Thursday, April 06, 2006

[New York] Deadline Pending for a 'Realistic' Plan on Poverty

from The New York Sun

By JILL GARDINER

The call came from City Hall about 24 hours before Mayor Bloomberg delivered his State of the City speech in January: Would you, Geoffrey Canada, be willing to help come up with a plan to reduce poverty in three of the city's most destitute neighborhoods?

Mr. Canada, a pioneer in the antipoverty field who runs a nonprofit called the Harlem Children's Zone, agreed before Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs got the question out, he said last week.

Now the 32-member commission, which he is heading with the chairman and CEO of Time Warner, Richard Parsons, is up against a Labor Day deadline and has been quietly meeting to tackle a problem that has been studied for decades and existed through a long line of mayors.

"I think there is a lot of pressure on the commission to come up with a plan that is both reasonable and realistic, meaning that we are not saying that 'if the federal government gave us $679 billion, we could do this,'" Mr. Canada said during an interview in his Harlem office.

Mr. Canada, a Democrat whose support for charter schools has won him praise from Republicans, and Mr. Parsons, a Republican who served as chairman of Mayor Giuliani's 1993 campaign, are both influential African-American leaders in the city.

Mr. Parsons, a corporate powerhouse whose name has been floated as a possible political candidate, declined an interview through a spokeswoman, Kathy McKiernan. Ms. McKiernan said he wanted to wait until the commission was further along in the process.

Yet even those who praised Mr. Bloomberg for taking on an issue like poverty said there are limits to what his Commission for Economic Opportunity will be able to accomplish.

"It's very nice that the mayor appointed a commission because it shows he's thinking about poverty, but commissions don't solve poverty," a political consultant, Norman Adler, said.

Mr.Canada and Ms.Gibbs both expect naysayers, but are undeterred and say the plan will go beyond services offered now to create a more comprehensive system for dealing with things like employment,housing,and education. The goal is to try the approach first in the Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhoods of Brooklyn and Melrose in the Bronx.

"I honestly don't blame folks for being skeptical," Mr. Canada said. He said, however, that the mayor's commitment makes change realistic.

"Just think of Bill Gates, he broke through," he said. "He got somewhere nobody had gotten before, and I'm sure there were a thousand folks saying good idea, but it will never happen."

Ms. Gibbs - who served as the commissioner of homeless services until January when Mr.Bloomberg brought her on as deputy mayor for health and human services, one of seven deputy mayors - said when Mr. Bloomberg gave her this assignment, she figured she'd do some Internet research, find another city that had a comprehensive model, hop on a plane, and bring back information the city could draw on to create its own program.

It didn't work that way.

Ms.Gibbs said "no urban jurisdictions" have an overarching anti-poverty strategy.

"Everyone says it's an unmanageable problem," she said. "I think people have internalized the impossibility of the task in a way that impedes" them from acting.

Mr. Bloomberg announced the commission's members last month with a news release that said the panel would be "marshaling public-private resources."

The body includes a mix of business, nonprofit, academic, and foundation leaders from places such as JPMorgan Chase, the Community Service Society, and the Rockefeller Foundation.

A professor of political science and sociology at the CUNY Graduate Center, John Mollenkopf, applauded the creation of the commission, but said the city will have to be careful about funding.

"The danger of something like this is that you have a lot of people involved who run specific programs ... who could produce recommendations that more or less add up to: 'Fund my program,'" he said.

Mr.Canada, a third-degree black belt in Tae Kwon Do who grew up in the Bronx with a single mother, said commission members are not there to lobby the city.

"If my answer to the commission's issue on poverty is 'Fund the Harlem Children's Zone,' then I should be tossed out," he said.

Mr. Canada said the commission has not yet talked about funding.

"It's not just about dollars," he said. "Will this require some new investments in financial capital? The answer is yes. Will it require a substantial shift in the way we currently spend dollars in these communities? I think the answer is also yes."

With taxpayers likely to be wary of spending more money on a problem that has already received a lot of funding, it seems likely that some money will be privately raised.

In announcing the commission, Mr. Bloomberg pledged a "major reduction" in poverty over the next four years in the same vein as his promise to reduce homelessness in his first term.

According to a 2004 Census Bureau survey, 20.3% of New York City residents live below the federal poverty line compared to 13.1% of people nationwide. The Bronx has the highest poverty rate in the city with 30.6%, followed by Brooklyn at 22.6%, Manhattan at 19.3%, Queens at 14.5%, and Staten Island at 9.6%. Those statistics don't take into account federal aid such as food stamps or the value of public housing.

A Columbia University professor and first-term policy adviser to Mr. Bloomberg, Ester Fuchs, who is on the commission, said the key will be linking people to economic opportunity.

"The commission has a very short timeline. This is not an academic commission that is studying policy for the next two years and coming up with recommendations that nobody can implement," Ms. Fuchs said. "The mayor is more practical and results oriented than that."

While the commission has received little public attention, political observers say Mr. Bloomberg, a billionaire who has given millions to charity, is setting his sights on a legacy-building issue.

When asked about pressure in delivering a successful plan, Ms. Gibbs said that she could enter into the "Guinness Book of World Records for most sleepless nights."

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