On a recent Saturday, Ashley Paniagua walked down a brick pathway that snaked between the towering Manhattanville Houses in Harlem, and headed toward a small garden she had helped plant months earlier. But the gates to the gardens were locked — the government worker who opened them every morning had yet to do so.
“It’s a lot of politics,” Ms. Paniagua, 26, said. “You’ve got to go through so many people, just to get something simple done.”
