Category Archives: Politics

New Coalition Unites to End Homelessness

April 12, 2013 6:01 pm Leave a Comment

Over 100 homeless advocacy and service provider organizations launched a new coalition this week — United to End Homelessness – to help address the homelessness crisis and hold 2013 mayoral and Council candidates accountable for advancing solutions. New York City’s next mayor and City Council will confront record levels of homelessness with over 57,000 people living in shelters or sleeping on City streets as of January, including more than 22,000 children.

“With NYC facing record homelessness, it’s critical that a new mayor and City Council take significant policy steps – together with other stakeholders – to stem the tide of misery in our city,“ said Mary Brosnahan, President & CEO of Coalition for the Homeless. “In order to move us forward, it’s imperative that city leaders increase investment in programs and services proven to help move our homeless neighbors towards permanent housing and self-sufficiency. We must expect no less from the next administration and City Council.“

“Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York often receives more than 300 hundred calls a day from New Yorkers on the verge of becoming homeless,“ said Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, Executive Director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of New York.  “Living with dignity in safe, decent housing is a basic human need. New York has been in the forefront of trying to ensure this right. Yet, despite this commitment in principle and with resources, too many residents of our City are homeless, doubled up or on the brink of becoming homeless.  Preventing homelessness needs to be a high and ongoing priority for all New York’s institutions and sectors.  As we approach the elections of a new Mayor, Comptroller, Public Advocate and City Council, preventing homelessness and ensuring safe, decent and affordable housing needs to be a central item on candidates’ agenda.“

United to End Homelessness formed to promote a unified vision to help create solutions for those who are homeless or at risk of homelessness during the 2013 election and beyond. As part of its launch, the coalition put forward a platform to outline the necessary steps the next administration must take to help end the homelessness crisis. Its platform focuses on:

  • Ensuring that fighting homelessness and expanding affordable housing is a top mayoral priority;
  • Increasing funding for programs that prevent homelessness, like legal services, eviction and foreclosure prevention, and aftercare services for the formerly homeless;
  • Expanding and improving housing assistance resources: create a new local rent subsidy for homeless people, reinstate and expand priority set-asides for the homeless in Federal, State, and City programs, and redesign the City’s system for placing extremely low-income and homeless households in set-aside units in tax credit buildings;
  • Guaranteeing adequate shelter, health care and services for all people experiencing homelessness without deterrent or bureaucratic barriers;
  • Continuing investments in supportive housing: ensure sufficient funding to fulfill the NY-NY III agreement, create a NY-NY IV agreement that increases the supply of housing units for homeless people, and ensure that existing supportive housing tenants continue to get the services they need by bringing contract rates up to current costs;
  • Preserving and creating more affordable housing for New York’s lowest income households;
  • Improving planning around natural disaster-induced homelessness, integrating it into the City’s overall strategy to assist homeless people regardless of the cause of homelessness
  • Creating an interagency council on homelessness that includes government, non-profit, and consumer stakeholders to implement a comprehensive plan to end homelessness, unifying priorities by sharing data and resources across agencies to enhance system-wide efficiencies.

Click here to read the full platform.

The number of homeless New Yorkers in shelters each night has increased 58% since 2002, and the number of homeless families has increased 66% over the same period. An additional 5,000 people sleep each night in other shelters (including runaway and unaccompanied homeless youth, domestic violence survivors, and people living with AIDS), and thousands more sleep on the streets or in other public spaces. New York City’s youth shelter system is overwhelmed and a record 80% of domestic violence emergency shelter residents are leaving with no safe place to go.

“Ending homelessness should be a top priority for the next administration and we look for the next Mayor to have a plan for doing so,“ said Ted Houghton, Executive Director of the Supportive Housing Network of NY. “Supportive housing – affordable housing linked to services – will be a major part of any successful plan: it is the most effective way to house those New Yorkers with disabilities or other barriers that make it hard for them to keep their homes.“

“Homelessness in New York City is a growing crisis that demands attention and action from our current government leaders, and from those who seek to lead our city,“ said Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO/Executive Director of Federation of Protestant  Welfare Agencies.

“Domestic violence can often force victims and their children into homelessness.“ said Carol Corden, Executive Director of New Destiny Housing Corporation. “80 percent of families leaving emergency domestic violence shelters have no safe place to go. We can and must do better to help New Yorkers find safe, stable homes. “

“We can end homelessness,“ said Bobby Watts, Executive Director of Care for the Homeless. “Policy choices that were made resulted in this crisis, and better public policy can get us out of it, spare needless human suffering, better serve our communities and save significant tax dollars.“

“With over 22,000 children sleeping in homeless shelters and hundreds of runaway and homeless youth being turned away because of a shortage of beds, it is critical that the City take immediate action to address the homelessness crisis,“ said Jennifer March-Joly, Executive Director, Citizens’ Committee for Children.

