Cristina Jimenez
Charlene Obernauer, Long Island Wins guest blogger, writes:
When the majority of people in the United States think about so-called “illegal immigration”, they picture a Mexican man crossing the border into the United States in the middle of the night. I don’t have actual statistical numbers to back up this claim, but I do have the experience of growing up in Suffolk County, where the tensions over immigration sometimes boil to the surface…While I wholeheartedly disagree with the blame-the-immigrant discourse, one can surely ask, what about the children who came here with their parents?
Read the rest of the story here
Posted at 4:12 PM, Jul 02, 2009 in Education | Immigration
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John Petro
Could someone please explain to me how Atlantic Yards, which was a dubious project to begin with, is good for Brooklyn or New York City?
The project, according to the IBO, is now estimated to be a money loser for the city. Now that there are no immediate plans for any office towers, the tax revenue generated from the commercial space will not materialize. The world class design of Frank Gerhy, whatever you may think of his designs, is gone. The affordable housing is also on hold. If the developer, Forest City Ratner, is fighting tooth and nail to get the financing for just the arena, what makes anyone think that Forest City will be able to finance affordable housing any time soon?
What about jobs? The delayed build out of the project means that many of the temporary construction jobs would be spread out over 12-plus years. Most of the jobs at the arena would be part-time and low wage. With the first commercial tower on hold, there won’t be any new white collar jobs at Atlantic Yards for the foreseeable future.
The Metropolitan Transit Authority, who was expecting a new rail yard out of the deal, has said that it will settle for less; less money and less rail yard. There is a good chance that the promised open space will be replaced with parking lost for many years to come.
Even if the project had all gone as planned, it would have likely had a negative impact on the area. I’m not suggesting that the current state of the site, with open rail yards, is ideal. However, there is nothing from the site plan to suggest that the development would have been anything other than a sterile master-planned community. The plan created vitality-sucking superblocks that would have discouraged pedestrian activity. The 2570 planned underground parking spots would have encouraged more automobile use, flying in the face of the goals of PlaNYC. The arena would have sit unused most nights, especially since the New York Times is already reporting an arena glut in the metropolitan area.
It is still uncertain that the project will move forward. The state’s highest court has agreed to hear an appeal on the eminent domain ruling. Mayor Bloomberg, Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz, the Empire State Development Corporation and the NYC Economic Development Corporation all insist that the project is still good for New York. They are acting as if the benefits promised in 2006 still exist. They don’t.
Posted at 11:27 AM, Jul 02, 2009 in Urban Affairs
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Harry Moroz
As state governments across the country grappled this week with painful decisions about tax increases and service cuts to close budget deficits, stimulus watchers raised serious concerns about the deleterious effects that these deficit-closing measures will have on economic recovery. Stephanie Kelton pointed out that “Jobs that are being created (or saved) through the left hand of the Obama stimulus package are disappearing at least as rapidly as the right hand slashes billions from state budgets.” Indeed, state and local government purchases declined $78.8 billion in the last six months.
These claims are used to argue for additional fiscal assistance for state governments. One popular means of providing this assistance is the now-defunct General Revenue Sharing, a Nixon administration program ended by Reagan that directed federal funds to state and (at that time primarily) local governments with essentially no strings attached. James Galbraith was an early proponent of resurrecting GRS to mitigate the economic downturn.
As much as state fiscal relief does stimulate the economy and as much as a third stimulus might be necessary, GRS has two important flaws that point out a larger problem with the stimulus package: how we can effectively target stimulus funds to the people and institutions that need them most.
First, GRS’s allocation formula is problematic. The Wall Street Journal suggests today that so far stimulus aid has been insufficiently targeted to the states with the most need, that is, to those with the highest unemployment rates. An earlier San Francisco Federal Reserve research note elaborated on exactly which portions of the stimulus package are more and less targeted to needy states. The parts of the stimulus that are well-targeted are those with formulas that proxy for “rapid reversals in economic fortunes”. This is true of the increased federal matching grant for Medicaid, which uses the rise in the state’s unemployment rate as one variable in the formula. The parts that are rather poorly targeted are those with formulas based primarily on population. This is true of the state Fiscal Stabilization Fund, which uses population as its primary variable.
