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New York City Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Linda I. Gibbs and SSEU Local 371 President Anthony Wells jointly announced that 61 employees of three City social services agencies were assaulted on the job last year. And, they urged passage of legislation that would increase criminal penalties for assaulting employees of a local social services district or juvenile detention agency while in the performance of their duties. The bill (S-641B/A-4627B) would elevate the offense from a misdemeanor to a Class D non-violent felony. The legislation only covers employees of the local government and does not include employees of nonprofit agencies providing services under contract with the City or State.
“The city’s social service workers fight on the front line daily to improve the welfare of vulnerable New Yorkers,” said Deputy Mayor Gibbs. “Often at great personal risk, they go into dangerous situations that others would only do with a partner and a weapon. It is time that we showed our respect for their commitment by recognizing an assault on them as no less than an assault on a uniformed and armed employee.”
The Senate Bill, which was introduced by State Senator Martin Golden and strongly supported by Senator Diane Savino, a former ACS worker and labor leaders, passed the Senate in February. The companion Assembly Bill was introduced by Assemblyman Peter Rivera and is reportedly stalled in the Assembly Codes Committee.
Also participating in the announcement were Administration for Children’s Services Commissioner Ronald Richter, Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond and Human Resources Administration Commissioner Robert Doar. Last year, 61 employees of the three City agencies were assaulted while performing their job duties, a 10 percent increase from 56 assaults in 2010.
“I am proud to have sponsored this legislation recently approved by the State Senate that will rightly protect social service workers and juvenile detention agency employees,” said Senator Golden.” I call upon my colleagues in the State Assembly to approve this bill this session so that it can be considered by Governor Cuomo to become New York State law. Ensuring the safety of employees while they are on the job has to be paramount.”
“The current law provides for enhanced criminal assault penalties to protect police officers, firefighters, school employees, transit personnel, nurses, and other service providers, appropriately so,” said Senator Savino. “We think such protection should also be extended to our social services employees.”
“Employees in the social services sector are among the most vulnerable public employees and the service they perform is so vital to New Yorkers,” said Assemblymember Rivera, who was joined by Assembly Members Rory Lancman and Eric Stevenson.
“ACS staff protect those who cannot protect themselves,” said ACS Commissioner Richter. “When a worker knocks on a family’s door, they never know what they will encounter on the other side. We have to do all we can to keep our workers out of harm’s way,”
“Our frontline staff have extremely tough jobs, each day providing homeless families and individuals with the highest level of service in shelter–and they put their hearts into their work,” said Homeless Services Commissioner Diamond. “It is essential that our employees feel safe in the work place and have legal protections against violence by clients.”
“HRA workers provide essential assistance to people in need and deserve the level of protection provided by a felony charge that would deter members of the public from using physical force to injure, threaten or intimidate them,” said HRA Commissioner Doar. “The enactment of this common-sense legislation would show our valuable staff that the city and state government are doing everything they can to protect them from violence in the work place.”
“New York City social service workers are often faced with intense situations that can unfortunately turn violent. They deserve to have the same protections under the law as other public employees who face similar danger. Safe employees are also better employees, which is good for both the workers and the citizens of New York,” said SSEU Local 371 President Anthony Wells.
Hundreds of children, parents and providers gathered at City Hall Park yesterday urging Mayor Bloomberg not to child care and after-school programs for 47,000 children. In a show of support, three City Council Caucuses – the Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus; the Women’s Caucus; and the Progressive Caucus – released statements calling for full funding of child care and after-school programs in his Executive Budget.
“By enacting these cuts, the Bloomberg Administration’s actions will, yet again, run counter to his own claim to a legacy of strengthening the system, ensuring college and career readiness for Black, Latino and Asian youth, and stabilizing the City’s economy,” said a statement from the City Council Black, Latino and Asian Caucus.
“These cuts will have severe ramifications, particularly for low-income, working mothers and their children,” said a statement from the City Council Women’s Caucus. “We urge the Administration to fully fund the subsidized child care and after-school systems.”
