run and poorly maintained. The Supers Club's mission, in part, is to address this inequity and provide superintendents and maintenance personnel with the education and training they need to do their jobs well.
"While the Apartment House Institute under Dick Koral's leadership has trained hundreds of building superintendents and maintenance workers in the classroom in recent years," says Dean Sonnenblick, "there are thousands of such workers who need to be reached and trained by other means. With very modest dues, membership cards and educational sessions in a social setting, many that might otherwise hesitate to take a college adult education course are coming in for training. The Supers Club is working and working well, and it is replicable on any campus in or near a densely populated urban area."
Photo by Skip Glenn
