Mayor de Blasio (photo: Edwin J. Torres/Mayor's Office)
This is part three of a three-part series: De Blasio and Homelessness: A New Progressive Mayor Wrestles with an Old Social Problem, by Peter Nasaw and Thomas J. Main. [Jump to Part One: The Challenge of Homeless Policy or Part Two: Setbacks and Responses]
Part Three: Can de Blasio Turn the Tide on Homelessness?
In response to the growing shelter census, the de Blasio administration recently released a new plan, “Turning the Tide on Homelessness,” which features an ambitious proposal to build 90 new shelters within a five-year period, while ending the use of cluster sites and commercial hotels. The multipronged approach also touts the mayor’s success in enhancing shelter security and addressing code violations, which is particularly warranted given the state of disrepair found in many cluster site apartments.
A New Tone and New Shelters
Perhaps the most striking thing about the new plan is its tone, which is markedly more realistic than de Blasio’s campaign rhetoric. When he was a candidate, de Blasio’s determination that the city could indeed successfully take on the daunting problem of inequality raised expectations about what could be done to deal with homelessness. Now, his new plan tells us that “[w]e must be clear-eyed: it will take many years to reset the unacceptable status quo we see today...There are no silver bullets here. We will not solve this crisis overnight. It will be a long hard fight.”
The more realistic tone is certainly welcome. But wouldn’t it have been better to start out by lowering expectations, which de Blasio could have afforded to do given the big lead he enjoyed in the general election campaign?
If the city indeed succeeds in opening 90 new shelters, it says it will be able to end the use of commercial hotels and cluster site housing. But the greatest challenge to the construction of new shelters is community opposition. De Blasio’s new plan therefore calls for improved community relations and better outreach to community boards in order to curb resistance to new shelters.
Unfortunately, the mayor’s promises to consult communities thoroughly sound all too much like those of his mentor, David Dinkins, who in 1991 proposed to overcome local opposition to his plan of opening a mere 20 shelters through “Early and Meaningful Community Involvement,” “Fair Distribution of New Facilities Around the City,” and “Undertaking a Comprehensive Approach to Siting.” Dinkins’ plan was to win over hostile neighborhoods by being too impeccably fair to dispute. Communities would have none of it. The highly visible plan merely called attention to itself and gave communities an obvious target. The fact is, the less noticeable such siting efforts are, the easier they are for the city to accomplish.
Another problem for de Blasio’s plan is that where and how to place new shelters is in part governed by the city’s “Fair Share” law, which was incorporated into the City Charter in 1989. The law is outdated and confusing, and over the past 25 years, poor neighborhoods have in fact received more shelters than is equitable. In response to this unfairness, the City Council is now considering a proposal to reform the Fair Share law and push better-off communities to accept more shelters.
Fair enough, it would seem, but a disproportionate number of shelter residents come from those same poor communities. Locating more shelters in better-off neighborhoods would mean that more homeless people would be sheltered far away from their places of origin, a practice that advocacy groups such as Coalition for the Homeless already dislike. How the de Blasio administration will square this circle is not at all clear.
Conclusion
Two courses of action for the city seem desirable. One is to reform the CITYFEPS voucher program. As it stands, CITYFEPS may not meet its goals of rehousing families in appropriate apartments since units are not appropriately inspected. The practice of having CITYFEPS units inspected by potentially self-interested service providers should end. The responsibility of inspecting apartments should be taken over by HPD, which already has a set of standards that is enforceable, and staff trained and equipped to perform this function. If the reintegration of DHS and HRA is successful, perhaps better coordination with HPD and other agencies will improve the administration of CITYFEPS.
The cluster site program should end and the apartments it made use of should be converted into permanent housing for LINC voucher holders. But as IBO notes, the greatest challenge to this initiative is that the landlords will be paid half as much from LINC as they are already being paid to run a cluster site. Landlords are also reluctant to resume business relationships with the city after the fallout from the abrupt termination of the Advantage program in 2011. However, the city should be able to use the threat of withdrawing funding for cluster site housing as leverage in convincing landlords to participate in the LINC program.