“We are experiencing a crisis in the availability of safe, affordable housing in the community“ said Phillip A. Saperia, CEO of The Coalition of Behavioral Health Agencies, Inc. “People with severe mental illness and substance use issues, often accompanied by multiple chronic physical health problems, are especially vulnerable to becoming homeless in this environment.“

Filed Under: Domestic Violence, Homelessness, Housing, Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News Tagged With: , , , ,

Mayor Bloomberg Challenges City Shelter Laws

April 2, 2013 6:45 pm Leave a Comment

A frustrated Mayor Bloomberg yesterday blasted a policy that allows nonresidents and even foreigners to get costly beds in city homeless shelters with no questions asked, reports the New York Post.

“When I pointed it out, some said that was ludicrous,” said Bloomberg, referring to his recent statement that a person could fly a private jet into Kennedy, take a limo to the city and get a free bed.

“What is truly ludicrous is a system that allows people from across the country and the world to take advantage like this,” the mayor said in response to a report that even foreigners were living large in city shelters.

Inside the Bowery shelter

“Until we are able to ask basic, common-sense screening questions, taxpayer dollars will continue to be diverted from those who truly need it,” he said.

About 25 percent of the roughly 48,500 people living in city shelters are not city residents — including a Polish freeloader, Michal Jablonowski, who gushed about free food, phone and medical care he gets at a shelter on The Bowery.

Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond agreed the rules are too lax — but said his hands are tied by a 3-decade-old consent decree that forces the city to provide shelter space to anyone who asks.

The decree settled the lawsuit Callahan v. Carey, in which advocates sued on behalf of Lower East Side vagrant Robert Callahan and other homeless people.

“People were not thinking of all of the ramifications at the time [the decree was signed],“ Diamond said. “This was written in an era before litigation of these types of issues became common. It was a new world.“

About 18 months ago, the city issued a new rule that would let it turn single people away from shelters if they could bunk with a friend or relative.

But Legal Aid sued and a lower court blocked the new rule, which would have allowed the city to save some of the $3,000 a month it costs to house and feed each adult. The city is appealing the ruling.

“We believe there are reasonable things the city can do to provide a system of shelters for those whose who need it in a way that’s responsible to taxpayers without burdening them with people who have alternatives,“ Diamond said.

Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota called the consent decree a menace to New York taxpayers.

“I do think the court case needs to be challenged. I think the court case should allow the city to have rules and regulations that prevent the types of fraud and abuse that were described in the New York Post,“ Lhota said.

Even some shelter residents said the city should pull in the welcome mat for nonresidents.

“I don’t think it’s fair. People from the city should have the first crack at it,“ said Sharif Smith, 35, who is staying in the same shelter as Jablonowski.

Filed Under: Homelessness, Housing, Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News Tagged With: , , , , ,

Students Rally Against After-School Funding Cuts

March 29, 2013 3:10 pm Leave a Comment

The nonprofit human service sector’s budget battles moved from Albany to New York City yesterday when more than 700 children from after-school programs rallied outside City Hall to urge the Mayor not to cut 47,000 children from child care and after-school programs.

The Mayor’s Preliminary Budget for Fiscal Year 2014, announced earlier this year, includes more than $130 million in budget cuts to the City’s after-school and early education systems. These cuts would eliminate programs for more than 47,000 children from mostly low-income families – the same number of children who were set to lose programs last year.

At the rally, hundreds of children from city after-school programs, including many from the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA) network, joined parents, providers, and advocates from the Campaign for Children to demonstrate why after-school programs are essential to their success in school and in life.

“Our after-school program provides my son with opportunities I couldn’t afford to give him otherwise,“ said Lissette Placencia, a parent from SCO’s Center for Family Life, Brooklyn. “I can’t imagine what I’d do if our after-school program is forced to close. I won’t have a safe and supportive place for my son to go while I’m at work.“

“After-school and early childhood education serve as the foundation for success for our City’s children and youth. These programs provide them with the instruction, guidance, and tools to help them reach their full potential,“ said Jennifer Jones Austin, CEO/Executive Director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (FPWA). “Our event is about spring and celebrating how children and youth grow and flourish from early childhood education and after-school programs. We call on our City leaders to invest in these supports because we want our children to continue to blossom.“

The Mayor’s Preliminary Budget for FY2014 includes:

  • None of City Council’s one-year funds: $120 million of last year’s restoration is one-year, discretionary money that will run out in June. The Preliminary Budget includes none of this funding, which will cause hundreds of programs – programs that just fought for funding in last year’s budget cycle – to have to shut their doors to the children they serve.
  • An Additional $10 million cut to after-school programs: This new cut to Out-of-School Time (OST) after-school programs, an after-school initiative created by Mayor Bloomberg himself in 2005, will eliminate slots for more than 3,600 children.

