Confronting Poverty: Turning Hope into Reality

The release of the report of Mayor Bloomberg’s Commission for Economic Opportunity (CEO), on which I serve, is a significant milestone for New York City.  To my knowledge, there has not been a similar effort of this magnitude in any other city in our nation.  To his credit, Mayor Bloomberg has delved into a subject – poverty – that has become taboo for most elected officials and deemed intractable by many policy makers.

When we speak of poverty in New York City we are talking almost exclusively about poverty in communities of color.  In a city that threatens to find itself divided both racially and economically – with a great disparity between rich and poor – addressing the subject of poverty holds out hope that New York can still be a place of opportunity for all.  

The CEO report gives the city a unique opportunity to put forth a realistic and attainable framework for assisting many New Yorkers to create a route out of poverty.  In many ways, the report mirrors much of the work my organization, the Community Service Society (CSS), has been undertaking to support low-income New Yorkers and identify opportunities for individuals to improve their lives.

Targeted Approach

The commission’s report takes a targeted approach, focusing on three distinct groups of the poor in New York City: working poor adults, young adults ages 16 to 24, and children ages five and under.  Each of these groups faces unique challenges.  Policies must be developed that will address their immediate needs and create avenues for sustained mobility throughout the course of their lifetimes.  

The commission’s decision to concentrate on groups of the poor is an acknowledgement that poverty in its entirety cannot be addressed in one fell swoop.  A more measured approach gives us a fighting chance to begin making significant inroads toward ultimately shifting the landscape of poverty. 

The commission report makes only passing reference to a group that is at the heart of poverty in New York City – single mother families.  CSS’s latest report on poverty in New York City, “Poverty in New York City, 2005: More Families Working, More Working Families Poor,” reveals that the poverty rate for single mothers has grown by an astounding 9.9 percentage points in the last four years.  Single mother families now constitute two-thirds of the city’s poor families with children.  More attention needs to be paid to this group, which continues to face significant challenges in finding and keeping jobs that improve their economic position.

Our only hope in sustaining the economic vitality of our city is making sure the large numbers of New Yorkers who are working yet remained mired in poverty have a career ladder on which to ascend to a more secure economic position.  To do anything less will jeopardize our city’s standing in the new global economy and retard innovation as resources will be diverted to growing social needs.

Sets of Recommendations

The commission report offers two broad remedies for the working poor: (1) expanding opportunities for low-wage workers to acquire skills that will allow them to move up the job ladder and (2) providing greater access to benefit programs that would provide additional resources to low-income families. 

Young people aged 16 to 24 – more than 200,000 living in poverty – need career pathways to jobs.  Youth coming out of foster care or prison are particularly at risk of being disconnected from either school or work.  The sort of apprenticeship agreements proposed earlier this year by the Commission on Construction Opportunity, creating a pathway to jobs in the construction industry, should serve as a model for workforce training in other occupations.

Among the commission’s recommendations for young children is expansion of universal pre-kindergarten to serve all three and four year-olds.  Research has shown that interventions made early in children’s lives lead to outcomes that increase their chances of becoming self-sufficient adults.

Creating a route
out of poverty

The work of the commission is not done.  Questions remain over the implementation of its recommendations.  The Bloomberg administration faces a daunting task in aligning the necessary city agencies, enlisting a long-term commitment from the private and not-for-profit sectors, and allocating sufficient resources to achieve measurable outcomes.  In a city where even the best of intentions often gets bogged down in bureaucracy, the city is going to have to fundamentally alter the way its agencies conduct their business in serving the poor.

The commission report should be viewed as just a starting point both for the new governor and for future mayoral candidates in the city, a point of departure going forward in any policy discussion concerning poverty in New York City.      

From the New York Amsterdam News
October 5 - 11, 2006