About 30,000 New York City families reached their lifetime limit--five years--for receiving Federal welfare benefits in December. The purpose of such time limits, according to their proponents, is to motivate welfare recipients to find other sources of income before they reach their limit. In New York State, however, this theory does not apply.
The state Constitution requires the government to provide for the "aid, care and support of the needy." This means that when federal welfare benefits run out, the state Safety Net Assistance program kicks in with benefits equal to those under the federal program. Theoretically, the change should be minimal for welfare recipients: they will get the same amount of assistance, in a slightly different form.
So who should care about Federal welfare time limits in New York? In fact, it is the government--both at the state and city levels--which should feel motivated by time limits to reduce the need for public assistance. During the years that people are eligible for Federal welfare benefits, the U.S. government foots half the bill, so the state and city each pay only 25 percent of the cost. Once that eligibility ends, the cost to the state and city doubles as they take on the whole responsibility for Safety Net Assistance benefits.
Officials of both the city and state governments of New York have known for over five years that time limits would cut off federal funds for long-term welfare recipients. If this had motivated them to reduce this population's need for support, they would have made major efforts to reach this "hard-to-help" group with services aimed at their particular needs.
Studies of families receiving long-term public assistance show that they differ from the general population of families on public assistance. According to the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation, heads of these households have more children and less education and work experience than heads of households receiving only short-term benefits. Many long-term recipients have multiple barriers to work, rather than a single clear-cut problem that would qualify them for Social Security disability assistance. They are the people least likely to be helped by welfare reform as New Yorkers have known it since Rudy Giuliani launched his version of it in 1995.
New York City's welfare reform program has focused on two goals. 1. It has prevented people from getting or staying on the welfare rolls by ingenious, often illegitimate, means. 2. It has helped the most skilled, educated, and experienced beneficiaries to get employment of any kind, no matter how dead-end, low-paid and temporary those jobs may be.
In the short term, these tactics have succeeded in cutting the welfare caseload in half over the five year-period starting in October 1996. Their long-term effects may end up costing the city and state more than they have saved.
A number of states had earlier time limits on federal welfare than New York. When we look at families that reached those limits already, we get some idea of what to expect in New York City. The evidence does not suggest that families can pull themselves together and out of poverty just because their welfare checks stop arriving. As of April 2001, nearly one in three adults heading New York City households on welfare was already employed, but earned wages so low that the household still qualified for public assistance.
Six months after time limits ended cash assistance for recipients in Cuyahoga County, Ohio, only 32 percent of them had worked continuously for at least 20 hours a week since their assistance ended. The Center on Urban Poverty and Social Change reports that three out of four of these families had incomes below the poverty line, even when food stamps are included. When the Manpower Demonstration Research Corporation followed up on a series of welfare-to-work projects, they found that only eight percent of subjects were continuously employed in the four years after they left welfare.
Federal welfare reform legislation has built-in incentives for states to invest in helping public assistance recipients to become qualified and able to work. Each year since 1996, each state has received the same amount of money that the U.S. government gave it for welfare benefits in 1995, even though the number of people receiving cash benefits is now much lower. The extra money was meant to be used to pay for child care, transportation, Medicaid coverage, education, job training, and other items needed by welfare recipients to find and keep jobs.
New York spent a lot of that money on good programs. However, some funding went through a budget gimmick called "supplantation," in which federal dollars paid for services that the state would have paid for otherwise, freeing up state dollars for general purposes, including a massive round of tax cuts.
The United States General Accounting Office examined spending under welfare reform by ten states, and concluded that eight of them invested more state funds into services for low-income families in the year 2000 than they did in 1995. New York was one of the two exceptions in which state spending declined.
Five years into welfare reform, New York State has accumulated over a billion dollars in unspent federal welfare funds. This surplus would be helpful when welfare rolls begin to increase again in response to economic changes, if it were not likely that Congress will treat the unspent dollars as an excuse to reduce future federal funding for public assistance.
Immediate use could be made of the unspent federal funds to improve and expand services that invest in beneficiaries' future ability to support themselves. These include high-quality child care, and education, job training, and vocational counseling for teenagers and adults. Job creation would also be useful during this time of economic contraction, through wage subsidies or community service programs. Even if the new jobs were not permanent, employees could develop a work history and gain experience, better positioning themselves for jobs that may emerge when the economy recovers.
There is no shortage of successful welfare-to-work strategies for New York to adopt. On paper, many of them already are in place. However, the size and quality of these programs depends on state and city commitment to do more than push people off the welfare rolls without regard to their future well-being.
New York City has a history of illegally discouraging applicants for public assistance. In the months preceding December 2001, recipients about to reach their five-year federal benefit limit were invited by the city to report to welfare offices to discuss "how you plan to manage your household expenses once your limits for Cash Assistance expire." According to a report by the Social Welfare Committee of the Association for the Bar of the City of New York, the notices bearing this invitation did not say that state benefits were available for those whose federal benefits ran out.
Although child care is essential to low-income mothers seeking work, there are still 30,000 children on the waiting list for subsidized child care slots in New York City. Just before leaving office, the city's first term-limited Mayor and City Council eliminated $71 million from the municipal budget, preventing the creation of 10,000 new day care slots.
It is no wonder that advocates for the poor are leery of how smoothly New York will make the transition to Safety Net Assistance. It will be much more difficult for families to navigate their way back into eligibility once the welfare machinery accidentally drops them into hunger and homelessness.
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.
The United States has had a social welfare system for over 70 years, but each Christmas the New York Times continues to print heartbreaking stories intended to inspire contributions to its Neediest Cases Fund.
In 1912, when Times publisher Arthur Ochs established this tradition, there were no food stamps, no social security for the elderly and people with disabilities, no school breakfast or lunch programs, no Medicaid or Medicare, and no Section 8 housing. Federal income taxes would not begin until the next year. New York City had a public-private system of poorhouses, outdoor relief, settlement houses, tuberculosis sanatoria, insane asylums, and orphanages, yet many of the poor lived in conditions so pitiable, Ochs thought they would no longer be tolerated if the Times made them known.
The first Hundred Neediest Cases were peopled by widows, orphans, and sick or disabled fathers. Mothers were often invalids, too delicate or devitalized to hold jobs or do housework. Hunger, cold, and the death of family members were dreaded not only for their direct effects, but because they could bring on tuberculosis.
More than a third of the cases arose from a father's death; today widows and children can receive Social Security survivors' benefits. Another quarter of the cases, in which the father was sick or disabled, might now be prevented by disability payments and better medical care. Public assistance or child support payments could now support the 13 cases where the father was in jail, had deserted, or was not mentioned. The few cases of impoverished old people would be resolved by Social Security. The remaining 17 cases involved children, mostly orphans, who had no adult to care for them. These would now be steered toward the still-controversial child welfare system.
By 1921, the annual collection for the Hundred Neediest Cases had become an institution. The Times pledged to make the nature of poverty "clearly known and to drive it home," because New Yorkers were "cut off by the conditions of life from channels of information as to the conditions of neighbors, channels of information which bring help and sympathy immediately." The Neediest cases were still dominated by sick, absent, and dead fathers. Mothers might work, but they earned too little to live on, or collapsed from overwork. A system had evolved to deal with such families by taking children away from their mothers. The Hundred Neediest Cases Fund provided an alternative: enough money to keep the family together.
The New York Times was careful to distinguish its 1931 collection for the Neediest Cases Fund from the "Emergency Unemployment Relief Fund," explaining that the donations for the Neediest helped "those who cannot be helped by employment because they are too old, too young, or too sick to work." Another difference was that the Emergency Unemployment Relief Fund had collected $18 million, while the Neediest Cases Fund was unsure it would reach its 1930 total of less than $348,000.
Pearl Harbor was bombed on the opening day of the 1941appeal. During the next week, enough money was donated to take care of the Hundred Neediest Cases, so on December 14, a collection was launched for a second 100 cases. The nation had been in the Depression for over a decade; no explanations were needed for fathers being out of work. The Times promised its readers their donations would "mean the turning of the tide toward health and self-reliance."
Some cases were receiving "public aid," but had additional needs, while others were not eligible because a family member worked part-time or at a low salary. There was cash assistance for dependent children, the elderly, the blind, and those needing "home relief." There were WPA jobs that could be held for up to 18 months, after which workers had to go back on public assistance, in a cycle some tried to break through training for higher-paid, permanent jobs.