The experience of the de Blasio administration also sheds light on two conceptual issues. One, it seems that the issue of perverse incentives needs to be reexamined. The studies that undermined the perverse incentive theory and cleared the way for the reintroduction of rent subsidies are now 18 years old and the issue needs to be revisited. The introduction of LINC was supposed to drive the census down, but it has in fact gone up, which does not imply causality but does suggest that the issue of how policy affects shelter demand deserves careful consideration. DHS needs to improve its forecasting ability to more accurately predict the likely results of changes in rent subsidies, eligibility, and other policies.
Also important is what recent experience with homelessness policy says about the prospects for the progressive coalition in New York City. A striking feature of city homelessness policy is that it was developed mostly under conservative mayors: Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg. From the beginning of modern homeless policy in the late 1970s to the end of Bloomberg’s tenure in 2013, the one-term mayoralty of David Dinkins was the only interregnum of progressive rule.
Coming to grips with homelessness proved difficult for Dinkins, who found that he had to rethink some of the progressive conceptions he had brought to the issue. Dinkins’ indecisiveness and his failure to make a dent in a problem he had decried as a candidate seemed to justify Giuliani’s criticism that progressives lacked the managerial skills necessary to govern New York City. De Blasio’s reelection prospects seem pretty good right now, but his lackluster record with an issue that was central to his political vision will not be helpful. To be fair, de Blasio was dealt a bad hand regarding the homeless problem, but he has not always played his cards well. The problem has not been fundamentally wrongheaded policy but lack of managerial and political deftness. Can progressives govern New York City? De Blasio’s so far disappointing record on homelessness does not help make the case they can.
This is part three of a three-part series, De Blasio and Homelessness: A New Progressive Mayor Wrestles with an Old Social Problem, by Peter Nasaw and Thomas J. Main.
Jump to Part One: The Challenge of Homeless Policy
Jump to Part Two: Setbacks and Responses
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by Peter Nasaw and Thomas J. Main. Nasaw, MPA, LMSW, is an expert on homeless policy who has worked in the social services for several years. Main is a professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York and author of Homelessness in New York City: Policymaking from Koch to de Blasio.
DCA Commissioner Lorelei Salas, the author
Sitting in front of more than 150 people, Maria Aguilar broke down in tears as she shared how often she experiences discrimination and abuse at the hands of her employers. Maria is a day laborer at “La Parada,” a street corner in Williamsburg where every day she waits and hopes for the chance to be picked up by someone looking for last-minute child care or housekeeping services. Maria is almost always a victim of wage theft and despite working long days and weeks she does not get paid minimum wage, let alone the overtime wages she is owed. After years of toiling under terrible conditions, she joined other day laborers and formed a worker co-op of cleaners with the hopes of regaining some sense of control over who she works for, and on what terms.
She is one of the “lucky” ones. Most workers may never get to set the terms of their employment. Take Pierre, a young father and husband working for a fast food restaurant, who choked up as he told us how he had to wait until Sunday to figure out which two or three days he might be scheduled to work that week, and having to choose between putting food on the table or paying his phone bill. Or Nereyda, a transgender Latina and member of Make the Road New York, who experienced sexual harassment and wage theft at the restaurant where she worked. When she finally obtained a court decision in her favor, her employer went bankrupt and shut down to avoid having to pay her back wages.
New York City stands against these and other exploitative labor practices; we are committed to protecting all New Yorkers regardless of national origin, race, religion/creed, gender, and gender identity.
Mayor de Blasio‘s legislative proposal to address the terrible scheduling practices in the fast food industry by requiring employers to give advance notice to workers of their schedules will make it so that workers like Pierre can plan ahead and know how much money they will bring home. And as our Office of Labor Policy and Standards (OLPS) gets ready to implement the Freelance Isn’t Free Act, gig economy workers will get assistance in recouping money they are owed and navigating the court system. We are building a new generation of workplace protections, and just in time.
A few days ago, the Department of Consumer Affairs’ Office of Labor Policy and Standards (OLPS), along with the city’s Commission on Human Rights and the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, held a public hearing on the state of workers’ rights at LaGuardia Community College in Long Island City. We took testimony from nearly 50 workers in the construction, fast food and retail, home health care, restaurant, and taxi industries. I have spent nearly 20 years working in the field of labor compliance at all levels of government, and the stories of rampant wage theft and unsafe workplaces that we heard struck a very familiar chord with me. What I found even more alarming was that the exploitative conditions these workers endure do not discriminate. They have spread across countless industries and span racial and socio-economic divides.