Research has shown that children who attend child care and youth who participate in after-school programs do better in school, are more likely to graduate, and have lower incidences of violence, drug-use, and teen pregnancy. These programs also allow working parents to keep their jobs – jobs that support their families and our local economy.

“If the City closes our after-school program, my daughter will be home alone until I get home from work at night. I’m afraid she’ll fall behind in school, and stay behind,“ said Moraima Cruz, a parent from the YWCA at PS 329, Brooklyn.

“My after-school program gave me the skills and confidence to be a leader in my community,“ stated Robert Ortiz, staff member and alumni of the after-school program at SCO Family ofServices’s Center for Family Life.

“A mainstay for youth and workforce development in the Lower East Side, Henry Street Settlement recognizes the transformative potential that after-school programs hold for not only the participants served, but the community as a whole,“ stated Matthew Phifer, Director of Education Services for Henry Street Settlement. “When learning continues during after-school hours through interactive and thought provoking activities, aligned with school day subject matter, there’s a salientcorrelation to improved academic performance and positive behaviors. To lose the opportunity to provide such services would not only be detrimental to our agencies, but would be a true disservice to the future of this city.“

“In my 27 years at PS 1, a school based site of Center for Family Life (a program of SCO Family of Services), I have witnessed firsthand the positive impact that an adequately funded after-school program can have on young people,“ said Helene Onserud, Center for Family Life Director, Community School Project Beacon at PS 1. “The Center for Family Life has a long and distinguished history of providing after-school supports to generations of families. In addition, because we are close-knit, we have historically employed staff from families throughout our community for many years. The staff are remarkably knowledgeable, caring and absolutely committed to the children they work with in after-school programs.“

Under the Mayor’s cuts, Out-of-School Time (OST) after-school programs will be hit hard. The Mayor’s proposal would mean slots for children slashed by 75% in just five years – from 87,256 children in 2008 to just 21,482 slots due to be available this coming September.

Filed Under: After School, Children, Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News, Youths Tagged With: , , , ,

Council Members and Advocates Call for Human Service Restorations

March 20, 2013 4:57 pm Leave a Comment

Council Member Annabel Palma, Chair of the City Council’s General Welfare Committee, along with her colleagues in the City Council, advocates, and clients, rallied on the steps of City Hall today to demand restoration of millions of dollars for social services programs slashed in Mayor Bloomberg’s $70 billion proposed budget for Fiscal Year (FY) 2014.

“This past year, the City Council won major victories in the ongoing debate with the Mayor over social services, restoring nearly $60 million to stabilize the child care system and thwarting the implementation of a policy that would have denied shelter to thousands of homeless men and women,” said Council Member Palma, whose General Welfare Committee provides oversight of the Administration for Children’s Services, the Human Resources Administration, and the Department for the Homeless.  “Yet again, it is up to the Council to take a stand for the City’s most vulnerable population.”

“Although the local and national economy are on the rebound, thousands of New Yorkers continue to rely on publicly-funded child care, housing programs, and food pantries to help provide job security and as bridges up and out of poverty.  We hope the Mayor will continue to see the value of human services in our communities and the role they play in growing a strong economy,” said Michael Stoller, Executive Director of the Human Services Council.

Administration for Children’s Services (ACS)

In October 2012, ACS rolled out an ambitious publicly funded early childhood education system known EarlyLearn NYC.   Last year, under the Mayor’s FY13 budget proposal, thousands of families stood to lose child care services because of the shift to this new system.  Ultimately, the Council, aided by the efforts of various organizations, providers, and families, dampened the shock to the system by negotiating an increase to the baseline funding for EarlyLearn NYC and by restoring over $58 million for discretionary seats and vouchers.

With the Council’s restorations, providers throughout the five boroughs, including the Jewish Child Care Association, could continue to serve nearly 4,500 children and low-income families could continue to access nearly 4,500 vouchers for child care.

In his proposed budget, the Mayor failed to baseline the $58 million for discretionary seats and vouchers, again jeopardizing the stability of the child care system.  These cuts, combined with the dramatic cuts to Out-of-School-Time, a program run by the city’s Department of Youth and Community Development, would have a devastating impact on many working families.

“As someone who began her career in education, I am deeply concerned with the proposed cuts to child care and after school systems,” Council Member Julissa Ferreras said. “For years, I served as the Beacon director for P.S. 19, and I can attest to how essential these programs are to the thousands of children and parents who rely on them on a daily basis. Not only does the budget fail to maintain the one year of funding restored by the City Council in 2012, it proposes additional cuts to both child care and after school systems. The education of our children is too important to allow this to happen.”