“Substantially cutting child care and after-school programs flies in the face of the values of our Caucus, said a statement from the City Council Progressive Caucus. “These cuts will leave low-income working parents who are striving to achieve economic stability with the untenable choice of quitting their jobs or potentially leaving their children in unsafe care while they work.”
Children and parents were joined by elected officials and advocates from the Campaign for Children, who kicked off the rally with a press conference calling on the Mayor to prioritize funding for child care and after-school programs in the budget.
“We provide our community with safe, affordable and educational child care and after-school programs – programs that not only put children on the path to success, but allow parents to keep their jobs,” said Carolyn McLaughlin, Executive Director of BronxWorks. “I know that times are tough, but why would the city want to deprive working families of the programs they rely on? I’m here to tell the Mayor that these cuts just don’t make sense.”
“Last year, the City Council made it a top priority to restore tens of millions of dollars for subsidized child care and after-school programs because we understood that these programs are a lifeline for working families and their children,” said Council Member Annabel Palma, Chair of the Council’s Committee on General Welfare. “Unfortunately, the Mayor doesn’t seem to get it and his Preliminary Budget, combined with the reforms laid out in the EarlyLearn and OST RFPs, would once again slash child care and after-school programs for nearly 50,000 children. Today, we stand together to tell the Mayor that we expect better for our children. I sincerely hope that he gets the message and works with the Council to produce a responsible budget that will prevent these devastating cuts.”
“The cuts to our after school programs are severe and truly justify the charge that City budget is being balanced on the back of our children,” said Council Member Lew Fidler, Chairman of the Youth Services Committee. We will be damaging the education of these kids. We will be creating a new generation of latch key kids, and if we have learned nothing else from history, we know that the pennies we save by these cuts will cost us dollars in police and criminal justice services next year. We have an obligation to make available good choices for kids, and if we don’t it won’t be entirely their fault when they make bad choices. We cannot pass a budget that does so many bad things to kids.”
Ask most people what type of property they live in and they will tell you if it’s terraced, detached, what type of roof it has, or in the case of an apartment what floor it’s on, how many bedrooms and bathrooms it has, whether it has its own yard, and maybe what the neighbourhood is like; but ask them what ‘Home’ means to them and they will speak in terms of values, such as family, love, sanctuary, warmth, comfort and security. For most people the equation is simple, we rent, lease or buy a property according to our means, and over time we make it the way we like it, fill it with things we need or like to have around us, make sure it is secure against damage or intrusion, find a reliable buildings and home contents insurance policy just in case, and then we simply live there.
Homelessness in New York
Some don’t have that opportunity. Homelessness in New York City is an almost intractable problem, and the situation is getting worse. The annual tally of those living on the subways or the streets for 2011 was 2648, although that is probably an underestimation. When added to the 40,000 or more people sleeping in homelessness shelters, the hundreds of thousands of hidden homeless who live in cheap hotels and motels, or in overcrowded conditions with friends and family, and those who have nowhere other than one of the tent cities on the outskirts of the city or across the river in New jersey, the problem is enormous. They are the vulnerable, the jobless, the dispossessed, the physically and mentally ill, the non-functioning veterans, and mostly the working poor.
Figures that don’t Add Up
Even with a job, living in New York is a constant challenge. The most recent full set of data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics is for the first quarter of 2011. They showed that, excluding Manhattan, wages in the other four boroughs were 10% or more below the national average, with Queens having the highest weekly wage of $844; and wage increases in the four boroughs was no greater than for the rest of the country. Yet in January this year, the Huffington Post reported that the Council for Community and Economic Research ranked Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens as being in the top five most expensive urban areas to live in the US. They also reported the living wage for New York City as being $11.86, although the current minimum wage is the same as the national figure at $7.25. As of March 2012 the average rent for a two bedroom apartment in New York was £2,919 per month, a figure which has increased by over 10% in the last year. The accepted maximum percentage of income to be spent on housing is 30% of income, and on that basis a family would have to be earning almost $117,000 for this to be affordable. For people in minimum wage employment, that is an unimaginable sum, as even a couple working two jobs each would be unlikely to make even half that amount.