Medical care now offered answers to many physical and mental problems, if the Neediest Cases Fund could pay for it. Donations began to buy "guidance" and "counseling," as well as rent and food. When a mother was dead, absent, or too weak to take care of her children, a housekeeper might be provided to avoid separating children from their families and homes.
The Hundred Neediest Cases of 1951 and 1961 show the success of the social safety net then in place. Hunger and absence of income were no longer prominent. Stories gave detailed explanations of why their subjects were in need. The new cases required counseling to lead them to solutions that they would otherwise not know about or accept, such as living with a disability, or moving to a nursing home. Parents and children who were "nervous" or "near breakdown" needed care to return to mental health. Delinquency had become an issue, as was living in crime-ridden slums.
By 1971, the "Hundred" part of the fund's name was dropped, and cases no longer were given numbers. Counseling was still the prescription for many, and drug use emerged as a problem.
The landscape of need looked much like today's by 1991, with homelessness, AIDS, and substance abuse becoming familiar elements in cases. The 2001 campaign for the Neediest features lengthy stories about outstanding cases. Aaron Donovan has written these stories for three years, but is "still surprised at the wide range of things that cause people to be needy."
Some cases fall through the cracks between social service programs: he recalls a child living in a homeless shelter who needed cabfare to and from chemotherapy treatments. Other people need emergency support while applications for public benefits are being processed. "Charities have an advantage over government," Donovan says. "They can get money to people right away."
According to David Jones, President and CEO of the Community Service Society, "government has abdicated substantially from case management." Instead of doing social work, employees at the city's public assistance agency are now charged with weeding out clients who fail to comply with convoluted application and recertification procedures.
The Community Service Society still gives cash grants to needy families, as it has done since 1912. However, Jones finds the agency has shifted its focus to a blend of the welfare poor and the working poor, as well as immigrants no longer eligible for Medicaid and public assistance. More time is spent, for example, on helping welfare recipients to regain benefits after inappropriate sanctions.
Aaron Donovan's story of Jasmine Tolentino, published on November 25, 2001, illustrates both the value of existing social programs and their limits. One of her sons has lupus, a chronic illness for which he was recently hospitalized. Tolentino lives with five children and a grandchild in a two-room apartment. Thanks to the social safety net, her son received the medical care he needed, and the family survives on public assistance, food from a local church, and food stamps. Because of the limits of public assistance, they cannot afford to move to a larger apartment, and were sleeping without sheets, blankets or pillows until the Children's Aid Society bought them with money from the Neediest Cases fund.
In "Behind the Hundred Neediest Cases," published in the City Journal in 1997, Heather MacDonald argued that their history illustrates a change in the "elite" view of charity. It was once reserved for the deserving poor; now the recipient's moral character is "all but irrelevant."
However, the same history can be interpreted as the opening chapters of a still-unfinished success story. In this reading, the early years of the Neediest Case Fund showed government the necessity of meeting basic material needs. Then the charity tackled those needs that remained unfilled. As our collective knowledge evolves, private donations support the application of new solutions to both old and new problems. And where bureaucracy fails, there is no substitute for direct compassion.
CITY-WIDE TASK FORCE ON HOUSING COURT SURVIVES BUDGET CUTS
Last month I incorrectly reported (See "A Rocky Season,") that the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court was planning to lay off its entire staff and close down in December, due to state and city budget reductions. According to Larry Wood, President of the Board of Directors, the 21-year-old coalition is still very much alive. "We are determined to stay together even if we were to lose all our government contracts," he says. State cuts of close to 45 percent of their income forced the task force to lay off eight of 18 staff members, with the remaining employees agreeing to take a pay cut. The agency's information tables at housing courts are open fewer days each week, with only one paid employee instead of two. Volunteers and employees of other housing-related organizations will still help to staff the tables.
The task force's cash flow is threatened by city cutbacks stemming from the World Trade Center disaster. Fortunately, late in November, it received approval for a grant of $100,000 from the Nonprofit Finance Fund, through its Nonprofit Recovery Fund. While this amount does not return the coalition to the level of funding originally expected for the current year, it ensures their ability to provide uninterrupted services at a time when they are seeing escalating demand for housing court assistance.
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.
The agency whose job it is to keep the city's children safe, the Administration for Children's Services, is now a permanent agency, thanks to a charter proposal that the voters passed in November, after a six-year separation from the Human Resources Administration. But Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta, widely hailed as the mastermind behind the agency's reinvention, is stepping down and his replacement has yet to be announced. At the same time, as if to mock all their best intentions, tragically, at least six children under the age of seven have died recently, allegedly at the hands of their abusive parents.
The list is a heartbreaking reminder of the agency's grave responsibility: Inez Bennett, 7, found dead in her family's Bronx apartment with a smashed jaw and hot water burns, cuts and bruises covering her body; Signifagance Oliver, 4, drowned in the bathtub by her mother in an exorcism ritual; Sylena Herrnkind, 3, beaten to death by her mother in the Staten Island home she shared with four siblings; Sidney Achan, 2, who died from multiple skull fractures and brain injuries; and Kyron Hamilton, 15 months, beaten to death by his mother who said the baby was bothering her while she watched television. A Brooklyn man was charged with second-degree murder in the death of De Andrew Monroe, the 15-month-old son of his girlfriend. According to police, the baby was shaken to death because he would not stop crying.
If the Administration for Children's Services is now officially permanent, that might not mean too much. "I don't see anything magical or dramatic happening," said Gail Nayowith, executive director of the Citizen's Committee for Children, New York's oldest child advocacy organization. "The real struggle will be to hold on to the reforms."
These reforms were born out of the case of six-year-old Elisa Izquierdo, who died in November 1995 after she was held prisoner, beaten, sexually abused and starved by her crack-addicted mother, a woman allegedly so vicious that she used her child as a mop, cleaning the floor with her dark curly hair. The public outcry was so immense that Mayor Rudolph Giuliani immediately dismantled the old Child Welfare Agency, a branch of the Human Resources Administration, and replaced it with the Administration for Children's Services. Former prosecutor Nicholas Scoppetta, who grew up in foster care, was installed as director.
Commissioner Scoppetta, who took office in January 1996, has been the agency's architect and Teflon-coated commander-in-chief. During the mayoral campaign, Michael Bloomberg said he wanted to keep Scoppetta, but the commissioner was firm that he would reject any offers to stay.
"There are two Nick Scoppettas," said Richard Wexler, executive director of the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform in Alexandria, Va. "There is the 1996 to 1998 model, who came in, made all the wrong assumptions, and sent child welfare careening backwards for two years. He drove the numbers of kids taken away from home way up." During the commissioner's first years, that number jumped from 8,000 in 1995 to 12,000 in 1998.
At the same time Scoppetta stepped in, Marcia Robinson Lowry, a leading litigator for children, was preparing a broad class action lawsuit against the city intended to reform the child welfare system, Marisol v. Giuliani. The lawsuit was eventually settled with a special advisory panel who would oversee an overhaul of ACS, with an emphasis on keeping families together. A final report was issued last December where the panel praised the agency for making "remarkable progress."
"Scoppetta's changed to some extent," continued Wexler. "He looked at things a different way from 1999 to date. He was absolutely convinced that we have too many people in foster care. He changed the orientation of the agency to family preservation. The new-model Scoppetta would be a very good commissioner."
Scoppetta has been responsible for cutting the foster-care population to 29,800 from 43,000 in 1997. For the first time ever, the city is now providing more families with preventive services -- more than 30,000 -- than there are children placed in foster care. Other successes include raised caseworker training and salaries, and a record 21,000 adoptions in six years, a six percent increase over the previous six-year period.
The difficulty is in picking the right person to follow Scoppetta. Although no names have been released, child advocates believe that the nomination will come from inside the agency. Nevertheless, many believe important lessons can be learned from outside the five boroughs. The Alabama system of care is considered to be the single most successful child welfare reform in the country. The reforms are also the result of a lawsuit where the state was required to rebuild its entire system from the bottom up. Their foster care population is now down by 33 percent.
Then there is the turnaround in Pennsylvania. In the mid-1990s, foster care placements were soaring in Pittsburgh and surrounding Allegheny County. Leadership changed and by more than doubling the budget for preventive services and embracing innovations like adding housing counselors to child welfare offices, the foster care population has been cut by 20 percent. And since January, 1997, there has been only one child abuse fatality in any family previously known to the agency.
