BMW: Here is the article. My mistake was that I remembered it at 42 years, the article actually says 47 years. That would have made him 12 years old. I was writing about the Delancy street property, not the Food Bank, which is another ridiculous charge. He deserves blame for what he did, not all kinds of other nonsense. http://www.thelodownny.com/leslog/2014/03/new-york-times-silver-rapfogel-kept-a-lower-east-side-lot-vacant-for-47-years.html

What happened was bad enough, but it seems that people are just making stuff up. I read an article from an on-line Lower East Side newspaper that Rapfogel and Sheldon Silver were preventing the property on Delancey St. (referred to above) from being developed for affordable housing, for 42 years. This makes no sense to me on a few accounts. 1. The property itself and its location would have no impact on the Jewish community. 2. Rapfogel is now 59 years old. That would have made him 17 at the time. He wasn't involved in anything as a teenager that he could have influenced anything. Sheldon Silver was just beginning his political career, so it's doubtful those accounts were true.