[New York] The Mayor Focuses on Poverty, and a Panel Is Ready to Help

from The New York Times

By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: July 17, 2006

It is a group drawn from the upper echelons of New York City’s business, nonprofit, academic and social services sectors, with Richard D. Parsons, the chairman of Time Warner, and Geoffrey Canada, who runs one of the most acclaimed antipoverty programs in the country, at its helm.

For the last four months, the group has been focused on solving a perplexing riddle: the problem of rising poverty in a city as wealthy as New York. They have analyzed data about who is poor in the city and why. They have sought the advice of business and labor leaders. They have made field trips to places like Rikers Island and job and social service centers in the Bronx and Brooklyn to talk to people about their economic challenges. Some members have even traveled to England for a firsthand look at that country’s efforts to reduce poverty.

Their conclusions are expected to form the basis of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s plans to attack chronic poverty in New York during his second term, much as he sought to overhaul the school system during his first. To that end, the mayor has put nearly all of his agencies on notice that they must be part of the effort as the group, the Commission on Economic Opportunity, is completing its work to present to him.

Although the specific recommendations will not be complete for several weeks, the thinking behind them has narrowed to a central notion: the solution to poverty is employment. But in a twist on the welfare-to-work policies of former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, the group has agreed that the government must use more of its resources to foster conditions that allow people to enter the work force and stay in it.

To achieve that goal, the commission has been looking at ways to increase access to child care so parents can hold on to their jobs. It has also been devising ways to use city resources to tailor training programs to an ever-changing job market, and to focus public schools on preparing students not only for college, but also for the workplace. The approach departs from the welfare-based strategies of previous generations, but emphasizes government’s role in making employment worthwhile for the poor.

“It’s not about pumping public benefits into households in order that they can have disposable income,” said Linda I. Gibbs, the deputy mayor for health and human services, who is overseeing the commission. Rather, she said, the focus is “what can we do to direct investments in poor households in a way that improves their earning capacity.”

The administration hopes the panel’s findings will help shift the focus and function of the city government and realize the mayor’s vision of attacking poverty as a central element of his legacy.

“I really believe that getting a good education is at the heart of any solution to poverty,” Mr. Bloomberg said last month at a conference organized by the commission. “If you fix the school system, that may not solve all the problems of fixing poverty,” he continued, “but it is one of those necessary if not sufficient conditions to really make progress.”

The effort is not without minefields. Mr. Bloomberg has charged the commission with finding ways to diminish or eradicate poverty without significantly increasing the size or cost of government. At the same time, there is a strong sense in the administration and on the commission that government must play a far more aggressive role in giving people the tools and support they need to work, much of which has a cost.

“There is a recognition that not everyone can go out there and compete equally, and that we have to use our resources and agencies and policies and programs in a way that gives people the best shot at gaining employment,” Ms. Gibbs said. One way to do that, she said, is to make sure that agencies work together as much as possible, strengthening their individual programs by bringing them together and sharing money.

But another is finding ways to ensure that no one is penalized for taking a job.

Mr. Canada said that under the current system, employment does not necessarily make people better off economically. “You might start working, lose a subsidy and end up with less cash than when you weren’t working,” he said. “It’s got to be better for folks to have jobs.”

Since many of those subsidies come from the federal government, commission members are weighing how the city could step in and make up the difference, and how to present an argument that would gain the mayor’s approval.

“The city is going to have to invest some money in an area that’s going to make a difference,” Mr. Canada said, adding that he was speaking for himself and not the commission. “When it comes to the kinds of investments that you need to make, if in the end we can’t show poor people that working pays, it’s going to be hard to lift folks out of poverty.”

Mr. Bloomberg’s critics have said that his approach to poverty during the first term was at best indirect, as officials pursued economic development, housing and education as priorities. But soon after winning re-election, Mr. Bloomberg challenged his commissioners to think boldly about setting new goals.

Ms. Gibbs, who was then the commissioner of homeless services, took up the charge and began talking with other city commissioners, including those at the Departments of Health, Housing Preservation and Development, Probation, and Correction, about how all of their agencies could work together to better help poor families. Out of that process, which included her discussions with Mr. Bloomberg about creating the new deputy mayor slot that eventually became hers, came the commission.

The commission members see their mission as far-reaching.

“There’s genuine involvement across a lot of agency boundaries, and people are energized in a way I’ve certainly never seen before,” said John H. Mollenkopf, the director of the Center for Urban Research at the City University Graduate Center and an adviser to the commission. He added that even the attempt to attack poverty in such a comprehensive fashion felt fresh.

“Just the idea that we should face poverty and inequality as a municipal challenge hasn’t been said since the War on Poverty,” Mr. Mollenkopf said. “There’s a realization that most social services are not designed to cure poverty but to help people cope with its consequences.”

In trying to find that cure, Ms. Gibbs has pulled together a high-profile panel. There are wealthy civic leaders like William C. Rudin, a real estate executive who is chairman of the Association for a Better New York, and Merryl H. Tisch, co-chairwoman of a State Board of Regents committee and an officer of the Metropolitan Coordinating Council on Jewish Poverty and the UJA Federation of New York.

There are former City Hall officials, like Stanley Brezenoff, who served in the Koch administration and is now president and chief executive of Continuum Health Partners, a group of hospitals, and Ester R. Fuchs, a professor of public affairs and political science at Columbia University who was a special adviser to Mr. Bloomberg in his first term.

And then there are community advocates and service providers, like Mr. Canada, who created the Harlem Children’s Zone, a widely emulated nonprofit organization that provides a network of educational, employment, housing and counseling services to families living within a 60-block area of Upper Manhattan.

Over the next few weeks, commission officials said, Ms. Gibbs’s staff plans to analyze the costs and likely outcomes of an enormous list of recommendations with an eye toward picking a first round to pursue.

“No one is taking the summer off,” Mr. Canada said.