Even with the shocking November deaths of Sylena Herrnkind and Signifagance Oliver, the number of child abuse fatalities in New York City remains fairly stable at 23 to 30 per year. Last year there were 22 deaths of children whose parents had been investigated by ACS, in 1999 it was 23, and in 1998 it was 36. These numbers coincide with national figures, where there are about 2 deaths per 100,000 children. David Tobis, executive director of the Child Welfare Fund, a watchdog and advocacy organization, doesn't see the spate of recent deaths in the news as unusual. "I don't see these deaths as reflecting the system as deteriorating. These deaths are a constant," he said.
"While we can learn from child deaths, they're essentially a weak indicator of how well the system is functioning," said John Mattingly of the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the private foundation that lead the Marisol v. Giuliani panel. "Deaths are public failures, but there are silent failures as well. A child who comes into the system who could have been kept at home with the right preventive services is a failure. There are thousands of those situations that are far better indicators of failure."
The Casey panel, along with a host of child advocates, say much more remains to be done before the Administration for Children Service's reforms are more broadly felt by the children and families who deal with the system every day. The panel has particularly noted that more needs to be done for the contract agencies, who handle 85 percent of the system's children. There has been speculation that Sylena Herrnkind's death may have been averted had the workers for the agency who placed the 3-year-old in a foster home, the Seaman's Society for Children and Families in Staten Island, had better training and closer contact with the ACS.
"The agency's success was that it improved the bureaucracy," said Tobis. "They improved training to staff, reduced staff turnover and, to their credit, there is now an accountability system. They have not done comparable work within the private agencies. The salaries, prestige and training is still too low." The Coalition for Child Protection Reform's Wexler also noted that the financial incentives for foster care providers needs review. "What they need to do is get away from the per-diem reimbursement. You're going to get what you pay for. If you change the financial incentive, the reward would be for returning children to birth parents or adoption."
Andrew White, director of the Center for New York City Affairs at the New School, has penned an advisory paper addressed to the new mayor and city council . "Everyone in the child welfare field knows that some parents abandon or severely maltreat their children," said White. "Most parents...do not fit this description, however, and are struggling with issues related to poverty, substance abuse, spousal abuse or illness." He advocated a broad expansion of neighborhood-based preventive services that would "help families steer clear of the kind of severe crises that can endanger their children." Unfortunately, he continued, "the nature of ACS policies are such that in most cases, families must be in the thick of a crisis before they obtain any assistance."
When Michael Bloomberg takes office in January, he will be mayor of more than the city's sagging economy and the aftermath of the attack on the World Trade Center. He will also be taking the reins of a government that relies on private, nonprofit agencies for the day-to-day care of human beings that the rest of us take for granted. Watching over children while parents work, feeding the elderly at senior centers, clothing and sheltering the homeless. Even when there is no special emergency, much of the city is held together by a brittle web of government contracts and underpaid social workers.
That web has been strained by a double blow from the state budget and the falling towers. First, lawmakers in Albany delayed this year's budget from April until August, when they passed a "bare bones" budget -- lower than last year's and minus funding for crucial needs. In mid-September, they followed up with a supplemental budget restoring less than half the funds that human service agencies counted on to keep their operations going.
Since September 11, ripples of destruction have spread far beyond Ground Zero. Soup kitchens found themselves feeding families of unemployed downtown restaurant workers, and community service centers wrestled with the crippled computer system of the welfare bureaucracy. While millions of dollars flow into charities serving World Trade Center survivors, agencies that serve people with needs unrelated to that disaster face the threat of reduced donations from sympathetic individuals and foundations, and the certainty of cuts from the city's shrunken coffers.
How do small human service agencies cope with large financial uncertainties? In normal times, the City of New York takes an average of 4 months to start payments, from the day a contract is signed with a nonprofit provider. Most providers start work long before they receive payments, borrowing money to stay afloat. However, lenders usually want to see a signed contract as collateral, and contracts are hard to finalize these days, when the city has announced 15 percent budget cuts, and state legislators have not yet decided how to spend "member item" money, seven months into the state's fiscal year.
Instead of the $500 million individual state lawmakers controlled last year, this year they will have only $200 million to distribute. Small programs can be entirely dependent on these unstable funds. "Two hundred million dollars sounds like a lot of money, and make no mistake, we're happy for it," said Megan McLaughlin, executive director of the Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies (see "Down and Out"). "But it's basically 211 elected officials battling over what amounts to less than $1 million each."
CHILDREN HIT HARD
Children are particularly hard hit this year. A new five-year limit on welfare benefits, combined with the weak job market, will force more parents into jobs that pay too little to cover unsubsidized day care slots. Advocates recommended an increase of $210 million in state spending for day care this year, to fund slots for 42,000 more children; only $32 million was approved.
State law says that by 2002, there should be enough room in free pre-kindergarten programs for every four-year-old to attend. However, the new state budget provides less than half of the $500 million needed. The state Senate Majority Leader, Republican Joseph Bruno, named the pre-K program as an example of the kind of spending New York cannot afford after September 11.
"We were asked to take in more children, but we just don't have the space," says Bernadette Wallace of Boys and Girls Harbor, which received no increase in funding this year for its three pre-K programs. "If there was to be additional money, we would probably open a new site."
RAINY TODAY
About $3 billion in state funds are being held in reserve "for a rainy day", much of it from savings due to welfare reform. To Michael Kink of Housing Works, the rainy day is today. "It would be wise to spend some of the surplus money on lifeboats," he says, "but Governor Pataki seems more interested in putting aside reserves for his election-year budget."
In addition to reduced state funding, many groups were directly affected by the events of September 11. Offices of some agencies were damaged: many had to delay or relocate services. Housing Works estimates that the disaster and its fallout have cost the agency over $300,000, including the cancellation of its 10th anniversary gala fundraiser.
The Haitian Women's Program hasn't been paid by the state for the last six months. "My accountant told me I couldn't go past October 31," says Gabrielle Kersaint. "We had no money." So the Brooklyn agency started laying people off, including a bilingual family specialist who provided permanency planning services to immigrants with AIDS. Now these parents will no longer have her help in figuring out how to provide for their children when they become too sick to do so themselves.
Legal Services of New York City is facing the possible loss of up to $3 million, nearly ten percent of their total budget. According to Communications Director Edwina Frances Martin, this jeopardizes their domestic violence program, whose lawyers represent survivors in court, in child custody cases, and in securing the benefits needed to become independent of abusive partners. Another program at risk helps welfare recipients to stay in school when their education is threatened by the demands of the city's Work Experience Program.
Brooklyn Legal Services laid off half of their lawyers in early November, and the Citywide Task Force on Housing is planning to close down in December, laying off their entire staff. Lawyers at the Task Force and Legal Services protect tenants from homelessness by fighting illegal evictions.
ELDERLY TOO
Worthwhile new programs may not be funded for a second year. The Park Slope Geriatric Day Center's program for Spanish-speaking elders depends on state funding that is still in question. "The state is finally recognizing a need and then -- boom," says Marianne Nicolosi of Park Slope Geriatric. The program's loss would deprive clients with Alzheimer's disease and severe physical conditions of the chance to take part in individual and group activities that give them physical, mental and social rewards.
The city was about to hire social workers to provide mental health services at senior centers, reaching elderly clients who would otherwise be reluctant to admit a need for it. "We fought for that money for four years," says Bobbi Sackman of the Council of Senior Centers, noting that as a new program, this item is particularly vulnerable to the planned city budget cuts.
AFTER 9/11
The World Trade Center tragedy intensified the need for many agencies' services, while placing new barriers in their path. "We're feeling the crunch of more people needing food," says Rita Marie Trucois, director of social services at Riverside Church, which has extended its food pantry's hours in response to a 30 percent increase in families seeking help. Citymeals-on-Wheels is finding it harder to deliver meals to homebound older people in downtown Manhattan. "Our mission remains the same," notes its director of program services, Andrea Kopel, even though it now costs more to deliver the same level of service.