“Citizens’ Committee for Children is deeply dismayed that the Mayor’s final Preliminary Budget includes $217.9 million in cuts to services to children and families—which is on top of 11 previous rounds of budget cuts,“ said Stephanie Gendell, Associate Executive Director of Policy and Public Affairs at Citizens’ Committee for Children.  “We are especially troubled that the budget fails to restore any of the over $120 million the City Council restored last year so over 47,000 children would not lose child care or after-school.“

“Affordable, culturally-sensitive, high-quality childcare is a long-term, high return investment,“ said Sandy Katz, Director of Early Childhood Programs for the Jewish Child Care Association.  “If the City slashes JCCA’s funding, 1000 children will be at risk of losing the safe, enriching, educational childcare they need to succeed, some of the parents may be forced to quit their jobs to take care of their children, and 140 providers may also lose their livelihoods.“

Department of Homeless Services (DHS)

The city homeless shelter population is at a record high.  This January, more than 50,000 people slept each night in city shelters, an increase of 19% from last year.  The Mayor’s proposed budget adds $69.5 million for increased capacity for a total DHS budget of $955 million.

During his term in office, the Mayor has proposed a number of measures to divert people from shelters in an effort to achieve cost savings.  In 2011, the Mayor unveiled a policy that would have allowed the City to deny emergency shelter to thousands of homeless men and women each year by imposing new bureaucratic burdens on homeless adults seeking shelter.  The Council won a major legal victory last month when a state appeals court ruled that the City did not properly adopt this policy.  Consequently, the policy has not gone into effect.

In his proposed budget, the Mayor offers another diversionary measure for single adults.  Under this proposal, single adults who do not utilize their assigned shelter for more than 30 days would need restart the intake process, at which point DHS staff would seek to divert them to other housing.  DHS expects to save $4 million in the next fiscal year through a reduction in care days.

“The increase in homeless services expenditures under Mayor Bloomberg has been exponential, rising 77% during his tenure,“ said Patrick Markee, Senior Policy Analyst at Coalition for the Homeless.  “But it is simply wrongheaded to attempt to save money by making it harder for homeless adults, many of them living with mental illness, to secure shelter.  However, the City could save money and reduce the homeless population in the right way by adopting the City Council’s proposals to provide permanent housing assistance to the record number of homeless children and adults.“

Human Resources Administration (HRA)

Annual funding for food assistance programs plateaued at around $13 million years ago in the pre-recession days.  Yet poverty and food costs continue to increase in the city.  Inexplicably, the Mayor proposes decreasing the budget for food assistance programs.

“There is no good justification for reduced food assistance funding when so many people in New York City are still struggling to make ends meet,“ Council Member Stephen Levin said.  “I will continue to work with Council Member Palma and the rest of the City Council to restore support for New Yorkers in need.“

The Mayor has also failed to baseline over $5 million in funding to the HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) for supportive housing contracts and case management, thereby placing 4,500 people with HIV/AIDS at risk of losing the specialized care they need to overcome a history of homelessness, substance use, or mental health issues.

“It is necessary that social workers and case managers support clients where they live, and not just at HRA’s HASA headquarters,“ said Council Member Gale Brewer.

“Supportive housing saves lives,“ added Ted Houghton, Executive Director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York.  “These proposed budget cuts to essential case management in nonprofit-run HASA-supportive housing are the definition of penny-wise and pound foolish – thousands of very fragile tenants living with HIV/AIDS will be at high risk of becoming homeless again, making them sicker and more dependent on the costliest systems for basic shelter and healthcare. If these cuts go through, more than 200 case managers who do heroic work helping the most vulnerable among us will lose their jobs. We strongly oppose these short-sighted cuts proposed by the Mayor and urge the Council to once again fully fund these vital positions.“

Finally, the Mayor plans to continue to pay 50% of broker fees for all benefit recipients, including HASA clients, after years of paying 100% of the fee.  HRA estimates that this policy has saved over $26 million since implementation two years ago.

“All anyone has to do is talk to clients to find out that this policy has a negative effect on people seeking affordable housing, particularly when there is a question as to the scrupulousness of various brokers,“ said Council Member Brewer.

Filed Under: Finance, Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

Posters on Teenage Pregnancy Draw Fire

March 20, 2013 12:04 pm Leave a Comment

One of the advertisements New York City has put up in bus shelters in neighborhoods with high rates of teenage pregnancy.

The curly-haired baby looks out from the poster with sad eyes and tears dripping down his tawny cheeks.

“I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen,” the text next to his head reads.

In another poster, a dark-skinned little girl casts her eyes to the sky and says, “Honestly Mom … chances are he won’t stay with you. What happens to me?”

These images, part of a public education campaign targeting teenage pregnancy that the city unveiled this week, are drawing mounting criticism from reproductive health advocates, women who had children as teenagers, and others who say they reinforce negative stereotypes about teenage mothers without offering any information to help girls prevent unplanned pregnancies, reports The New York Times.