While we wait to see what direction the Trump administration takes in terms of enforcing key workplace protections, we are preparing for the worst. A proposed $2.5 billion budget cut for the United States Department of Labor could result in a gutting of enforcement staff and further deterioration of working conditions. Now more than ever, it will be up to progressive cities and states to step up enforcement efforts and fill the gap left by the federal government.
New York City, led by Mayor de Blasio, is doing just that. We have been enforcing New York’s Paid Sick Leave Law for just over three years, and since January, we have seen a 30 percent increase in the number of complaints filed against employers not following the law. We are encouraged by the fact that people are not shying away from coming to us for help, but this troubling trend coincides with the timing of anti-immigrant policies coming out of D.C.
Today -- Monday, May 1, or May Day -- will be filled with marches and protests, and everyone who cares about workers’ rights, including those at my agency, will be seeking to elevate the issues that plague workers in this country. It has become ever clearer that worker exploitation is an equal opportunity evil that cannot be condemned just once a year. We need to devote more time and resources to filling current labor gaps if we hope to secure a safer and stronger workplace for our children.
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Lorelei Salas is the Commissioner of the Department of Consumer Affairs, which houses the Office of Labor Policy and Standards. Workers can learn more about what the office does at nyc.gov/dca or by calling 311. On Twitter at @NYCDCA.
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A charter school rally at the Capitol (photo: The Governor's Office)
UFT President Michael Mulgrew raises important points about the negative impact of suspensions in his recent op-ed, “Charter Schools Can’t Suspend Their Way to Success.”
There is no disputing Mr. Mulgrew’s argument that the excessive use of suspensions and other exclusionary disciplinary practices means that students (and especially students of color) miss out on class time and their education permanently suffers. No school – regardless of whether it’s a public charter school or district public school – should ever be able to “suspend its way to success.”
The good news is that New York can do something about it – right now.
In Albany, state leaders are working on a major overhaul of how New York measures school performance and provides urgency, resources, and support to help schools that are not succeeding for any group of students. These changes are possible under a federal education law that President Obama signed, called the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).
While academic measures like reading and math achievement must – and should – remain the most important aspect of how we measure school performance, there’s also room for a small number of additional measures of school quality and student success that capture other important student outcomes that schools can control and that have a clear link to achievement.
Without a doubt, reducing suspensions meets those criteria.
A recent study by the California Dropout Research Project and The Civil Rights Project at the University of California found that “suspensions themselves directly reduce the graduation rates of suspended students” – resulting in a 6.5 percentage point difference in high school graduation rates.
Our own research at The Education Trust--New York found that across New York State, African-American elementary and middle school students are nearly four times as likely as their white peers to receive at least one out-of-school suspension, and African-American high school students are twice as likely as their white peers to be suspended. The challenge is not limited to New York City, and it’s not unique to charter schools.
We – along with a statewide coalition of civil rights, education, parent, and business organizations committed to advancing equity through ESSA – believe that schools should be held accountable for reducing the overuse of exclusionary discipline measures, including in- and out-of-school suspensions, expulsions, seclusions/restraints, and school-based arrests.
Of course, just including discipline in our accountability system is not sufficient. We also need the resources to support teachers and principals in enacting restorative justice practices and establishing positive school environments. Including discipline in our accountability system can help create the urgency to provide these critical tools so our schools can truly address the problem and improve the learning environment for all students.
Other states are already taking advantage of ESSA to show they are serious about reducing excessive discipline. In Louisiana, for example, the state’s new accountability system would require support and improvement in schools that have high rates of suspensions.
Does New York’s State Education Department agree that efforts to reduce excessive suspensions should have real teeth?
We’ll find out in just a few short weeks, when they present their draft accountability plan to the Board of Regents and the public.
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Ian Rosenblum is the executive director of The Education Trust--New York. On Twitter @EdTrustNY.
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