Harry Karas is not feeling well. The AIDS virus he has been battling for a decade has the upper hand today. This morning he passed out in his office and had to be hooked up to one of the oxygen tanks he keeps nearby.
He hates the tanks, worries they might become a crutch. But today there was no alternative. He'd promised to help a fellow tenant council president across town.
So, limping and leaning on a cane, an oxygen tank trailing behind him, his swollen feet wrapped in socks, he slowly shuffled to a van waiting outside his office in the 2100 block of E. Fairmount Ave. He winced with each step, but he pressed on.
Ten years ago, he was living the high life of a gay man-about-town, complete with handsome lovers. He had a grand, $145,000 townhouse in Reservoir Hill and owned the Two Crazy Greeks pizza shops. Life was good. Then the virus came. He thought it was a death sentence. And it was, the death of one life making way for another.
Today, his years of hard work will pay off with the groundbreaking of the $54.4 million townhouse complex that will replace the old Broadway Homes project. On a gently sloping hill, the site has a spectacular view of Baltimore's skyline.
It took years to reach this point. Karas arrived at the old 22-story Broadway Homes public high-rise a broken man. He was sick, penniless, homeless. Slowly, he pulled himself up. Now he is regarded as one of the shrewdest, craftiest tenant council presidents ever to sit down at the bargaining table.
The turning point came the day he helped a blind tenant into her ninth-floor apartment. The woman asked if he could bring her the fried chicken dinner she had bought from Popeyes. He saw it on the kitchen counter, roaches scrambling over the food.
"I went home and cried. I was devastated," said Karas. "From that point it became a mission for me to help these people."
He ran for tenant council president and won in a landslide. Since then the women of Broadway Homes have depended on this Greek immigrant to speak for them, to argue for them, to lead them. And he has never failed them.
"I'm not a martyr or anything like that. What I am is hard-headed, and I won't take 'no' for an answer," he said one afternoon, while discussing his negotiating style and his relationship to the people he serves. "This Broadway is like a family, and I'm like the sick child that nobody wants to die."
On some days he feels like Job, beset by bleeding boils from a Bartonella infection and hobbled by a wound in his right heel that defies all medications. The infection, caused by animal scratches, is one more assault on his heavily compromised immune system. Yet, none of this has stopped him.
Negotiations over the development would have gone much smoother, and the public housing tenants likely would have gotten much less, if it weren't for Karas.
He kept reminding everyone that HOPE VI, the federally funded program that has leveled the city's high-rise public housing, was not conceived to benefit big-time developers, homebuyers looking for a good deal, or Johns Hopkins Hospital.
HOPE VI was for people like Sarah Stewart, 67, who has raised grandchildren and great-grandchildren in the projects.
Winning's a 'kick'
"You don't know what adrenaline I get when I help somebody or get (Housing Commissioner Paul T.) Graziano to do something," Karas said, smiling a toothless smile. "I get a kick out of that. I'm sorry, I love to see a big developer buckle under."
There were heated discussions over the necessary land swap with Hopkins, the consent decree involving replacement housing, and the promises to improve the lives of the public housing tenants.
In the end, five homes at the new 166-unit development were set aside for purchase by Broadway residents. It was either that or Karas was walking away from the table, and he knew no one wanted that.
"He understands the power dynamic in a negotiation. He understands what he's up against as negotiator for poor people who have nothing, and he also understands what their leverages are and how to use them. He's not afraid of anybody," said Barbara Samuels, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney who has worked alongside Karas. She calls him "one of the sharpest people I have met."
"Some people think he's kind of crazy," said Samuels, "but crazy like a fox."
Ownership of the new community center will revert to the tenant council after 15 years. Johns Hopkins Hospital will contribute $500,000 into a fund for former Broadway residents. HUD has approved $500,000 for a youth program run by Hope Village Inc., the nonprofit entity formed by residents of the old Broadway Homes.
These hard-won concessions, unique in the city's Hope VI program, are part of Karas' legacy.
"You got to understand," he said, voice carrying the accent of his native Greece. "Nobody in a negotiation wants to benefit the other. You know, they say the best negotiation is when everybody comes out unhappy. I don't believe that. The best negotiation is when I come away happy and everybody else is unhappy."
Respect among foes
Daniel P. Henson III, the former city housing commissioner, remembers their earliest meetings during a dispute over air conditioning and ventilation at the Broadway apartment tower.
"He was hollering and screaming at me about the Broadway. He kept insisting that I meet him over there," said Henson. "Eventually, we met one-on-one, and I found him to be a charmer. Harry could wrap you around his little finger with his charm if he wanted to."
Over the years, the two came to respect each other. Henson has watched and admired Karas' maneuverings.