The criticism escalated Wednesday into a sharp exchange between the mayor’s office and Planned Parenthood of New York City, typically an ally of the administration on reproductive health matters. Planned Parenthood issued a statement denouncing the poster campaign, saying that it ignored the racial, economic and social factors that contribute to teenage pregnancy and instead stigmatized teenage parents and their children.

The mayor’s office responded, saying that it was “past time” to be “value neutral” about teenage pregnancy and that it was important to “send a strong message that teen pregnancy has consequences — and those consequences are extremely negative, life-altering and most often disproportionately borne by young women.”

Haydee Morales, vice president for education and training at Planned Parenthood of New York City, said the organization was “shocked and taken aback” by the tone of the new campaign.

“Hurting and shaming communities is not what’s going to bring teen pregnancy rates down,” she added.

She said that the campaign’s message — that teenage pregnancy leads to poverty — was backward.

“It’s not teen pregnancies that cause poverty, but poverty that causes teen pregnancy,” she said.

The posters — many of which bear the tagline, “Think being a teen parent won’t cost you?” and emphasize the expense of raising a child — have been put up in bus shelters in neighborhoods with high rates of teenage pregnancy and will be installed in subways next week.

The Bloomberg administration has aggressively sought to reduce teenage pregnancy by mandating sex education in public schools and by empowering high school nurses to provide birth control, including the morning-after pill.

The city’s teenage pregnancy rate has declined by 27 percent in the past decade, roughly equaling the national rate of decline. Nearly 9 out of 10 teenage pregnancies in the city are unplanned, according to the Bloomberg administration.

According to the National Campaign to Prevent Teen and Unplanned Pregnancy, a child born to a teenage mother who has not finished high school and is not married is nine times more likely to be poor than a child born to an adult who has finished high school and is married.

Robert Doar, commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration, said the campaign’s goal was to send a message about personal responsibility that would resonate with teenagers.

“We think it’s important to speak frankly and in a way that people will hear about the responsibilities of parenthood and the responsibilities of raising a child,” he said.

The city spent about two years and over $400,000 producing the campaign, which included hiring a marketing firm to conduct focus groups with teenagers, as well as with the parents of teenagers, and with parents who had children when they were teenagers.

The posters include a number to text to receive facts about teenage pregnancy and to play a game about a pregnant teenager, Anaya, and her boyfriend, Louis. Via text messages, the game chronicles a series of challenges facing Anaya and Louis and asks the person playing the game what they should do, which the player indicates by texting a response. The humiliations Anaya faces drive home a message that teenage pregnancy leads to family conflict, social isolation and poverty.

“My BFF called me a ‘fat loser’ at prom,” Anaya says in a typical exchange. (The city has since changed “fat loser” to simply “loser.”) In other examples, Anaya’s father calls her “stupid,’” and her best friend stops talking to her.

Carolina Pichardo, 30, of Manhattan, who became pregnant with her daughter from an unplanned pregnancy when she was 18, said she was upset and angry when she saw the ads, because they reinforced the shame that she said teenage mothers already felt too strongly. “I felt like a statistic,” she said of becoming a teenage mother. “When they use those same statistics against us, it doesn’t really help, because we already feel like we’re a part of it.”

Filed Under: Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News, Youths Tagged With: , , ,

New York City’s Fight to Prevent Teen Pregnancy

March 20, 2013 11:51 am Leave a Comment

A new ad campaign that aims to highlight teen pregnancy prevention in New York City is generating headlines this week — but the important story is the innovative approaches the city has brought to this work over the last several years, which helped cut teen pregnancy by 27 percent in New York in the last 10 years.

Under Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s leadership, New York City has become a model for how to educate and empower young people. Over the last decade, working with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department of Education, New York City’s schools and social service agencies have partnered closely with community groups, like Planned Parenthood of New York City, to reach young people where they are and give them the information and access to birth control that they need to prevent teen pregnancy.

This plays out every day, across the nation’s largest city.

In the South Bronx, students in many public high schools receive expanded sex education geared toward helping them prevent unintended pregnancy. The city partners with the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and community organizations from within the South Bronx to develop and deliver the innovative program.

Across the city, 25 percent of public high school students have access to reproductive health centers within their schools — where they can get information and support, as well as direct access to contraception.

In some public schools in New York — many of them serving communities that were historically neglected — school nurses and doctors provide sexual health information, pregnancy tests, birth control, and referrals. When this program, Connecting Adolescents to Comprehensive Health (CATCH) came under fire last year from groups that oppose access to family planning, the Bloomberg Administration stood strong.

Because it is such a multifaceted issue, no one strategy has helped cut teen pregnancy so significantly in New York — and no single approach will help us continue making progress. Collectively, the innovative and aggressive strategies that New York City is using have become a model for how to effectively prevent teen pregnancy.

