politics & policy Archives - Page 6 of 9

City Lawyers Tell Supremes: No Pay Raise for Home Aides

January 22, 2025January 16, 2007

City Limits • Jan. 16, 2007

City lawyers are working to keep wages for home health workers low, City Limits has learned, even as their colleagues in city government discuss ways to help them move out of poverty. While the mayor’s high-profile Commission on Economic Opportunity recently announced it would be building a “career ladder” out of poverty for the lowest rung of health workers, city lawyers are fighting to keep home health aides from being entitled to minimum wage and overtime.

On Jan. 5, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to hear Coke v. Long Island Care at Home, a five-year-old case seeking to bring home health aides under minimum wage and overtime laws. City lawyers said last week they plan to file an amicus curiae or “friend of the court” brief in support of maintaining the pay exemption before the case is heard this spring.

Mayor Gives a Lift Up the Job Ladder

January 22, 2025December 26, 2006

City Limits • Dec. 26, 2006

When Mayor Bloomberg announced the first steps to be taken in his new $150 million antipoverty initiative last week, he skimmed over what could be one of its most ambitious components: A set of “career ladder” programs designed to take low-wage, entry-level workers in growth industries and help set them on the track to better jobs and the middle class.

“What we want to do is target those sectors where the entry-level jobs may not be institutionally connected to the next step up the rung,” Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said at the event, “and give [workers] the skill building that’s necessary in order to qualify for those high level, better paying positions.” Gibbs added that the city would likely be focusing its efforts on health care and food manufacturing, though the programs would not be made public for another month or two.

Bloomberg Announces $150M Plan to Help Poor

January 22, 2025December 18, 2006

Daily Intelligencer • Dec. 18, 2006

They say New York is just for the rich these days, but today one of its richest — Mike Bloomberg — unveiled a plan to help those who aren’t. His Commission on Economic Opportunity unveiled its anti-poverty strategy, and, at a ceremony at the stalwart Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, the mayor pledged a $150 million annual commitment to fund it, including $25 million to be raised from private foundations. That chunk of change will go first into an Innovation Fund, which will oversee the budget and — this is a first, folks — measure programs’ success at actually alleviating poverty.

Farmer Delivers to the Bronx: High Health, Low Fat and Cost

January 22, 2025October 23, 2006

City Limits • Oct. 23, 2006

The Bronx’s La Antillana supermarket is getting some stiff competition from an unlikely source: the schoolyard of P.S. 28, across East Tremont Avenue in the Mount Hope neighborhood. Last Thursday, public health leaders and community activists announced the Mount Hope Food Project, a new program aimed at preventing obesity by expanding access to healthy food.

The program’s cornerstone will be a community-supported agriculture (CSA) project, where an upstate farmer brings fresh produce every week to program members at a low cost – roughly $11 per person each week. The ability to get fresh, quality food sold Altagracia deVilla, 44, a home health aide and single mother of three, on the CSA.

Paying Daddy to Be Dad

January 22, 2025October 10, 2006

The Huffington Post • Oct. 10, 2006

Forget marriage promotion as the solution to poverty. New York State is taking on fathers. The move has been a long time in coming; for all the success welfare reform had in moving single mothers into jobs–albeit low-wage ones–it’s largely been a failure at doing the same for men.

Here in New York, the state welfare agency is launching a special tax credit for noncustodial parents, at least 90 percent of whom are fathers, to encourage (and make it easier for) them to pay child support–the first of its kind in the country. Parents up to date on their child support can get up to $1600 back at tax time–and they don’t cease to be eligible for the program until their income exceeds $32,000 annually, a far more generous threshold than the regular EITC.

Extra Credit For Fathers: Reliability Earns Tax Break

January 22, 2025October 9, 2006

City Limits • Oct. 9, 2006

A new tax break will be available come April for lower-income parents responsible for child support, making it the first of its kind in the country. State officials are launching an earned income tax credit (EITC) for noncustodial parents who are current with their child support payments, offering up to $1,600 a year in a refundable credit.

“What we’re trying to do is work on the success of welfare reform, where we saw single moms move off the rolls. But we have not seen the same movement among young men,” said Michael Hayes, spokesperson for the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA), which will administer the program.

Poverty Report Attracting Attention Outside New York

January 22, 2025September 25, 2006

City Limits • Sept. 25, 2006

New York City is planning to use new antipoverty initiatives to do more than help just the five boroughs’ poor. At a City Council hearing last week, officials said they’ll also be pushing a legislative agenda to complement the priorities set out in the report of the Commission on Economic Opportunity – a move that observers say could position NYC as a policy trendsetter nationwide.

“There’s many things we can do here locally, but many [for which] we need the partnership of both the state and the federal level,” said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Linda I. Gibbs, citing access to health insurance and increased workforce development funding as examples. “It is incumbent upon us to bring our advocacy to the state and federal agendas.”

Bloomberg’s War on Poverty

January 22, 2025September 19, 2006

The Huffington Post • Sept. 19, 2006

With the Katrina anniversary come and gone, it’s unclear how quickly poverty will recede from public debate. But in New York City, it was yanked back to center stage by yesterday’s announcement of the findings of a high-profile antipoverty commission chartered by Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Taking on poverty at the local level is a bold proposition–not least because much of the funding for antipoverty initiatives comes from the feds. It’s also an increasingly necessary approach as the federal government further abdicates responsibility for doing so, and funding correspondingly recedes. As such, the experiment in New York helps illuminate a couple important ideas about contemporary poverty–and government’s role in alleviating it.

New Directions Seen in Aid to City’s Poor

January 22, 2025September 5, 2006

City Limits • Sept. 5, 2006

City officials are considering a move away from the strictest elements of New York’s poverty policy over the last decade, most notably by creating easier procedures for the poor to receive government aid and considering new ways to help needy people living above the federally-defined poverty threshold.

The Mayor’s Commission for Economic Opportunity drew attention last week after an internal memo detailing its likely recommendations, including targeting resources toward three specific demographic groups, was written about in the New York Times. But a closer look suggests that broader shifts are afoot.

Working, Stiffed

January 22, 2025August 25, 2006

The American Prospect • Aug. 25, 2006

It’s difficult to imagine a more sympathetic figure than Barbara Brooks. A full-time child care supervisor and part-time college student, Brooks is raising five kids on her own in a downmarket Long Island town. In the entire 90 minutes of Roger Weisberg’s Waging a Living, a documentary about the working poor set to air on PBS on August 29, few moments resonate more than when Brooks wipes away tears to explain, “The harder I work, the harder it gets.”

Premiering a week after the tenth anniversary of welfare reform, Brooks’ on-screen debut also happens to fall precisely one year after Hurricane Katrina thrust poverty back into the national consciousness.