"In light of the September 11 attack, we have become more lenient," reports Shawniqua Ottley of the Fund for the City of New York, a major source of the bridge loans that sustain struggling nonprofits. "A lot of agencies are on the brink." Applicants for the Fund's loans are experiencing unusually long delays in processing contracts, particularly with city agencies displaced by the World Trade Center disaster.
Instead of requiring that an agency have a signed contract in hand, the Fund is now granting loans as long as it can verify that a contract is on the way to being signed. Borrowers are being given six months to pay back loans, twice as long as usual. Applications for loans have increased from about three a week to fifteen or twenty, according to Ottley. The Fund has had to draw on the Ford Foundation and the September 11 funds for an emergency injection of cash to meet increased demand.
Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless expects a time lag before we see the full impact of the sagging economy and the attacks on the World Trade Center. "The bigger question is, what's going to happen in the future with the city and state budgets?" Both the governor and the new mayor are facing large budget gaps in the next few years. Neither leader seems eager to raise taxes, even though higher unemployment will swell the need for social services. The Fall of 2001 may prove to be a dress rehearsal for uncertainty on a whole new scale.
Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.
It is amazing what a city agency can do when given direct access to the mayor, $600 million in additional funding, and a new start free of former ties. Tragically, it took the beating death of six-year old Elisa Izquierdo in 1995 to bring about this attentiveness, but with these resources Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta has been able to turn around the city's child welfare agency, renamed the Administration for Children's Services (ACS) when he took the helm and separated from the Human Resources Administration.
Scoppetta raised salaries, increased staff training and education requirements, reduced caseloads, and appeased litigants that wanted the federal government to take over the agency. He agreed to have the agency monitored for two years from within by a panel of child welfare experts led by the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Last year, in a report issued at the end of that surveillance, the agency won high praise at the "remarkable progress" it has made.
In early September, Scoppetta ordered the closing of one of the city's own foster care offices in Harlem because it placed rock bottom on an evaluation of 46 agencies that provide group homes for adolescents and children. Three private agencies that scored just above the Manhattan city-run office were put on probation and will be required to submit improvement plans.
Critics say Scoppetta did not act soon enough, that staff in the Harlem office had been complaining for years that caseloads were too high and supervision was not adequate. But according Jennifer Falk, spokesperson for ACS, "This summer was the first time we had the ability to do a comprehensive study. Prior to that, the information was just anecdotal."
Some fear that closing the office -- one of only four run by the city -- might lead to a dependence on private agencies for direct service foster care. This concern stems from the fact that the city entered into the foster care business in 1959 when hundreds of minority infants were being rejected by the religious agencies that controlled the foster care beds.
Scoppetta has acknowledged the need to keep the city in the business of direct foster care but with the requirement of quality and accountability.
Most observers credit Scoppetta with great strides. There are 30,000 children in foster care in New York City today, mostly adolescents, but that is down from 43,000 when Scoppetta took the job. The average caseworker's load has been reduced from 27 to 12, and over 1500 new ACS caseworkers have been employed with higher educational requirements.
In early September, however, the commissioner announced that he will not continue on in his post under the new mayor. Instead he plans to take to the road, speaking and writing about his experiences, in order to help other communities across the country whose child welfare systems are not as far along.
But is the city itself far enough along?
"You have to give the commissioner credit," said Gladys Carrion, executive director of Inwood House, one of the contract agencies for foster care that works with ACS. "He is the first one to admit that there's a lot of work undone. He's devised the structure and support, like a grid, but it is in the very beginning stages. The transformation of the agency has not yet taken place.
"How families interact with ACS hasn't changed," said Carrion. "There have been cultural changes at the top, but it still hasn't trickled down. How we view biological parents, and the changing role of foster parents to become mentors to biological parents, this is still at the beginning stages."
Carrion is optimistic that ACS can keep on track without Scoppetta and continue to better serve families and children. Her own wish list would include replicating what Scoppetta was able to bestow on city staff -- increased salaries, benefits and training -- for the contract agencies as well. "We have a serious problem with retention of staff," Carrion acknowledged.
Unfortunately, increased funding for child welfare is not a decision the commissioner himself makes. It comes from the state, with matching funds from the federal government. Scoppetta has consistently lobbied the state to provide more funding, according to the ACS press office.
Mayoral candidate Mark Green came out with a report from the Office of the Public Advocate that focused on shortcomings that still exist in the foster care system including:
Scoppetta and Mayor Giuliani addressed some of these issues in their next phase of reform for ACS, entitled A Renewed Plan of Action. The plan promised development and expansion of neighborhood-based services, strengthening the availability, affordability and quality of child-care services, improving the achievement of permanency (with family, with placements, or with adoption) for children, as well as continued efforts in services for child protection, medical care, and adolescents.
Scoppetta wishes his successor (yet to be announced) the support of the new mayor, and he acknowledged that predecessors have often been scapegoated at the first crisis (the average tenure for his post was one-and-a-half years) and not given the time or resources he has been given to bring about change.
Unfortunately, the new commissioner will not have the same funds to work with. Since the World Trade Center disaster, all city agencies have been asked by Mayor Giuliani to submit a plan to cut their budgets. ACS is presently working on that plan.
In addition, besides a mayoral shift, a new commissioner, and less funding, ACS may lose its autonomy unless voters in November support an amendment to the New York City charter that would permanently make the Administration for Children's Services a city agency.
Like many downtown social service agencies, ACS administrative staff, Youth Development staff, and Teen Congregate Care staff were displaced as a result of the terrorist attacks on September 11th. Provisions planned for possible mishaps at the millennium proved to be useful during this time, including a toll-free phone number and the immediate loading of web pages alerting staff and families about temporary relocation sites and services. Staff were able to return to their offices by September 25th. Counseling sessions have also been made available for ACS staff, contract agency staff, and the families and children they serve.
It is 4:30 p.m. on a Tuesday in the Bronx, in a precinct known for the second-highest rate of juvenile arrests in the city, the 44th. Inside a storefront on 174th Street, local teenagers gather. Sawdust and lumber litter the floor; strains of Bob Marley play in the background, punctuated by laughter and occasional chatter. Two boys use a carpenter's plane to shape a piece of mahogany. "It's the stem," one of them explains, using the nautical term as if he had been born on the sea. The storefront is a boat building workshop, and these teens are building a wooden boat.
Rocking the Boat is one of many teen after-school programs offered by New Settlement Apartments in the Mount Eden area of the southwest Bronx. New Settlement's teen programs range from community service to sports to homework help, and serve some 360 local teenagers, many of whom live in the New Settlement housing project. Though teen after-school programs vary widely both at New Settlement and throughout the city, all programs meet one critical need: they provide teenagers with supervised activities during the hours after school.
TEEN TIME, TEEN TROUBLE
According to various studies, juveniles are most likely to be both the victims and the perpetrators of crime in the four hours after the end of the school day. The Federal Bureau of Investigation notes a tripling in juvenile crime between 3 p.m. and 8 p.m. "Most kids have parents who are working and out of the home between 3 and 6," said Samantha Vincent, director of an after-school program administered by the Educational Alliance in Manhattan. "What are their options? To go home to an empty house, or to go hang out on a street corner."
Unsupervised time after school puts children at great risk of being involved not just in crime, but also substance abuse and teen pregnancy, according to studies by the National Center for Juvenile Justice; the risk is greatest during the teenage years.
"The majority of kids in this neighborhood don't have that rich menu of things to do after school that kids in affluent suburban communities have," says Jack Doyle, director of New Settlement Apartments, a middle-income development that houses 900 families, 300 of whom are formerly homeless.
Despite the need for teen after-school programs, there are many fewer programs for teens than for younger children, according to Jason Schwartzman of the Partnership for After-School Education, who surveyed some 1,073 youth programs in the city, and found that only 35 percent provide activities for teenagers.
"Programs for teens are considered more difficult and more expensive," said Vincent. "The potential risks are higher. High school kids can do drugs, have sex, and be violent."
One of the greater challenges facing providers of teen after-school programs is keeping them interested. "The older the kid, the more difficult it is," Schwartzman said. "Teenagers have independence, and if they're bored they can leave if they want to."
"You must provide something pretty exciting to get kids off the streets," said Vincent.
BUILDING BOATS
Rocking the Boat, one of the more unusual after-school programs available to New York City teens, seems to have no trouble keeping kids interested. "I wanted to develop something kids and parents couldn't say no to," said Adam Green, the program's director.
