politics & policy Archives - Page 7 of 9

Welfare Reform’s Silver Lining

January 22, 2025August 22, 2006

The Huffington Post • Aug. 22, 2006

You can generally count me out in heralding welfare reform as an unmitigated success. When President Clinton signed the bill into law ten years ago today, on August 22, 1996, he struck a dicey bargain, based on a premise that only a rich man would find credible: To end poverty, people had merely to go to work.

That’s true if you’ve got minimum wages starting around $20 an hour, public health care, free child care and housing subsidies for anyone who needs it. Unless I’ve somehow missing something in five years on the poverty beat, none of that describes contemporary America.

Welcome Shoppers

January 22, 2025August 21, 2006

City Limits • Aug. 21, 2006

From beneath a purple awning emblazoned with “East New York Bargain$ For Less,” a handful of local residents are working to put a fresh spin on its previous tenant’s declaration by opening the neighborhood’s first food cooperative.

By mid-September, volunteers and staff from the Local Development Corporation of East New York hope to open the doors on a member-run grocery store featuring high-quality fresh produce, as well as bulk dry goods and other prepared foods. It’s the latest in a series of efforts by the East New York Food Policy Council, a project of the LDC, and other local activists to bolster access to fresh, healthy food in East New York.

Foodies in da ‘Hood?

January 22, 2025August 15, 2006

The Huffington Post • Aug. 15, 2006

Forget organics. Stop worrying about local. Just get some fresh food into the ‘hood. That’s a pretty basic summary of the latest brainstorm in the “How do we stop being so fat?” conundrum: Use bodegas–the cheap corner stores found in poor urban neighborhoods–as beacons of health. If it sounds unlikely that the local one-stop ice cream/malt liquor shop could be a promoter of sound nutrition, you’d best pause a moment and really take a look at the Bodegas as Catalysts for Healthy Living Act, introduced into the House in late July by Rep. Nydia Velazquez (D-NY).

Jicama in the ‘Hood

January 22, 2025August 2, 2006

Salon • Aug. 2, 2006

Amid a crowd of New York City public high-schoolers, Antonio Mayers, 16, is trying — with modest success — to wrap his head around the idea of freezing a mango pit for later consumption as a popsicle.

“How long you put it in the freezer?”

“Just until it gets, you know, frozen. It’s really good,” says Michael Welch. Welch is leading Mayers and his tittering cohorts in a cooking class coordinated by EatWise, a New York nutrition and food systems education group.

Body by Bodega

January 22, 2025July 24, 2006

City Limits • July 24, 2006

Bushwick – > Federal officials are opening up a new front in the fight against obesity: access. Heading the charge is Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez, representing parts of Brooklyn, Queens, and the Lower East Side, who plans this week to introduce the Bodegas as Catalysts for Healthy Living Act. If enacted, it would mark the first federal effort to target the issue of food quality and availability in the nation’s low-income communities.

The bill, which is also backed by the Washington Heights-based Bodega Association of the United States and local public health officials, would create a federal program offering grants through the Small Business Administration to help bodegas and corner stores stock and maintain fresh fruits and vegetables, along with low-fat milk and real fruit juices.

After-School Budget Won’t Budge: City Leaves Providers Scrambling

January 22, 2025December 12, 2005

City Limits • Dec. 12, 2005

Child care providers around the city were riled up last week after a city official publicly explained the approach undergirding the city’s massive new after-school child care initiative: Pay less than needed and expect service providers to make up the rest.

“Government can be a big part of the solution but not the only part,” said Bill Chong, deputy commissioner of the Department for Youth and Community Development (DYCD), at a Milano School forum on the new “Out of School Time” (OST) program last week. “To depend simply on city resources is a short-sighted approach.”

The New Safety Net?

January 22, 2025November 1, 2005

Part 3 of series, “Getting By”

Winner, 2006 James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism
Finalist, 2006 Livingston Award for Young Journalists

City Limits • November/December 2005

Early this April, before the snow had completely disappeared, Milagros Espinal undertook an annual ritual, rustling her three children out of her Bronx apartment for a 15-minute jaunt over the Tri-Borough Bridge. Upon reaching Bayside, Queens, she hunched over an aging Hewlett Packard computer, consulting earnestly with her stepbrother, Veder Velarde. Between slurps of Coke, Milagros and Veder, who works in accounting, focused on the task at hand: painstakingly inputting figures from the receipts and 1099s generated by the child-care business she was running out of her living room. It was a late start for Milagros. She had hoped to finish her taxes months before, but now April 15 loomed just two weeks away, and she was anxious to dispense with the paperwork.

Big Changes in Child Care: City Hopes to Regulate Informal Providers

January 22, 2025October 31, 2005

City Limits • Oct. 31, 2005

As the city moves to overhaul its public child care system, officials are looking to recruit new allies into the fight: “informal” providers who currently receive public funds to care for children. The initiative, which also institutes background checks on informal providers, comes less than a year after Jaylen Robinson, a 19-month old in informal care, was smothered and killed by his caregiver.

Still in the early stages of discussion, the idea is a small component of the massive child care overhaul announced last week. It marks the city’s first major attempt to regulate unlicensed care, which has grown dramatically in recent years.

Hidden Health Costs

January 22, 2025October 11, 2005

City Limits • Oct. 11, 2005 High rates of childhood obesity may have a stealth culprit: rising prices. A new study from the Rand Health Corporation, a nonprofit policy group, found a strong correlation between childhood weight gain and higher prices for fruits and vegetables. In fact, the study found higher prices to be a … Read more

At Campaign Headquarters, Glitter and a Salsa Beat

January 22, 2025September 4, 2005

New York Times • Sept. 4, 2005

Nothing about Ruben Gonzalez’s block of East 108th Street near Third Avenue suggests a run for City Hall. The street, which is peppered with vacant lots and abandoned buildings, and punctuated by a fire hydrant spouting graceful arcs of water, ends, eloquently, at Poor Richard’s Playground.

But as August drifted to a close, it was City Hall — or, more precisely, the work of a candidate angling for a job there — that had drawn the attention of Mr. Gonzalez and his friends. Passing the afternoon in lawn chairs on the sidewalk, he and a bunch of fellow retirees casually eyed a building that once housed La Palma, a nightclub, but which is now the bustling headquarters for a City Council campaign.