Public Housing – Not Enough
Therefore, most low income families looking for a home have to hope that they will get some form of public housing, but that too is a scarce resource. The New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) ensure that the cost of rents for tenants, be it for conventional public housing or under Section 8 in collaboration with private landlord, do not exceed the 30% of that income figure. NYCHA’s own statistics show that they currently have 403,357 authorized residents on their books, yet this still accounts for only 4.9% of the city’s population, and there is a waiting list exceeding 160,000 families for conventional public housing, and more than 120,000 for the Section 8 program. With a turnover rate of less than 4%, the wait may never end for some.
A Living wage
The homelessness problem in New York will only improve with a large scale increase in the provision of public housing, which seems highly unlikely, or with an improvement in the income of those looking for a home. With the hoped for economic recovery some of those affected by the down turn will find jobs, or better paying jobs, and will be able to re-establish a proper home for themselves and their families, but others will continue to be low earners, and for them it is important that their income move closer to the living wage that is needed to live in New York. That is why, after eight years without change, it is important that the current push by State Senator Jeffrey Klein, Assemblyman Keith Wright and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver to increase the minimum wage to $8.50 is successful. Their proposal is that the figure should then be automatically indexed to inflation, which would at least ensure that it did not remain static in the future, but in reality this should only be a first modest step towards improving the lives of many hard working New Yorkers who simply want to earn a wage that gives them a home.
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Imogen Reed is a freelance writer from England who writes on behalf of a number of good causes including an alcohol addiction center
Sources: Huffington Post 01/06/12 & 01/27/12, coli.org, nyc.gov, coalitionforthehomeless.org, Metro Focus 02/06/12, NY Times 02/12/12
African American women in six U.S. cities are becoming infected with HIV at a rate five times the national average for black women, and closer to the rates of some African countries, according to a new study.
Researchers at Johns Hopkins University and around the country who made the findings suspected the rates were relatively high in these “hot spots” that have battled the epidemic for decades, but the numbers still came as a surprise in a field that tends to focus more on black and gay men.
The researchers found that in Baltimore; Atlanta; Newark, N.J.; New York City; Raleigh-Durham, N.C.; and Washington, the annual rate of infection was 24 per 10,000 black women. Nationally, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports that black women become infected at a rate of 5 per 10,000.
The rate in Congo is 28 per 10,000.
The study was conducted with funding from the National Institutes of Health by researchers who are part of a national consortium called the HIV Prevention Trials Network. The data were presented March 8 at the 19th annual Conference on Retroviruses and Opportunistic Infections in Seattle.
A total of 151 organizations claiming to represent more than 1 million New Yorkers have joined the Campaign for Children and signed a letter to Mayor Michael Bloomberg opposing proposed cuts to child care and after-school programs. The groups say that the Mayor’s Executive Budget proposals for FY2012-13, which begins July 1st, will eliminate funding for 47,000 child care and after-school slots.
“Enacting these cuts will deal a devastating blow to struggling children and families,” the letter states. “As a Mayor seeking to improve the education of our children, ensure college and career readiness for black and Latino youth, and stabilize the City’s economy, we believe you should reassess proposed budget cuts in the realm of child care and after-school.”
Click here to read the full letter and see the full list of signatories.
Advocates note that the Campaign for Children represents a newly-formed alliance between supporters of child care and after-school programs.
“The organizations that have joined the Campaign for Children know that we can’t afford to cut the child care and after-school programs that allow hard-working parents to keep their jobs while their children get the educational opportunities they need to succeed,” said Gregory Brender, Policy Analyst at United Neighborhood Houses NY, on behalf of Campaign for Children. “This massive display of support is a message loud and clear from New York City to Mayor Bloomberg – you must restore funding for child care and after-school programs that children and working families depend on.”
In a recently-released impact brief, Campaign for Children found that, in each year since 2009, the Bloomberg administration has significantly reduced funding for the city’s child care and after-school systems so that they serve fewer and fewer kids. They say that with the Mayor’s newest cuts, services for more than 90,000 children will have been denied access in five short years – a 61% decrease.
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