Each semester, Green recruits 16 teenagers to construct a 14- or 17-foot Whitehall, a traditional Hudson River rowboat. The project takes an entire semester of after-school work, during which students learn and practice basic carpentry skills as well as some applied mathematics, science and history. Green's crew will finish their current boat in June, and plan to launch it from Hunts Point and row down the Bronx River.
Begun in 1998, Rocking the Boat has grown popular - this semester, 23 signed up, although Green can only take 16. Students grow to feel invested in the project as they see the boat begin to take shape, and gain an unusual sense of accomplishment.
Meliza Pena, 16, a student at William Howard Taft high school, is building her second boat this semester. "When I first saw it, I wondered, how are we going to build a boat in the Bronx when there's no water?" Now, she is sold. "If I can accomplish something I never thought I could do, I can accomplish anything!"
BUILDING KIDS
Rocking the Boat provides more for teens than just a reason to stay off the streets. "The purpose of Rocking the Boat is not to build boats," Green said, "it's to build kids."
Some teens are most excited about the hands-on skills they are learning. "It's not really the boats that interest me, it's the building," explained Elliyaas Carter, 15, who hopes to someday repair airplanes. "It's the practical skills," said Ronnie Perez, 14. "We've also built things like tables for the workshop. It's so easy!"
Other teenagers value the less tangible skills they have gained. "I've learned a lot about leadership," said Meliza Pena, who has learned how to speak in public by representing the program at various events and festivals, and who gained work experience as a boat-building apprenctice. Students are given much of the responsibility for organizing the boat shop and the construction process and other activities.
Successful after-school programs for teens are not just about keeping kids out of trouble, but about respecting and valuing them, according to Megan Nolan, a social worker at New Settlement. "A successful program has the view that teens are a resource in the community rather than a problem to solve."
"If students are made to feel like their work or their participation is integral to the success of the overall program," Vincent said, "they'll want to come."
TEEN TIME
It is 7:45 p.m. on a Tuesday in the Bronx. A parent chats with Green, while a group of staff and students lingers in the office. They seem reluctant to leave. Edmanuel Roman, 15, looks at some photos taken throughout the afternoon. He likes what he sees. "It really looks like I'm doing something, like we're all working together."
Ade Fasanya's law office is two flights up a narrow staircase in a small Queens building on 89th Avenue. It is from this spot, amid folders stacked up on every horizontal surface, that Fasanya launches his daily assault on injustice in the child welfare system on behalf of indigent Queens parents who have been charged with child abuse and neglect.
Fasanya is one of about thirty attorneys who represent parents in Queens child welfare cases. Children in the city's family courts are represented by the Legal Aid Society's Juvenile Rights Division, which puts Legal Aid attorneys off-limits to impoverished adults. So the courts provide private attorneys to parents, drawing from a panel of lawyers who have signed on to serve.
In the last three months, judges in family courts throughout the city have found it nearly impossible to find lawyers willing to take new cases. That's because panel attorneys, a shrinking pool, have staged an informal work slowdown. Since late last year, Fasanya and others have declined new cases to protest the state's billing rates, which stand at $25 an hour for out-of-court work and $40 an hour for court appearances, with an $800 cap on each case. A n industry-wide survey of billing rates for associates across New York State shows the average to be between $180 and $260 an hour
The state has raised the billing rates just twice since the panels were created in 1965; the last time was in 1986. Court-appointed lawyers in New York now rank 49th in the country in pay, despite repeated pleas to the governor from the state's top judge, Judith Kaye, and other prominent members of the state judiciary..
Fasanya has come to his office for a lunch break between marathon sessions at Queens Family Court where on a typical day he argues eight or nine cases, running back and forth among courtrooms on three floors. Such is the caseload in the city's five family courts that attorneys for both children and adults routinely handle over a hundred open cases at a time and judges preside over fifty to sixty cases a day. Often Fasanya doesn't get to his office at all during the day -- and neither does anyone else. Like all of the attorneys on the appointed-counsel panels, Fasanya is unable to afford a secretary or a part-time paralegal assistant.
So he repairs to his office at night and on weekends to do the work Legal Aid attorneys and most solo practitioners turn over to assistants. His office is functional, containing a desk, a couple of chairs, boxes of files on the floor, a stuffed filing cabinet and, adorning the wall behind his desk, the legal robe and powdered wig he wore years ago -- mementos of his days as an attorney in Nigeria.
At least Fasanya has an office. Several panel attorneys gathered at a lunchtime strategy session in Queens in late February said they don't. Their base of operations is the Assigned Counsel room, Room 129D, in the Queens Family Courthouse, a 17' by 14' room sporting one desk and one phone.
Fasanya, a man with a fined-tuned sensitivity to unchecked government power, said he had to have at least the semblance of an office. "I do not want to interview clients under pressure in the courthouse, with court officers looking all over for you up and down the halls because a judge needs you in the courtroom."
Sitting at his desk on 89th Avenue, he said the reality of defending parents against the inevitable mistakes the city makes in identifying abusive and neglectful adults could be very grim.
"I have practiced under a dictatorship and I have seen people get a fairer shake," he said.
A case on Fasanya's docket earlier in the week seems to illustrate the point. His client, Karen Gibson, had lost custody of her four children on October 22nd, 1998, two days after her mother died. A caseworker to whom Gibson had turned during her mother's illness with the hopes of obtaining homemaking services, suspected that Gibson was using and selling drugs and initiated the removal of the children. As it turned out, the city never turned up evidence to support the charge. Still, agency officials found it difficult to return the children once the agency had taken them -- what if something went horribly wrong and the public learned that the children had been released from city custody? Instead, caseworkers drew up a list of tasks Gibson had to complete including "getting better insight into parenting by attending a parenting skills class" and attending therapy.
Now, two and a half years later, Gibson had completed all of the agency's tasks. She went to court hoping to begin the process of reunifying her family. But the city arrived with a petition to terminate her parental rights. This would irrevocably end all ties between Gibson and her children and trigger a search for adoptive families for them. When the judge hearing the case, Robert F. Clark, asked why, the city's attorney rose and explained, "The children have been in care for 28 months. The mother doesn't have appropriate housing."
A new federal law, the Adoption and Safe Families Act, requires the city to seek terminations of parental rights whenever children have been in foster care for 15 of 22 months. The law is creating a new kind of havoc in New York City cases because massive delays and repeated adjournments are common in the city's family courts.
Fasanya jumped in, furious: "Here we have my client complying with everything in the agency plan, the agency and the mother are working together, and someone in the agency is filing a petition to terminate her parental rights!"
Back in his office, Fasanya was still irate. "Do you know how rare it is to get a case dismissed in Family Court?"
One reason it may be so rare is that for attorneys like Fasanya, finding the time to prepare and file motions is painfully difficult. "Your time is so intense. There are days when I've been here as late as two in the morning. I come in on Sundays," he said.
Yet, panel attorneys must file many more motions than others if they are to do the most basic legal work. Legal Aid lawyers and the legal team at the Administration for Children's Services have social workers and investigators on staff to assist them in preparing cases, but parents' attorneys must file orders with the court requesting approval for every expenditure, including for investigators and social workers who might interview parents, relatives, witnesses.
And these things take time.
"You have to justify the need for an investigator or a social worker," Fasanya said. "You have to sit here and bang it out, tailor it to the specific request you're making."
A 1997 study of the city's family courts by the Vera Institute of Justice found that 90 percent of parents' attorneys did not file a single written motion.
Last February, the New York County Lawyers' Association filed a suit in State Supreme Court charging that the state's billing rates effectively deprive clients of their constitutional right to counsel.
On January 12th of this year, Governor George Pataki, Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver announced an agreement to create a task force to study the compensation rates. But none of the panel lawyers in family court are holding their breath. Sitting in the cramped, barely-furnished room set aside for panel attorneys in the Manhattan Family Court, Sam Ackerman, an attorney who has been on the assigned-counsel panel for 28 years, said, "If you want to get nothing done appoint a committee. If you really want to get nothing done appoint a task force."
On March 12, the Mayor's Committee on the Judiciary rejected a second 10-year term for Brooklyn Family Court Judge Philip C. Segal. The second term was due to start April 1. The New York Law Journal, which reported the termination of Judge Segal's service, said the judge has a reputation for being bolder than most in challenging city officials in child abuse and neglect cases. Lawyers described Segal to the law journal as "exceptionally willing to press city officials to provide services to help reunite families."
