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The Crucial Role of Year-Round, Part-Time, Private-Sector Employment


job fair

Job seekers (Mark Lennihan/AP)


Advocates for the poor rallied last month for additional summer youth jobs. City Councilman Jumaane Williams said many youth in the city have to decide between getting a legitimate job or turning to drug dealing to make money. "It is unfair to ask young people to make the correct choice when we give them no choice," Williams said.

While there is something positive about summer employment, much more substantial benefits come from year-round part-time employment. As Councilman Williams points out, teens from poor families have substantial consumption needs, but these needs are year round. Unfortunately, the teen employment rate in 2013 was little more than half what it was fifteen years ago as firms shifted to young adults and retirees. Nationally, only one in ten black teenagers from low-income households is employed. While I strongly endorse a minimum wage increase, there is some evidence that it may accelerate this shifting of employment to older workers.

Legal employment for young men reduces the temptation to engage in illegal activities. Less discussed, is the impact of joblessness on young women. Without paid employment, many must rely on male partners; men who will demand sexual favors that put these young women at risk for sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancies. These problems are most pronounced for disadvantaged black teen women whose incidence of gonorrhea and chlamydia are at least seven times the rate for white teen women. Each year in New York, 13 percent of black teen women becomes pregnant - a rate 3.5 times higher than the white rate. While paid employment is not a magic bullet, it will help many young women avoid these risks.

Continuous teen employment has other benefits. The Community Service Society recently documented the substantially higher graduation rates for black and Latino students who attended Career and Technical Education (CTE) High Schools. These CTE programs not only prepare students with the academic skills necessary to succeed in the world of work, but also provide mentoring and the work skills needed, including team work, work discipline, and communication skills. Many of these same skills are developed through paid teen employment.

There are already a number of programs that aid disadvantaged youth. Year Up is a successful program to prepare promising students for demanding occupational programs that lead to backroom employment in the financial sector. Other programs focus on disconnected youth who are neither in school nor employed. None of these programs, however, focus on high school students who are at risk of not graduating. There is a crucial need to introduce to the world of private-sector paid employment this large group of disadvantaged students before they become disconnected from school and work.

There are a number of ways that government support can move significant numbers of students into year-round part-time private-sector employment. In the 1990s, the government shifted many long-term welfare recipients into the workforce; and continues to have a number of programs that move ex-offenders into paid employment. As in both cases, a critical component of work-readiness programs is preparing participants for the behavioral traits private-sector employers require; and ongoing counseling to help facilitate effective employment.

Besides the work readiness and ongoing counseling, other modest incentives can be given to the national retail chain stores and fast food establishments to induce them to increase their teen employment. In addition, government should find ways to induce firms that provide summer employment to extend, for a modest proportion, employment into the school year. Once hired, employment counselors can help students to balance work and school and to develop strategies to reduce risky sexual behavior. By providing soft skills, mentoring, and spending money, year-round employment could move disadvantaged youth forward.

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by Robert Cherry, Stern Professor of Economics, Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center of CUNY
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Hynes' Dubious Battle


Hynes

Former Brooklyn DA Joe Hynes (Bryan Thomas for the New York Times)


As revealed by the recent Department of Investigation inquiry, former Brooklyn DA Joe Hynes spent a significant amount of his final year in office fretting about local media coverage.

Despite the raft of negative stories about various aspects of his tenure that appeared in all the dailies, Hynes seemed to think that endorsements from the city's leading editorial boards could carry him to reelection. As a result, he continually tried to spin his actions in ways that would impress these opinion-makers.

Is this how any elected official, scandal-plagued or otherwise, should act?

Hynes seemed particularly concerned with winning the Grey Lady's nod, stating in one email that it was the "only opinion page that matters." The D.A. likely perceived that the Times held sway over voters in Brownstone Brooklyn. Other emails captured his considerable frustration with the views of the Daily News and Post editorial boards.

In his attempt to impress the Times, Hynes went so far as to assemble a 9.5-page brief outlining his case for reelection. In preparation, he solicited feedback from Judge Barry Kamins, a frequent adviser, whom Hynes in his letter said was known for "his expertise in Legal Ethics."

Here as elsewhere, Hynes either defended or distanced himself from many ongoing charges, notably those involving his alleged mishandling of child sex abuse cases in Brooklyn's Ultra-Orthodox community as well as the murder cases involving Detective Louis Scarcella. As Kamins had recommended, amidst the campaign Hynes formed a high-profile review panel to study the Scarcella cases.

