Neil deMause

Remember last Friday’s New York Times front-page story on how poverty rates aren’t as bad as we’d feared? Today the Census released the figures behind that piece, and it turns out even where the Times was right, it still missed the point:

If you’ve been trying to follow the debate over the new measure of poverty released by the Census Bureau this morning, you’re probably completely confused by now. So far in the last few days we’ve seen:

• On Friday morning, the front page of The New York Times offered up the Census data as a ray of sunshine amid the economic gloom: “Bleak Portrait of Poverty Is Off the Mark, Experts Say,” read the headline, with the accompanying story—by longtime Times poverty reporter Jason DeParle and two others—noting that the Census’ new Supplemental Poverty Measure would likely make half of the reported rise in poverty since 2006 disappear… [read more]

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg has long insisted on reserving the right to require childless food stamp applicants to work for their benefits — even turning down the offer of a federal hardship waiver that 46 states have been granted. And now, according to interviews with poor New Yorkers and their legal advocates, he’s apparently putting that threat into practice:

When Brownsville resident Robert Rodriguez went to the city’s Pine Street food stamp center in East New York last month to recertify his eligibility for food aid, he was brought up short by what he saw in the waiting room.

“There’s a big sign in there telling everybody they gonna have to start working for the food stamps,” he recalls. “Last time I noticed, you had to work if you get cash money, but I never knew no shit about no food stamps.”

It’s a story that is increasingly being repeated among the city’s 1.8 million people receiving food stamps: With no public announcement, the city has begun requiring them to either prove that they hold down jobs, or enroll in city work programs — and face having their benefits cut off if they don’t comply… [read more]

A who’s who of welfare reform heavyweights met at NYU this morning to debate whether the 1996 law is working, 15 years on. Predictably, they couldn’t even agree on what “working” meant:

Wednesday’s panel on the 15th anniversary of welfare reform, held at NYU’s Wagner School of Public Service, was certainly full of heavy hitters on the subject of how the 1996 law has affected American society. The lineup:

New York City HRA Commissioner Robert Doar, chief proponent of the city’s “Work First” welfare policies.

CUNY sociology professor and Glenn Beck target Frances Fox Piven, who has written about poverty programs for more than 30 years… [read more]

I’m on FAIR’s radio show Counterspin this week, discussing the media frenzy around last week’s release of census data showing poverty is dramatically on the rise in the U.S. But what did the news stories leave out? Listen to Janine Jackson and I discuss that here.

With unemployment still through the roof, are job training programs just preparing people for jobs that don’t exist?

As the economy threatens to sink into a double-dip recession, pressure is growing for federal, state, and local governments to do something about the 16 million Americans who remain out of work. One solution popular with politicians of all stripes—and with both business and labor groups—has been job training programs to close the gap between employers’ needs and workers’ skills.

“Even though a lot of folks are looking for work, there are a lot of companies that are actually also looking for skilled workers; there’s a mismatch that we can close,” President Obama said in June in presenting a community college program to teach manufacturing skills. Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg has launched a series of job training initiatives, most recently as part of his new Young Men’s Initiative to aid black and Latino teens—a cause to which he gave $30 million of his own pocket money… [read more]

If you didn’t get enough on how tough it can be to apply for public benefits in New York City in my recent City Limits magazine story, here’s a new article on a report saying it’s doubly tough if you’re a teenager or young adult:

It’s a story that’s repeated itself several times now under the Bloomberg administration: A leading New York social services agency issues a report harshly criticizing the Bloomberg administration’s welfare policies as inappropriate for many poor New Yorkers, and ineffective at moving people into economic self-sufficiency. City officials respond by insisting that the study is flawed, and that the city’s “Work First” model has been a success at connecting low-income New Yorkers with employment.