It’s no secret that Planned Parenthood of New York City was disappointed with the Human Resources Administration’s latest ad campaign, which uses provocative language to show why teens should avoid becoming pregnant. As a nonprofit health care provider, we pride ourselves on being nonjudgmental, and our concern is that the ads have the effect of making young women, men and children feel judged.

It’s not the ad campaign we would have developed, but it doesn’t negate the much broader body of work that New York City leaders have done over the last decade. And it doesn’t change the enormous pride that Planned Parenthood of New York City has in our partnership with the city.

What matters here is that young people have access to information and health services that can help them prevent unintended pregnancy. Nobody does that better than New York City, and what’s happening here is leading the way for the rest of the nation.

Filed Under: Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News, Youths Tagged With: , ,

Mayor Bloomberg Plays Shame Game in Preventing Teen Pregnancy

March 20, 2013 11:45 am Leave a Comment

Tatiana Alejo, a counselor, at a class on teenage pregnancy.

“It is well past time when anyone can afford to be value-neutral when it comes to teen pregnancy.”

— The mayor’s press office

The New York Times – In the South Bronx, inside the International Community High School, Johnny, Brayan, Khady, Genesis and Francisco link arms and joke and giggle and write out lists of what they admire about each other. Sometimes they hug.

They are working-class kids, ninth-graders navigating the shoals of adolescence. Each is a volunteer in a program, Changing the Odds, aimed at decreasing the likelihood that they will become teenage parents.

They hear no didactic lectures and see no wagging fingers. There is patient trust-building, and an insistent message: It is hard enough to escape poverty’s fierce gravitational pull; to add to that the grueling business of raising a baby makes it harder still.

“You try to give them a safe place to talk,” says Tatiana Alejo, 26, a counselor with the program, which shows great promise. “They have so many social pressures. And we never, ever, downgrade or shame.”

This is the day-to-day reality of the campaign against teenage pregnancy. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, personally and through his health and education departments, takes a vibrant role in this movement. Teenage pregnancy remains a perilous problem but has dropped sharply in the city and across the nation in the past 20 years.

You wonder, is Mr. Bloomberg aware of this?

I ask, as last week his administration began a jarringly judgmental advertising campaign that aims to shame teenage parents and scare teenage girls who are not yet parents by warning that really bad consequences await should they get pregnant.

One poster shows a weepy baby boy, staring at the camera, and these words: “I’m twice as likely not to graduate high school because you had me as a teen.” Another poster features a pensive toddler and states: “Honestly Mom … chances are he won’t stay with you.”

Like most parents, I have tumbled down the Class IV rapids that are raising teenage children. On a personal list of my stupidest moves, resorting to the shame-and-blame game ranks at the top.

Before State Senator Liz Krueger, Democrat of Manhattan, took a bungee jump into politics, she was among the city’s wisest thinkers on poverty. Her bottom line is clear: Spending scarce money on a “scared straight” campaign is “fatally stupid” and likely to backfire.

The Bloomberg administration did not waste much time arguing last week. Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s press spokesman, typed out a Twitter post: “We’ve been criticized for edgy, aggressive public service ads, but we’re not stopping.”

“Edgy” sounds cool, sort of like the décor at the Brooklyn Nets arena, or wearing your baseball cap backward at brunch. “Edgy” works less well when adults try to talk at teenagers.

Two months ago, Robert Doar, commissioner of the city’s Human Resources Administration, gave this subject a test run. He delivered a speech to the Manhattan Institute, a conservative policy group, in which he lamented that President Obama “almost never turns his hypercritical eye” toward single-parent families.

Mr. Doar, whose agency finances this campaign, took a poke at the “leaders of the groups where the problem of single parenthood is most severe, both the African-American and Hispanic communities.” They “refuse to take this issue on aggressively,” he said, “or deal with it in any meaningful way.”

I’m not sure which church pew Mr. Doar sits in, but when from time to time I find myself in black and Latino churches, I often hear a social message that is usefully middle-class, and aimed at encouraging men and women to recognize their responsibilities to one another. And black, Latino and white legislators rake in tens of millions of dollars to underwrite the city’s programs aimed at breaking the cycle of teenage pregnancy.

As for Mr. Obama, himself the son of a single mother, he has invested many millions of dollars to battle teenage pregnancy and fought to include contraception in his health plan. Contraception, study after study shows, plays a central and inescapable role in pushing down the number of pregnant teenagers.

There is a conceit, widely held among Mr. Bloomberg’s inner circle, that this city administration alone speaks truth. But mayors long ago recognized teenage pregnancy as a crippling problem of poverty.

In 1991, Mayor David N. Dinkins and the schools chancellor, Joseph A. Fernandez, fought for the right for high schools to distribute condoms. Mr. Bloomberg picked up the cudgel when he announced that selected schools would distribute Plan B, an emergency contraceptive pill.

The politics are rough. But no less rough than learning to speak to teenagers in a language they respect.