A Brooklyn court-appointed attorney, Robert J. Greenfield, told the law journal that Segal was "'not afraid to toss a case'" if the elements of abuse or neglect are not proven."
Peggy J. Farber is freelance journalist specializing in children's issues. Her reporting on conditions of NYC children has appeared in City Limits Magazine as well as on National Public Radio.
Alene Taylor sat hunched over a large calendar in the corner of a cavernous office on West 29th Street, fretting over impending deadlines, like any professional journalist, and that is what, suddenly, she had become. For as long as she could remember, she loved to write, filling black and white notebooks with poems and stories when she was seven, submitting articles for consideration to Seventeen Magazine when she entered her teens. Now, at 16, Taylor was being given a chance at a magazine that has been a success for almost a decade, writing an article about working conditions inside foster care agencies. This was not the first story she had written about the brutalities of the foster care system, though it was the first that required reporting. For the others, she wrote about her own experiences. Taylor writes for Foster Care Youth United, a bimonthly magazine that contains some of the most honest writing about foster care anywhere -- and it is written entirely by adolescents.
New York City's foster care officials often complain that the city's journalists fail to give an accurate picture of the foster care system. But two publications - Foster Care Youth United, and a new book by New York Times reporter Nina Bernstein - give about as careful and candid a view of foster care as any reader could ask for.
Foster Care Youth United was begun in 1992 by Keith Hefner, the publisher of New Youth Connections, a newspaper written by and for New York City high school students. Hefner discovered that the writing process could do more than just give foster kids a voice, that it could actually help traumatized young adults overcome some of what they had endured - provided the editors guided the young writers to structure their stories to help readers in the audience. "That little bit of distance gives them a big space to look at things they wouldn't otherwise because they1re too painful," Hefner said.
Certainly, Taylor's life has given her plenty to write about. She has lived in foster families and in group homes. For a brief period, at 12, she lived at home where her mother's boyfriend went after her.
Eighteen months ago, she began writing for Foster Care Youth United with a piercing poem about the attack by her mother's boyfriend. Since then, she has written about teenagers hanging out on the corner near her group home, about sexual harassment. She has begun a novel. "There's a lot of things I want to say," Taylor said "Everything may be hard right now but later on it won't be that way."
Kendra Hurley, one of the magazine's editors, said she has seen teenagers like Taylor transformed by writing. "So often in foster care decisions are being made for you," Hurley said. "Just the knowledge that what they have been through is useful to someone else can be empowering."
Hurley recalled a young woman who had been sexually abused. "She had written a lot before she wrote about that," Hurley said. "Then she wrote a pretty straightforward story about it, and then she wrote about it again, and then it was something she was obsessed with as a writer. I think the whole impulse for writing for any writer is to try to make sense of what1s happened, especially if you've had lots of trauma."
There are between ten and twenty young writers at work on Foster Care Youth United at any given point during the publishing year. Each issue, distributed at group homes and through child welfare agencies, reaches about 15,000 adolescent readers.
Foster Care Youth United is not the only place to find truthful writing about foster care. This month, Nina Bernstein, a reporter for the New York Times, publishes The Lost Children of Wilder: The Epic Struggle to Change Foster Care, a book about a court battle to fix New York's foster care system that lasted longer than the childhood of two generations of foster children.
Bernstein was a reporter at New York Newsday in 1990 when she decided to track down Shirley Wilder, the lead plaintiff in Wilder, a class action lawsuit that had promised in its early stages to improve the level of care given to children in city custody. Shirley was 13 when the suit was filed in 1973. By the time Bernstein found her, Shirley was a 33 year old crack addict infected with the AIDS virus, and the suit was still not entirely over. Shirley had lived through the worst the foster system had to offer. She had also, at 14, given birth to a son, Lamont, and placed him in foster care.
Learning of Lamont's existence, Bernstein set herself the task of finding him, of unearthing what had happened to him, and of writing about these two and the court battle fought in their name. The story of Shirley's and then Lamont1s journey through foster homes, psychiatric hospitals, juvenile lock-ups, homeless shelters, and the streets forms the backbone of Bernstein1s book. The sorrow that had defined Shirley1s girlhood, Bernstein soon discovered, was repeated in Lamont's boyhood, even as the battle advanced through the courts and the city bureaucracy. Like the writers of Foster Care Youth United, Bernstein struggled to make sense of what happened. "Children in the foster care system are about as powerless as people can be. They're children, they don't have their natural advocates, their parents, and they don't vote."
Peggy J. Farber is freelance journalist specializing in children's issues. Her reporting on conditions of NYC children has appeared in City Limits Magazine as well as on National Public Radio.
AIDS:
In his column in the New York Times, Bob Herbert reports that one in every fifty black American men is infected with HIV. "That's an astounding statistic," writes Herbert and then he puts forward several more. AIDS is the leading cause of death in black men between the ages of 25 and 44. While blacks make up just 13 percent of the US population, more than half of all new HIV infections occur among blacks. Blacks are ten times more likely to be diagnosed with AIDS and ten times more likely to die from it. Black women account for 64 percent of all new infections. Herbert faults a variety of factors for the spread of the disease in black communities including: information about the threat of AIDS not being disseminated widely or effectively enough, particularly among youngsters who feel they are invulnerable; poverty contributing to a lack of access to health care information, preventive services, and even treatment; widespread denial in the black community because of the stigma attached to AIDS, homosexuality and IV drug use. Politicians and clergy are beginning to speak out but Herbert suggests that, "nothing less than a mighty chorus is needed to cope with this overwhelming tragedy, a chorus comparable in its seriousness of purpose to the civil rights movement."
Another recent article reports on a survey that found high rates of unprotected sex and HIV transmission among young New York City men. In particular, a high proportion of young men are engaging in unprotected anal sex, a major risk factor for transmission of HIV. About 50 percent of black and Hispanic men and 39 percent of white men said they had anal sex and did not use condoms. Also alarming was the fact that 16 percent of the men surveyed were found to be HIV positive, while only 3 percent said they had previously tested positive for the disease, meaning they were recently infected. The survey was conducted by the New York City Department of Health and the New York Blood Center between March 1999 and July 2000.
HOMELESS:
Although homeless men and women suffer from physical and mental illness at higher rates than many others in the population, they do not receive necessary medical care and one in three homeless people surveyed reported being unable to get drug prescriptions filled. A study released by the Journal of American Medical Association found almost half of all homeless people had at least one major illness and three-quarters were suffering from either a mental problem or abuse of alcohol or drugs. The majority do not have medical insurance, and homeless veterans often do not take advantage of military insurance benefits. One percent of Americans find themselves homeless in the course of a year.
A 1969 sanitation law intended to discourage people from abandoning cars or car parts is being used to arrest homeless people because the wording contains a prohibition against leaving any box, barrel, bale of merchandise on a city street. Anyone sleeping in a box is in violation, according to a recent ruling by a federal judge upholding the policy.
Two pieces of good news arrived recently with an announcement by former US Housing Secretary Andrew Cuomo and another by Mayor Giuliani of funds for new housing initiatives. Before leaving his job along with the Clinton administration (and prior to announcing his bid for governor) Andrew Cuomo visited the city bearing news of 84.7 million in federal funds for programs to house the homeless. Giuliani then announced a $600 million increase over four years in low cost housing. The Coalition for the Homeless has a chart that demonstrates the Mayor's housing budget only amounts to 47 percent of what was spent on housing eleven years ago, before his administration. And it is also true that his budget cuts about $700 million in other programs, mostly social service. Nevertheless, additional low-cost and subsidized housing is welcome news. According to a study last year by New York University, housing is critical to ending homelessness. Eighty percent of homeless families in the City that were provided with subsidized housing remained stable after five years and did not re-enter the shelter system, regardless of other problems. Only 18 percent had stability in the group that did not receive subsidized housing.
IMMIGRANTS
Forced to rely on emergency room care because the 1996 welfare reform laws deny them Medicaid preventive care, immigrants in the city are reportedly getting sicker. And continuing to enforce this policy will cost the state and federal government $132 million in emergency room treatments by the year 2005, according to a new study by the New York Immigration Coalition, "Welfare Reform and Health Care: The Wrong Prescription for Immigrants. "Ironically, this policy was established so that it would save the government money," Margie McHugh, executive director of the Coalition, told Newsday. In addition to that cost, approximately 6000 immigrants will be hospitalized for conditions that could have been prevented by access to regular coverage.