The latest study, “Missed Opportunity,” was issued jointly last month by the Community Service Society (owner of City Limits) and the Resilience Advocacy Project to investigate how young applicants for public benefits are handled by the city Human Resources Administration, which manages public benefits. Their answer: poorly… [read more]

And one more from the City Limits extravaganza (which is now optimized for you to read through start to finish online, beginning here). This is a companion piece that didn’t make the print magazine for space reasons, profiling a Hunter College student who’s stuck in low-wage work thanks to her country of birth:

Like many students at Hunter College, C. is in her mid-20s, is working on her degree after several years in the work world and commutes to class from a shared apartment in Queens. But she stands out in one way, though it’s not one she goes out of her way to mention to classmates and teachers.

“I would love to be able to tell people, ‘You know, I’m undocumented,’ ” she says, “because I think it would shock them. My accent is not too strong. I’m young. I’m going to school. They would never characterize me as undocumented. The problem is, I am.”… [read more]

I’m happy to report that contrary to what I said yesterday, my entire article profiling low-income New Yorkers and how they make ends meet is now available online via the City Limits website. You can find links to all six sections here, or if you prefer individual links to each chapter, be my guest:

1. The Poor Have Numbers. Do They Count?
2. Even Entrepreneurs Need Food Stamps
3. From Blue-Collar to the Welfare Line
4. One Woman’s Plan to Beat Poverty
5. Sharon’s Homework: Self-Sufficiency
6. What Would Help Poor New Yorkers? Take Your Pick

You can also still order a print or electronic copy as well, but the new issue isn’t in the ordering system just yet. So if you want to see all the nice charts and photos, just hold tight and I’ll post an alert when your money is good here.

And now it can be revealed: One of the big projects taking up much of my time this spring was a special issue of City Limits magazine on low-income New Yorkers, how they make ends meet, and how government policy helps (or hinders) them in getting by.

Currently available online are the first two sections: My introduction on the anywhere from 1.5 million to 3 million New Yorkers (depending on how you count) who are poor, and the first of several profiles of low-income individuals — students, parents (single and otherwise), homeless shelter residents, low-wage workers — and their daily lives. From the former:

It’s a simple enough question on the face of it: How many people living in New York City are poor? The answer, it turns out, depends on how you count.

For decades, the milepost was the federal poverty line, a measure developed in 1963 by government statistician Mollie Orshansky to try to quantify how many Americans were in need. Noting that a federal survey had estimated the average American family’s food spending as one-third of its income, Orshansky took the cost of a subsistence “food basket,” tripled it and deemed families earning below that amount officially poor… [read more]

And from the latter:

It’s Monday, Jan. 31, and as usual, Tanya Fields is having a hectic morning. The Bronx mother of four has already had to juggle her schedule after her babysitter called in sick, forcing her to be late for an important appointment in downtown Brooklyn. But on this occasion—unlike her daily work running a nonprofit startup or her prior years as an environmental advocate—there’s no calling in sick or asking to reschedule: This appointment is for trying to keep her welfare benefits… [read more]

There are another four chapters after that, but the moment at least, you’ll need to buy a copy ($4.95 for a PDF, or add $2 shipping for a paper copy) to read those.

It’s well worth doing so, though, or else you’ll miss out on meeting people like Sharon Jones, Walter Greene, and Beverly Davis, and hearing what it’s like to live in the world’s most expensive city when your monthly income barely breaks four digits. Also, supporting City Limits, which enables me to write more of these stories. It’s a win-win!

[UPDATE: My entire article is now available online for free! But ordering a copy is still the polite thing to do.]

The Bloomberg Administration prides itself on basing its policies on hard data. But in the case of welfare policy, an analysis of new city documents (and conversations with city staffers) shows that it’s been picking and choosing which data to keep tabs on:

In last week’s State of the City address, Mayor Bloomberg pointed with pride to the fact that despite the economic downtown, his administration has “kept the welfare rolls at historic lows.” Over the past 15 years, cash assistance rolls have shrunk from 1.1 million to barely 350,000—a figure that conveys the city’s commitment to “work first” policies that began under Rudy Giuliani and have continued under the current administration.

But documents released to City Limits reveal that even under the famously data-driven Bloomberg, there’s much that the city can’t answer about who’s applying for welfare—and what happens to them when they do. …[read more]