Estelle Raboni grew up in a Dominican family in Washington Heights and directs Changing the Odds. Teenage girls have babies, she says, in pursuit of something understandable. They want to love, and to be loved.

Parenthood sometimes provides a balm. But the cost — in education deferred, income lost and isolation — is great.

“It’s so much more complicated than telling a teen: ‘Don’t do it’ or ‘Your boyfriend will leave you,’ ” Ms. Raboni says. “Fear cannot motivate a girl who already feels alienated.”

That registers as a value-sensitive bottom line.

Filed Under: Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News, Youths Tagged With: , , , ,

NYC Stops Payment into Nonprofits’ Pension System

March 20, 2013 11:24 am Leave a Comment

New York City is withholding payment into a pension system that covers some employees at many of the city’s day care centers as well as some of its best known cultural institutions, including the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, reports The New York Times.

City budget officials said the suspension came after a review indicated that the number of workers covered by the pension system was possibly inflated.

Mark Page, the city’s budget director, disclosed the suspension of payment into the pension plan, Cultural Institutions Retirement System, or CIRS, at a meeting last week of the City Council’s Finance Committee.

Mr. Page said the city has questions about whether its share of the pension costs, projected to be about $17 million for the fiscal year ending June 30, was overstated because of irregularities in pension calculations. Under an arrangement that dates from 1962 the city pays into a pension system that covers some workers in dozens of day care centers with city contracts as well as dozens of cultural institutions.

“There is a bunch of money that we have paid for over the years that has been, I guess, nice for those enterprises but not very nice for our taxpayers and what we have actually gotten for our money,” Mr. Page said at the committee hearing.

At the cultural institutions the employees typically covered are a fraction of the staff and generally occupy unionized positions, like security guards or gardeners. Their salaries are also provided by the city, although they are not city employees.

“The city has not paid the CIRS bill this fiscal year, and the city is currently conducting a review of payments made to CIRS on behalf of these nonprofits to ensure that proper and accurate bookkeeping records were maintained,” said Lauren Passalacqua, a spokeswoman for the mayor’s office.

She said the city had “detected potential anomalies in the data provided by these nonprofits related to the payments the city was making for them to CIRS.” When the review by the Office of Management and Budget is completed, she said, she expects that whatever money the city owed the institutions would be paid into the retirement system.

Raglan George Jr., executive director of the union that represents the day care workers and a trustee of the pension system, said there had been no inflation of numbers. He said the dispute concerns a failure by the city to account for the pension payments of about 1,200 workers who were let go last year because the city had introduced a new early-childhood education program.

“When they made that decision they never considered the impact on the pensions,” he said of the city officials.

Mr. George said that the pension system is otherwise well financed, and that the delay in the city’s payment would not affect those currently drawing pensions.

Richard Koski, the executive director of the retirement system, said in an interview that he could not discuss the issue and does not have full details of the city’s concerns.

“We’ve been around for 50 years, and I think we do a really good job for the folks who work there,” Mr. Koski said. He said the system covers 20,000 people, both active and retired, and about 50 cultural institutions.

The cultural institutions listed as members on the pension system’s Web site range from well-known attractions like Wave Hill, El Museo del Barrio and the Museum of the Moving Image to smaller organizations like the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies and the Center for Book Arts. About one third of the city’s payment to the pension system covers the cultural employees, and the rest covers the day care employees.

Officials at several of the institutions declined to comment, some saying that they did not have enough information yet.

The retirement system operates as a partnership among the city, the cultural institutions and the Day Care Council of New York, a membership organization of child care and family service providers and advocates. The city’s decision to suspend payment in the system was first reported in The New York Post.

In a letter this year to the commissioners for the city’s Cultural Affairs Department and the Administration for Children’s Services, Mr. Page said the city’s review had shown that the cultural and day care employees were working under a collective bargaining agreement that called for “benefits greater than those afforded to city employees.”

The letter said that when the current collective bargaining agreement expires on June 30 the city would finance those pensions only at the same level as city employees, and that the city would no longer subsidize benefits like matching the 401(k) contributions of employees.

 

Filed Under: Finance, Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News

State Lets Domestic-Violence Victims Shield Addresses

March 20, 2013 11:18 am Leave a Comment

A new program in New York allows domestic-violence victims to shield their addresses from abusers by having mail sent to a substitute address handled by the Department of State, reports The Journal News.

The Address Confidentiality Program is free and is available to domestic-violence victims who have relocated or plan to move for safety reasons. Other individuals living in the same household, such as children, parents and siblings, may be able to participate too.

The state provides participants with a substitute address that all first-class, registered and certified mail could be sent to, and the Department of State forwards it to them. The agency also accepts legal notices on behalf of people in the program.

The program began Oct. 26, 2012, but it wasn’t formally announced until this week, said Laz Benitez, an agency spokesman. The state has been providing the information to shelters and other community service providers since last year.