High school students with limited English are overlooked and underserved, according to a report by the Urban Institute released in January. Shortages of trained teachers, relevant curriculum, lack of individualized instruction all are contributing to extraordinarily high drop-out rates for immigrant teens. Mayor Giuliani's recent budget proposal may help in that it incorporates funding for weekend English classes for 38,600 students.
AGING
Founders of the gay rights movement, which began 52 years ago, are aging and mostly poor, according to an editorial by Dudley Clendinen in the Times last month. Harry Hay, the first to organize for gay rights back in 1948, is now 88 and ailing. Phyliss Lyon and Del Martin, founders of the first enduring organization for lesbians, are almost 80. Dr. Franklin Kameny, who first insisted that to be gay was not to be abnormal or mentally ill, who first petitioned for employment rights and legally championed for gay civil rights, is now 75. But for gay and lesbian elderly, according to Clendinen, "the twilight years can be especially daunting." Studies in New York and Los Angeles found 65 to 75 percent of elderly gay and lesbian residents live alone. When a partner dies, Social Security does not pass on survivor benefits, and many pension plans exclude same-sex partners. Attitudes also tend to be conservative in housing for the elderly, especially in subsidized low-income housing. The National Gay and Lesbian Task Force has recently focused attention on the needs of aging lesbians and gay men. There are several plans for gay retirement colonies under way, but at present, there is only one.
For-profit nursing home owners in the city are raking in millions in profits and exorbitant salaries, according to an article in the Daily News. The Clove Lakes Health Care and Rehabilitation Center in Staten Island reported $8.4 million in profits this year. Sheepshead Nursing Home in Brooklyn followed with $5.6 million, and Kings Harbor Multicare Center in the Bronx with $4 million. Nursing home executive salaries jumped, too, with five homes paying their owners $1 million or more. Many not-for-profits homes in the city run by religious organizations also reported surpluses. Critics such as the Nursing Home Community Coalition of New York, a patient advocate group, fear that profits are being gained at the expense of the residents. "The way to make a profit is to cut staff," Cynthia Rudder, director of the Coalition, told the Daily News. Last month the News reported staff shortages and neglect in city nursing homes with the state health department unable to handle all the patient abuse complaints or to adequately monitor the industry. Most nursing homes in New York are funded by Medicaid, presently at a cost of $5 billion, paid for by taxpayers.
"Did the weather come on yet?" one of the men asked. CNN was on in the hospitality room of BJ's place, a homeless shelter for ten men in the basement of the Community Church on East 35th Street. The men ate sandwiches, cookies and ice cream from a buffet spread and watched an endless parade of talking heads on television discuss politics.
A few of the men expressed their own opinions, but it wasn't the news that really interested them. It was the weather. Silence came over the room as the cheery meteorologist spoke of temperatures going down to freezing that night.
BJ's Place at the Community Church is one of 140 shelters in the five boroughs coordinated by the Partnership for the Homeless which provides a warm and safe place to sleep for about 1400 men and women on any given winter night.
The majority of shelters take their guests from nine drop-in centers in the city that are funded by the Department of Homeless Services and mandated to take in anyone who would otherwise be out on the street. Once inside the drop-in center, it can take up to two weeks before getting a shelter placement. There are screenings for contagious diseases such as TB or infectious hepatitis, as well as psychiatric evaluations, and counseling. While waiting for a shelter placement, a guest can stay overnight at the drop-in center, but there are no beds. They can also go to one of the city's shelters, but many would rather not. Perhaps they were mugged there in the past. City shelters have improved in recent years but some of the homeless would rather wait for a private shelter or take their chances on the streets.
Outreach Team
"Homeless people are not freezing to death but a lot of them remain out there freezing," said Bill Appel, Executive Director of Emergency Services for the Partnership for the Homeless.
The Partnership for the Homeless has an outreach team called First Team that approaches homeless people on the street and encourages them to go to the drop-in centers. And First Team will keep track of those that don't come in to make sure they are alright.
"Starting in September, we come up with a list of people that are out there, vulnerable to elements," said Appel. "We note the different locations and check on them on a regular basis. There's a new location now on the West Side Highway from the lower West Village to about 20th Street where there are these large cement pillars in the middle of the street to redirect traffic; in between these tall pillars, some homeless people are staying. Even cars going by wouldn't notice that three or four people are existing within five feet of them."
First Team makes contact with the homeless, offering to give them a ride to a detox, a drop-in center or a hospital, depending on what they deem most helpful. But they do not bring clothing or food. "We do not try to enable people to remain on the street," said Appel. "Our objective is to get them inside. And if they are in danger of freezing, if it is below 32 degrees and they don't have shoes or a coat, if they appear to be mentally impaired, we call 911 to pick them up."
Residents to BJ's at the Community Church all came in out of the cold, either voluntarily or through the efforts of First Team, to a drop-in center on West 23rd Street known as Peter's Place, the only drop-in center in the city geared for the elderly and frail reclusive homeless people. "A lot of them were out there for years," said Bill Appel. That would be hard to tell by looking at them now.
A Night At BJ's
The ten guests arrived at BJ's about 8:30 in the evening. They had just had a hot meal at Peter's Place and were transported from there by yellow school bus. They entered cheerfully, as if happy to be home, and were greeted warmly by two women volunteers. The men were neatly dressed (donated clothing is available at the drop-in centers, some of it brand new) and polite.
They will get to return to BJ's every night for the rest of the week, Monday to Saturday. On Sunday the church has other uses for the room and they are sent elsewhere-if there is space. One of the men mentioned to the volunteer that he spent the previous night in a chair.
But tonight they are feeling good with a roof over their heads, a bed, clean linen, clean towels, and a welcoming atmosphere. The rules are few: They must sign in. No alcohol or drugs. Lights out at 10:30, up at 5:30. But there is one hard rule: even though they will be returning for the rest of the week, they are not allowed to leave any belongings behind.
PROFILE OF THE GUESTS AT BJ'S Volunteer Sue Kistler drew up a profile of a few of BJ's recent guests: PAUL, who has since found an apartment, was a scriptwriter for Sid Caesar, Mort Sahl, and Lenny Bruce, among others. He kept us in stitches with a steady stream of jokes--some good, some terrible. GUY, born in New York in 1939, is a maintenance man who can always get our TV to focus. He has two daughters and a son, none of whom live nearby. Guy hopes to return to school when he finds a place to live. He is interested in the paranormal and wants to study electronics with the idea of finding connections. MANUEL, born in Colorado but a New Yorker for many years, is an actor in TV, film and radio. A Native American, he finds himself inevitably typecast in films. Doing radio or voice-overs, however, his cultured tones evidenced years of theatrical training. JOSEPH, born in Queens, lived there all his life until last year when his landlord raised the controlled rent by $25, which Joseph couldn't afford on his SSI. He has severe diabetes and is on disability, but is always smiling and willing to help. |
"They'd like to leave something to say this is my place," explained volunteer Sue Kistler.
A retired teacher and editor, Sue Kistler has been a volunteer at BJ's for the last eight years, leaving her apartment in Murray Hill one night a month to stay overnight with the guests. She says she was bothered by seeing the homeless on the street ever since moving to the city nine years ago, but the day she came across a man who had frozen to death, she felt she had to do something. "He was lying right on the street," she said. "They had just found him."
Ms. Kistler admits she was nervous the first night she volunteered, but says she doesn't feel threatened at all now. Volunteers work in pairs, and they get their own room and bathroom. According to the Partnership for the Homeless, there has never been a threatening incident in the 18 years they have been coordinating the shelters. Interestingly, about 85 percent of the people on the street are men, and 85 percent of those who volunteer at the shelters are women.
"It is the only thing I'm doing that's useful," says Kistler. A few of the men stayed up after their snack and watched Monday night football, read the paper, talked or played scrabble with the volunteers. There's a little porch upstairs where they can go outside for a smoke. But most of them were eager just to go to bed.
BJ's Place was named after BJ Knowlton, a sailor who traveled all over the world but ended up homeless as a result of alcoholism. He went through the shelter system, sobered up, and was one of the first guests to stay at the Community Church in the early 80's. Before long he was running the shelter, keeping everything ship-shape and living there with the men, until he died two years ago at the age of 82.