"There are times in a meeting when he just blows up and he walks out, and the next day he'll apologize and blame it on the drugs, or blame it on whatever," said Henson. "And there are also times when he blows up and it is clearly for the negotiating purposes, when it is clear to me that he is making sure that these people know that he's not going to let them push him around."
Theatrics are just part of the game for Karas. He once threatened to go on a hunger strike to speed up an agreement. Imagine an AIDS patient starving himself and being tended to by a cadre of female volunteers and their children. Imagine that on the evening news.
"It's hard for somebody to argue against a position when he is there so passionately arguing for it and has clearly paid his dues," said Graziano, whom Karas once designated as Broadway's Person of the Month. "He has occupied the moral high ground on these issues, and how can you challenge that?"
To his associates, Karas can be a nag, a stickler for detail and punctuality. He is by turns pushy and petulant, or full of laughter and mischievous banter. He boasts that he could be back living the gay high life in no time. All he'd have to do is put in his teeth, dye his thinning, shoulder-length silver and gray-streaked hair, put on a nice set of clothes, and start stepping.
But that life is behind him. Now, he works for the people of the Broadway.
"This is my husband, this desk," he said one afternoon in his office. "This is my mate."
Child of the heart
At home, he is a soft touch, lavishing affection and instilling solid values on Troy Poole Jr., 8, a boy he took in 10 days after the child was born at Mercy Hospital. He knew the parents and worked out an arrangement making him guardian, giving them a chance to straighten out their lives.
Karas used to carry the baby papoose-style on his chest. Whenever he dropped the child off with others, he also left a sweater or shirt in case Troy went into a crying fit. Seems all the boy needed was the smell of Karas to calm down. Now, when Troy goes to the park, he carries a two-way radio so they can keep in touch.
"I hate that I can't play with him or run with him," Karas said. "But guess what? God brought his father back."
Troy Poole Sr. worked for Hope Village until recently. The boy still lives with Karas in a two-story rowhouse in the 1700 block of E. Lombard St. It's the house with the plants and flowers out front and the grape arbor in back.
"This little boy, he taught me patience. He taught me sacrifice. He taught me stability. Before that my life had no structure, even though I was helping," he said. "I couldn't begin to pay Little Troy back. For the first time in my life, I'm loved unconditionally."
Karas was christened Haralambos Nicholas Karasatikiras. His mama called him "Lambis." He grew up in the village of Lahi and in Athens before joining the merchant marine when barely a teen-ager.
He traveled the world and might have stayed in the merchant service but for the constant sexual abuse inflicted on him by his captain.
On April 8, 1969, with the ship docked at Sparrows Point, Karas told the captain he was going to get a few sodas. He left the ship and never returned. Within a month he was broke and sleeping in the Pagoda in Patterson Park. He sought spiritual comfort at St. Nicholas Church in Highlandtown. The priest there turned him away. Karas says it was because he wasn't dressed right.
"That really appalled me. You see, God tells us, come as you are. Period," he said. "Who is the church? The church is a bunch of sinners like the rest of us."
He has not set foot in a Greek Orthodox church in years, yet remains deeply religious and still wears a seaman's cross. He meditates daily, prays every morning and has an altar set up in his home, complete with icons and incense. His god is a deal-maker. He promised to quit smoking and change his lifestyle, in exchange for being given enough time to help Broadway and Little Troy:
"Greek people do that if they're really spiritual. We believe God's love comes free, but our salvation has a price. My religion is based on guilt."
Sarah Stewart, his tenant council vice president and right hand, calls him every morning around 6:30 to touch base and gauge his strength for the coming day.
In a newsletter she wrote:
"When we asked 80 residents to sign complete power of representation to him all of them did. It is that kind of trust, and love we have for this difficult and sometimes almost unbearable man who compromise nothing that will decrease our quality of life! The man who many times has to make a choice between his health and us! I know that he has always chosen us."
More than a month has passed since Harry Karas limped to the van. He is feeling great, laughing and joking with his board members about a recent trip to New Orleans. The wound in his heel is mending. A new drug cocktail has beaten back the virus. The oxygen tanks sit idle.
Some folks are planning a quick gambling trip to Delaware, and he has $100 burning a hole in his pocket. The trip would be a guilty pleasure. He could spend the money on Little Troy. But ...
"If I stop doing the sinful things for me, then I might as well go for sainthood because, God knows, I don't do anything else," he says, laughing, bare gums showing.
His mind is full of plans. He wants to put drug abuse and domestic violence programs in every public housing project. He wants every able-bodied Broadway resident working. He wants to take a group of Broadway children to the old country. He wants to keep doing good.
"When somebody is drowning and they put their hand up, we have an obligation to grab it and pull them out," he said. "I'm not talking about [President George W.] Bush. I'm talking about us, the community."