It will cost just over $125,000 a year to operate the program, according to Benitez. The Department of State could not provide information on how many people currently are participating.

Applicants must fill out a form available at www.dos.ny.gov/acp.

Once accepted into the program, they will receive an identification card. State and local governments must accept the substitute address, although private companies, such as utilities, are not obligated to use it. The program members will be enrolled for four years and can reapply.

Mail is repackaged and sent on a daily basis during the week, except on holidays. The lag time in receiving the mail typically is five to seven days. The program doesn’t forward packages, periodicals and catalogs, unless they are clearly identifiable as prescription drugs or were sent by a government agency. For more information, call 855-350-4595, a toll-free number.

Filed Under: Domestic Violence, Health, Nonprofit Headline News, Nonprofit Help Center, Politics, Top News Tagged With: , ,

City’s Sheltering of Out-of-Town Homeless, Mayor’s Response Spark Debate

March 20, 2013 11:10 am Leave a Comment

In response to New York State’s guarantee to shelter the homeless, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, “you can arrive in your private jet at Kennedy Airport, take a private limousine and go straight to the shelter system, and walk in the door and we’ve got to give you shelter;” reported The New York Times.

Advocates for the homeless have called the mayor insensitive, but while Mr. Bloomberg’s wording might have been inelegant, the substance of his comment does not appear to be far from the mark: More people who gave their last address as outside New York are entering the city’s shelter system.

“New Yorkers who don’t have a place to go, we accept that,” Seth Diamond, the commissioner of homeless services, said.

“But New York is becoming a safety net for the country, which is really not the position we want to be in.”

Under a number of court decisions, the city has been required under the State Constitution to provide shelter. The city’s allure for out-of-towners who hope to find work, and its historically lower thresholds for providing public assistance, have tended to attract an uneven number of applicants for emergency housing.

The share of single adults who applied for shelter and listed their last address outside the city rose to 23 percent in December from 19.9 percent in February 2012, the Department of Homeless Services said. The percentage of out-of-towners among homeless families has also been climbing, to about 10 percent last month from 8.4 percent of households in 2009.

That could mean as many as 9,000 out-of-towners in the system over the course of a year. But advocates for the homeless maintain that that estimate is overstated, unverified and distorting.

“It could be someone from the Bronx, who lived their whole life in the Bronx, got evicted, spends some time on the street, applies for shelter and gives their mother’s address and their mother lives in New Jersey,” said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless.

“The vast majority of the people in the system are New Yorkers,” Mr. Markee added. “There’s always been a small percentage of homeless who came from someplace else.”

With the shelter population setting records — last week, the system housed nearly 50,000 people, including 10,000 single adults and 20,000 children — the mayor has been seeking to defend his administration’s response to the challenges presented by the homeless. He has said that the state’s decision to cancel a rent subsidy program has resulted in fewer people leaving the system.

More recently, he has been reminding New Yorkers that the state imposes few limits on applicants for shelter, particularly on single adults.

Mr. Bloomberg made a point of explaining that among those seeking shelter are people whose last address was out of town.

The department identified the top sources for single adults who listed out-of-town former addresses as New Jersey, Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, Virginia, California, Puerto Rico, Texas, Connecticut and South Carolina. Among families with children, the top sources also include Massachusetts and Maryland.

Samantha Levine, a mayoral spokeswoman, said that those arriving at intake are asked for their previous residence, “so there are not folks who had been, say, born in Boston and been living in New York City for 10 years.”

Families applying for shelter are asked whether they have some alternative housing, with relatives, for example, and the city tries to steer them to it. Last month, a state appeals court ruled that the city had illegally enacted a requirement that single adults had to prove they had no alternative housing before being allowed into shelters.

Since 2007, thousands of people who gave an out-of-town last address were persuaded to return to their hometowns or another destination and the city paid their way by plane, bus or train.

The city’s Project Reconnect has encouraged 2,443 single adults to return to their hometowns, the city said. The average transportation cost was $269, considerably less than the cost to the city of providing them with shelter, which is about $76.24 a day for single adults and $103 a day for families with children.

In the same period, 2,024 families (with an average of three members each) from out of town have left the city for other destinations, at an average cost of $192 per person.

Officials said the out-of-towners are encouraged, not required, to return to where they came from; their access to housing at the destination is verified before they are sent there. The top five places they leave for are Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina.

Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s chief spokesman, said Mr. Bloomberg’s remark about a private jet was “illustrating the strict nature of the current law that says we have to provide shelter for anyone, no matter what.”

“Twenty percent of the residents in homeless shelters are from outside of the city,” Mr. La Vorgna said, adding, “His point is we provided shelter to all, and we are the only place in the nation that does.”

Filed Under: Finance, Homelessness, Housing, Nonprofit Headline News, Politics, Top News Tagged With: , , ,
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