At the beginning of Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s second term, homelessness in his city was at an all-time high: Nearly 40,000 New Yorkers were without homes, which was astronomical considering the city’s homeless population had never reached 30,000 before Bloomberg took office. In response, he laid out an ambitious five-year plan to reduce homelessness by two-thirds.
Eight years later, 48,694 people were homeless, according to the New York City Department of Homeless Services.
What went wrong?
The administration’s critics might say that the mayor’s housing policies failed because he’s out of touch with most New Yorkers. His recent gaffe — ”nobody sleeps on the streets” — and the administration’s infamous policy of offering homeless families one-way tickets out of town certainly give credence to that idea. Critics may also point to the mayor’s support for the continued conversion of the city’s rent-regulated system to a market rate system, which continues to obliterate the city’s affordable housing stock.
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However, the mayor’s defenders would probably suggest that the rise in homelessness has more to do with nationwide phenomena; every city suffered during the severe economic downturn and collapse of the housing market, and this helped to create a perfect storm that no one could navigate, not even a man who became famous for understanding market forces. If people don’t have money, they can’t afford a place to live, simple as that.
Whichever camp you’re in, you would probably agree that the mayor’s efforts were, overall, unsuccessful. But was this a result of a billionaire’s blind faith in free markets or of housing policies that were fundamentally flawed?
When it came to the housing crisis that plagued all three of his four-year terms, Bloomberg clearly believed the road to success would be paved by the real estate industry.
Much of the administration’s efforts to curb homelessness relied on encouraging developers to create affordable housing; the “New Marketplace Plan” and 80/20 buildings, where 80 percent of the tenants pay market rate rent and 20 percent have their rents subsidized, trade attractive tax abatements for affordability (until the apartment becomes market rate).
These programs exempt building owners from paying the full real-property tax rate, and one tax abatement program, according to the Citizens Housing and Planning Council, results in an annual $257 million in uncollected city taxes.
But the mayor’s ideology dictates that such incentives are necessary, and that the market forces will solve problems in the long run. And it’s not far-fetched to view his appointments to the Rent Guidelines Board — a group of nine individuals that determine rent hike limits for nearly one million rent stabilized apartments — as an extension of that ideology. Two-thirds of the board members have backgrounds in investment banking, finance, or the real estate industry.
Perhaps the administration’s proximity to the real estate industry helped create the impression that he was far removed from the world of everyday people, and Bloomberg’s creation and preservation of approximately 150,000 affordable housing units and the expansion of supportive housing for people with disabilities, mental health, or substance use issues is overshadowed because of his relationships with realtors.
But the administration’s often-documented poor management of the city’s public housing system, the discontinuation of giving homeless families priority for Section 8 vouchers, and the de-funding of rental assistance programs suggest the mayor simply made bad decisions.
While tax abatements may have temporarily created more affordable housing units, tax breaks ultimately mean less revenue. So while developers took advantage of programs designed with building owners in mind, many of the city’s programs that were designed with the current and potential tenant in mind (as well as the homeless and potentially homeless) anguished. The “Advantage” program — which helped families leave shelters by finding apartments and work — was abruptly discontinued. Forty-four percent of the defunct program’s participants applied for shelter within a year. The program’s failure was reminiscent of its predecessor, the Housing Stability Plus program, which also resulted in many of the former participants returning to homeless shelters.
The mayor even lobbied against a measure that sought to save city funds and prevent homelessness among disabled New Yorkers living with AIDS. He insisted that there was a start up cost for the policy change, which advocates continue to dispute. However, both the mayor and AIDS housing advocates would probably agree that any cost associated with the proposed policy is dwarfed by the amount of money the city handed out in tax breaks to the real estate industry.
In addition to the quarter of a billion dollars the city sacrificed to entice developers into building affordable housing units, the Pratt Center for Community Development estimated the city gave away another $750 million per year because of a tax abatement program that doesn’t stipulate affordable housing units at all.
A full and thorough examination of Mayor Bloomberg’s 12-year record on housing reveals his commitment to free market principles as well as his astonishingly poor decision-making.
But maybe it’s not that complicated: New York’s income disparity gap — which was already one of the widest in the country — continues to grow. At the end of Bloomberg’s three terms, the gap has grown to rival sub-Saharan Africa, according to a 2012 report by the US Census Bureau.
While Mayor Bloomberg tried everything from building more affordable housing units to shipping homeless people out of town, he did nothing to address poverty. His policies may have made the problem worse. And if you don’t have money, you can’t afford a place to live.
It can’t be any simpler.
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Jaron Benjamin is the executive director of the Met Council on Housing, New York City's oldest tenant union. He is also the coordinator of the Real Rent Reform Campaign, which represents thousands of lower and moderate income tenants throughout New York City.
Okay, stop us if you’ve heard this one: A guy walks into a New York City employment assistance office. He’s just been laid off, and he’s terrified. At the assistance center, he receives a cursory assessment of his interests, skills and barriers. No one there has a record of whether this is the first time he’s used the workforce system, or whether he has already received multiple services — the city has no system-wide data bank.
He’s given a voucher to attend a training class in an occupation he’s interested in and heads off to one of those proprietary schools he’s seen advertised on the subway. But after completing the training, it turns out that few employers are hiring right now for that type of job — the city workforce system doesn’t always use up-to-date labor-market information.
He’s then sent off to several interviews with employers where his skills are not a good match — his job counselor doesn’t have a close relationship with local employers and doesn’t know what they’re really looking for.
Soon he’s discouraged and decides that the workforce system is not worth his time and local employers are frustrated because they’re not seeing any candidates with the right skills — the system is not fully meeting the needs of either job seekers or businesses.