But throughout the summer, challenger Ken Thompson kept attacking Hynes on these and other issues, and the six-term incumbent could not shake the perception that he had mismanaged the D.A.'s office. As the September primary approached, only the Daily News editorial board weighed in on the race, giving a notably lukewarm boost to Thompson based on its "judgment compelled by serious evidence that Hynes has presided over miscarriages of justice."

Hynes' failure to win over the leading editorial boards thus contributed to his lopsided defeat in the primary. Yet even if he had the endorsements he coveted, it's unlikely they would have made much difference. In the mayor's race, Christine Quinn ran the table, but nonetheless went down to a humiliating defeat.

Newspaper endorsements, of course, cannot alone shape popular perceptions of candidates. One of the leading criticisms of Quinn was that she remained too close to Mayor Bloomberg - which also explained why she got the support of the same editorial boards that helped sanction Bloomberg's third term. So "playing to the boards" certainly can be a losing campaign strategy.

Moreover, as the role of social media expands, the views of powerful opinion leaders will face increasingly more competition. Online readers are paying less attention to what's on A1 of the Times, raising questions about the future influence of the official positions taken by the city's legacy media institutions.

It nonetheless would be a mistake to dismiss Hynes' view of the dominance of editorial boards as a thing of the past. They obviously can still steer the popular discussion. Consider the tabloids' relentless charter school advocacy, the Daily News' crusade to save horse carriages, or the Times' robust support for reforming stop-and-frisk. And as evidenced by the Espaillat campaign's enthusiastic reaction to receiving the Times' endorsement, all candidates still welcome the instant credibility provided by a leading board's support.

The best lesson that the Hynes example teaches current and future elected officials is simply this: spin things all you want, but you're not going to impress any civic leaders when you're not upholding the basic responsibilities of your office.

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Theodore Hamm (@HammerDaily) is chair of journalism and new media studies at St. Joseph's College in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.
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A Free-Market Solution To The Affordable Housing Crisis


Hammel Houses - NYCHA

Hammel Houses, NYCHA (wikimedia)


Mayor de Blasio's recently released affordable housing plan is extensive and forward thinking – but also extremely expensive. The 200,000 units it envisions are estimated to cost $41 billion, of which $8 billion will come from City coffers.

We could reach the same goal without such astronomical spending. In fact, the City could do it without spending a single dollar from its budget.

To accomplish this feat, we need to harness the power of the market. Here is a five-point plan for how we can do so to create a housing plan that serves all New Yorkers:

First, we must put to use the vast sums of funding in the capital markets to build mixed-income housing and provide for low-income households through a partnership between the public and private spheres. This funding can help generate more housing in a cost-effective way.

Second, there are numerous tracts of land around the city that are not meeting their full potential. By enabling development in these areas, we can reduce the overall cost of land to a level that promotes the creation of affordable housing. For a start, more than 30 million square feet of development rights related to NYCHA projects are sitting unused in Manhattan. In addition, the City controls or outright owns many other properties around New York, including the nine blocks in the Seward Park Urban Renewal Zone and the 90 acres adjoining the Brooklyn Army Terminal, that could be turned into thriving mixed-income developments.

Third, developers should be required to lease the ground on which new projects are built, which can generate ground rents through the luxury component of the development. The additional funding, in turn, can be set aside for a self-funded rent voucher program.

Fourth, the solution to low-income affordability is not more low-income housing; rather, it is more income. We can empower struggling working households by providing them with the income needed to rent an apartment like others in the marketplace, in the form of transferable or "sticky" vouchers. These rent vouchers would be self-funded by the new mixed-income communities to be created under this proposal.

Fifth, to make these ideas a reality, we need to create an independent Affordable Housing Authority. An Authority with the appropriate mandate and powers can solve the problem using a public-private partnership model. Similar agencies, such as the 42nd Street Development Corp., have successfully revitalized neighborhoods around the city. The new Authority would simply apply this proven archetype on a citywide scale.

By using this model, the funds needed for new developments can be financed through capital markets without the massive outlays of the mayor's plan. Indeed, we can completely redevelop many of the city's aged and dilapidated NYCHA projects, using this very model.

Creating affordable housing is one of the major public policy challenges of our time. Fortunately, we have the financing and know-how to fix this problem in an economical way. Now we need only the political will to make it happen.

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Leonard Grunstein is Managing Member at Hanlen Real Estate Development & Funding
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