The Way Back
The men are up early, having coffee and a light breakfast. A hot meal awaits them at Peter's Place. The morning news on CNN blares on about the Florida votes and the falling stock market. Meanwhile, the weather picture for the following night predicts wind chills in the minus numbers. The bus is there at 6:30 for their return trip to Peter's Place.
Some of the men work at jobs, but they don't earn enough to put together a deposit and a monthly rent. Some are enrolled in NetWork, a job training and placement program run by the Partnership for the Homeless. One of them mentions he will soon be moving into permanent housing.
"The objective of the drop in center is to move people into a living situation within nine months," said Bill Appel," and Peter's Place has a good record of doing that. But you're not going to be able to bring someone who has been out there five or ten years into permanent housing in five or ten days" says Appel. "There's a lot of mental illness, drugs and alcohol. They need extensive case management and networking with other agencies. It doesn't happen over night." vOver the years she has volunteered, Sue Kistler has seen many of the men at BJ's move on. "We don't have the same ten guys staying here this year that we did last year. But we do have several of the same ones we had in October.
"It's a very slow turnover," says Kistler. "But there is a turnover."
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(Jan '01) "Did the weather come on yet?" one of the men asked. CNN was on in the hospitality room of BJ's place, a homeless shelter for ten men in the basement of the Community Church on East 35th Street. The men ate sandwiches, cookies and ice cream from a buffet spread and watched an endless parade of talking heads on television discuss politics.
A few of the men expressed their own opinions, but it wasn't the news that really interested them. It was the weather. Silence came over the room as the cheery meteorologist spoke of temperatures going down to freezing that night.
BJ's Place at the Community Church is one of 140 shelters in the five boroughs coordinated by the Partnership for the Homeless which provides a warm and safe place to sleep for about 1400 men and women on any given winter night.
The majority of shelters take their guests from nine drop-in centers in the city that are funded by the Department of Homeless Services and mandated to take in anyone who would otherwise be out on the street. Once inside the drop-in center, it can take up to two weeks before getting a shelter placement. There are screenings for contagious diseases such as TB or infectious hepatitis, as well as psychiatric evaluations, and counseling. While waiting for a shelter placement, a guest can stay overnight at the drop-in center, but there are no beds. They can also go to one of the city's shelters, but many would rather not. Perhaps they were mugged there in the past. City shelters have improved in recent years but some of the homeless would rather wait for a private shelter or take their chances on the streets.
Outreach Team
"Homeless people are not freezing to death but a lot of them remain out there freezing," said Bill Appel, Executive Director of Emergency Services for the Partnership for the Homeless.
The Partnership for the Homeless has an outreach team called First Team that approaches homeless people on the street and encourages them to go to the drop-in centers. And First Team will keep track of those that don't come in to make sure they are alright.
"Starting in September, we come up with a list of people that are out there, vulnerable to elements," said Appel. "We note the different locations and check on them on a regular basis. There's a new location now on the West Side Highway from the lower West Village to about 20th Street where there are these large cement pillars in the middle of the street to redirect traffic; in between these tall pillars, some homeless people are staying. Even cars going by wouldn't notice that three or four people are existing within five feet of them."
First Team makes contact with the homeless, offering to give them a ride to a detox, a drop-in center or a hospital, depending on what they deem most helpful. But they do not bring clothing or food. "We do not try to enable people to remain on the street," said Appel. "Our objective is to get them inside. And if they are in danger of freezing, if it is below 32 degrees and they don't have shoes or a coat, if they appear to be mentally impaired, we call 911 to pick them up."
Residents to BJ's at the Community Church all came in out of the cold, either voluntarily or through the efforts of First Team, to a drop-in center on West 23rd Street known as Peter's Place, the only drop-in center in the city geared for the elderly and frail reclusive homeless people. "A lot of them were out there for years," said Bill Appel. That would be hard to tell by looking at them now.
A Night At BJ's
The ten guests arrived at BJ's about 8:30 in the evening. They had just had a hot meal at Peter's Place and were transported from there by yellow school bus. They entered cheerfully, as if happy to be home, and were greeted warmly by two women volunteers. The men were neatly dressed (donated clothing is available at the drop-in centers, some of it brand new) and polite.
They will get to return to BJ's every night for the rest of the week, Monday to Saturday. On Sunday the church has other uses for the room and they are sent elsewhere-if there is space. One of the men mentioned to the volunteer that he spent the previous night in a chair.
But tonight they are feeling good with a roof over their heads, a bed, clean linen, clean towels, and a welcoming atmosphere. The rules are few: They must sign in. No alcohol or drugs. Lights out at 10:30, up at 5:30. But there is one hard rule: even though they will be returning for the rest of the week, they are not allowed to leave any belongings behind.
PROFILE OF THE GUESTS AT BJ'S Volunteer Sue Kistler drew up a profile of a few of BJ's recent guests: PAUL, who has since found an apartment, was a scriptwriter for Sid Caesar, Mort Sahl, and Lenny Bruce, among others. He kept us in stitches with a steady stream of jokes--some good, some terrible. GUY, born in New York in 1939, is a maintenance man who can always get our TV to focus. He has two daughters and a son, none of whom live nearby. Guy hopes to return to school when he finds a place to live. He is interested in the paranormal and wants to study electronics with the idea of finding connections. MANUEL, born in Colorado but a New Yorker for many years, is an actor in TV, film and radio. A Native American, he finds himself inevitably typecast in films. Doing radio or voice-overs, however, his cultured tones evidenced years of theatrical training. JOSEPH, born in Queens, lived there all his life until last year when his landlord raised the controlled rent by $25, which Joseph couldn't afford on his SSI. He has severe diabetes and is on disability, but is always smiling and willing to help. |
"They'd like to leave something to say this is my place," explained volunteer Sue Kistler.
A retired teacher and editor, Sue Kistler has been a volunteer at BJ's for the last eight years, leaving her apartment in Murray Hill one night a month to stay overnight with the guests. She says she was bothered by seeing the homeless on the street ever since moving to the city nine years ago, but the day she came across a man who had frozen to death, she felt she had to do something. "He was lying right on the street," she said. "They had just found him."
Ms. Kistler admits she was nervous the first night she volunteered, but says she doesn't feel threatened at all now. Volunteers work in pairs, and they get their own room and bathroom. According to the Partnership for the Homeless, there has never been a threatening incident in the 18 years they have been coordinating the shelters. Interestingly, about 85 percent of the people on the street are men, and 85 percent of those who volunteer at the shelters are women.
"It is the only thing I'm doing that's useful," says Kistler. A few of the men stayed up after their snack and watched Monday night football, read the paper, talked or played scrabble with the volunteers. There's a little porch upstairs where they can go outside for a smoke. But most of them were eager just to go to bed.
BJ's Place was named after BJ Knowlton, a sailor who traveled all over the world but ended up homeless as a result of alcoholism. He went through the shelter system, sobered up, and was one of the first guests to stay at the Community Church in the early 80's. Before long he was running the shelter, keeping everything ship-shape and living there with the men, until he died two years ago at the age of 82.
The Way Back
The men are up early, having coffee and a light breakfast. A hot meal awaits them at Peter's Place. The morning news on CNN blares on about the Florida votes and the falling stock market. Meanwhile, the weather picture for the following night predicts wind chills in the minus numbers. The bus is there at 6:30 for their return trip to Peter's Place.
Some of the men work at jobs, but they don't earn enough to put together a deposit and a monthly rent. Some are enrolled in NetWork, a job training and placement program run by the Partnership for the Homeless. One of them mentions he will soon be moving into permanent housing.
"The objective of the drop in center is to move people into a living situation within nine months," said Bill Appel," and Peter's Place has a good record of doing that. But you're not going to be able to bring someone who has been out there five or ten years into permanent housing in five or ten days" says Appel. "There's a lot of mental illness, drugs and alcohol. They need extensive case management and networking with other agencies. It doesn't happen over night." vOver the years she has volunteered, Sue Kistler has seen many of the men at BJ's move on. "We don't have the same ten guys staying here this year that we did last year. But we do have several of the same ones we had in October.
"It's a very slow turnover," says Kistler. "But there is a turnover."
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