This story will be repeated all too often unless the next Mayor of New York City redesigns the entire workforce system. Though the Bloomberg Administration significantly improved the workforce system the past several years — despite decreasing federal and state financial support — the current system has likely improved as much as it can within the limits of its siloed and fragmented framework.
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With New York City’s unemployment rate hovering at 9 percent, the next mayor will make job creation for all New Yorkers a top priority. And yet our next mayor will face an even greater challenge: Public funding for workforce development is in steady decline—the city’s Workforce Investment Act (WIA) dollars were more than cut in half over the past decade, with many in Congress urging still further cuts—while the city’s job growth will likely continue to lag behind its population growth.
In response, the New York City Workforce Funders (a collaborative of NYC foundations investing more than $55 million annually into workforce development) and The Clark Foundation commissioned an independent Workforce Strategy Group to “re-envision the New York City workforce system.”
The good news is that our next mayor will have the power to redesign New York City’s workforce system into an innovative engine for job creation that serves both employers and jobseekers: The Strategy Group just published “Re-envisioning the New York City Workforce System,” which proposes an entirely new framework for how the workforce system could serve both businesses and jobseekers across the five boroughs.
The re-envisioning document frames five key recommendations for all the mayoral candidates to consider:
Re-envisioning the New York City Workforce System is a blueprint that the next Mayor can use to deliver on the promise of job creation across all five boroughs of New York City.
David LaGreca is executive director of VCG Governance Matters and co-chaired the New York City Workforce Strategy Group, along with Steven Dawson, strategic advisor to PHI. The Workforce Strategy Group included a diverse range of workforce stakeholders with decades of experience in the city’s workforce system. As a volunteer group, its charge was not to articulate the vision for the future, but rather a vision, one intended to engender spirited debate within the workforce, employer, philanthropic and public policy communities. Copies of Re-envisioning the New York City Workforce System are available at: http://www.reenvisionworknyc.org/.
Image courtesy of Thompson Rivers, used under Creative Commons license.
When I walk around the city, listen to people describe their experiences, and observe my own family members, I grow disheartened. Too many New Yorkers are unhealthy because they have inadequate housing, are living in poverty, are unemployed or have low paying jobs, lack access to quality education and nutrition, are bearing inequitable environmental burdens, lack access to open space and safe areas for exercise. These “social determinants of health” adversely affect their health status.
New York needs a “Public Health Mayor” who will address these issues.
Municipal leaders are charged with promoting the health and safety of their city's residents. New York City is no different and, with a diverse city like the Big Apple, it is surely not an easy responsibility for any mayor to tackle.
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However, it is unacceptable that almost 2.5 million New Yorkers have been characterized as “medically underserved” — lacking sufficient primary and preventive care services — and that major gaps in public-health status persist in our city. These gaps were very apparent the day after Superstorm Sandy, when parts of the city’s health care system operated full swing while others were virtually immobilized.
Our next mayor must focus on eliminating health disparities, particularly in immigrant communities and communities of color. This can be done by ensuring the availability of culturally and linguistically appropriate services; improving access to health care for immigrants, the uninsured, and the underinsured; promoting effective primary care and prevention services; helping individuals with disabilities and chronic illnesses like HIV/AIDS; protecting resources for women’s health, children’s health, mental health, and early intervention; and developing a high-quality and diverse workforce within the healthcare industry; addressing issues impacting sex workers; and key parts of the Affordable Care Act incentives healthy outcomes, especially for vulnerable communities.
We need assurances that the next mayor will continue to support the public health and hospital system, with health services in medically underserved communities.
There are many moral arguments for public health issues to be one of the incoming mayor’s top priorities. However, I also recognize the insufficiency of those arguments. It is also important to understand the economic case for action. Small investments in prevention can stave off higher future health costs. Mayoral leadership on public policy recommendations like paid sick days only makes our workforce more productive and improves the health of our fellow New Yorkers. Providing social supports to pregnant and parenting women and families has been shown to improve birth outcomes, and avoid costly ongoing infant medical costs. The next mayor can ensure the sustainment of low-cost or no-cost measures that can jumpstart local efforts to address public health concerns and issues.
Whatever your opinion is about the current mayoral administration’s priorities around public health concerns, there is still a need for a systematic, comprehensive and holistic approach that truly involves planning from the ground up.
A “Public Health Mayor” must recognize the indispensable role that community members and labor play in improving health care throughout the city, and through leadership must create an environment that includes community voices in the decision-making and policy-setting processes.
In appointing people to positions such as the Commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Health, the mayor can exercise this type of leadership by selecting people who value community input and support community-led approaches to closing the gaps in health status. This can only be successful if the “Public Health Mayor” devotes sufficient attention to these issues, commits the necessary revenue and resources, ensures transparency in spending and operations, and provides accountability for public health programs.
We must recognize that a great city like New York can only fulfill its promise of greatness when it is better for everyone on all economic and social justice issues. For many of our community partners, the Mayor can make a profound effect on access to health care, prevention, wellness and other health issues. The next mayor must be a “Public Health Mayor” who will make addressing public health issues as one of the his or her highest priorities.
Anthony Feliciano is the director for the Commission on the Public’s Health System, whose mission is to fight for equal access to quality healthcare for everyone regardless of race, ethnicity, language spoken, diagnosis, or the ability to pay. CPHS coordinated a coalition of community, labor, academic, professional organizations and individuals who sponsored a New York City Mayoral Candidate Forum on Important Public Health Issues on January 16th, 2013.