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Posted at 1:28 PM, Jul 01, 2009 in Stimulus
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John Petro
The housing bubble provided some clear indicators that there is something wrong with our current patterns of housing development. The suburban sprawl model that fueled the growth of many Sunbelt economies, from South Florida to Phoenix to southern California, sputtered out, leaving foreclosed homes, half-finished developments, and never-filled strip malls in its wake. It is difficult to determine cause and effect, but it is clear that the financial crisis had its roots in the wave of foreclosures that has swept the country.
But, according to Joel Kotkin, once the dust settles we should just continue on our current trajectory. Kotkin believes that a “renewed quest for homeownership could underpin a sustainable recovery.”
However, there is nothing sustainable about our current housing model. It has real costs on our pocketbooks, our economy, and our environment. The Economist seems to agree.
The Economist mentions that the housing bubble destroyed about $4 trillion in wealth before concluding, “[Policymakers’] efforts in the past few years seem to have weakened, though not destroyed, the best arguments for treating home ownership as something to be encouraged: that it increases people’s savings and creates better neighborhoods for everyone.”
Kotkin doesn’t take kindly to this type of advice. He sees this type of critique as a way for “new urbanists”, “big-city theoreticians”, and even “the fashion police” to force people out of their leafy bungalows and into drab apartment blocks. He seems to be defending homeownership, but really he’s defending suburbs.
So this is where Kotkin confuses his argument. He mixes up the concepts of homeownership versus renting and suburban sprawl versus transit-oriented development.
I’ve argued before that we need a more balanced housing policy, one that looks at renting as a viable option for building wealth, but not that we should restrict access to homeownership. I’ve also argued that we need to be building higher-density housing developments in order to increase affordability, link households to jobs, and to tackle climate change.
Luckily, some members of the administration have also sensed that the wind has changed direction. Earlier this year, HUD and the Department of Transportation announced a partnership that would “help American families gain better access to affordable housing, more transportation options, and lower transportation costs.” The focus is on coordinating federal transportation and housing investments in order to drive down the two highest costs for households, their housing and their transportation.
However, the need for diversity in our housing stock isn’t just an affordability issue or an environmental issue. It’s also a matter of providing choices for individuals and families. Would more Americans choose to ditch the car and take transit if that option is available? Yes. Would more Americans choose to live closer in to the central city and cut down on their commuting time if more housing was available in central neighborhoods? Yes. Would this lead to a cleaner environment? Yes. Would it lead to a healthier populace? Yes.
Would it lead to, as Kotkin surmises, “declining living standards and a return to feudalism”? No.
Posted at 10:32 AM, Jul 01, 2009 in Urban Affairs
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Cristina Jimenez
After the much anticipated immigration meeting, the President reiterated his commitment to reform our broken immigration system. The administration only committed to start the debate this year; hoping that a bill is passed in 2010 before the midterm elections. According to Emanuel, immigration reform lacks the votes to pass this congressional session.
Congressional leaders present at the meeting and advocates feel enthusiastic about the outcome of this meeting. But the tension over a guest worker program is clear. After the meeting, Senator McCain said to reporters:
I can’t support any proposal that doesn’t have a legal temporary worker program and I would expect the president of the United States to put his influence on the unions in order to change their position. Without a commitment to a legal temporary worker program for our high-tech community and agriculture sector, there is no such thing as comprehensive immigration reform.
As I have said before, guest worker programs institutionalize a second-class labor market in which temporary workers are exploited and cannot look for other jobs. They are basically bound to unscrupulous employers. Guest workers’ vulnerability in the workplace weakens conditions and lowers wages for all workers.
Any kind of guest worker program will hurt foreign and native-born workers.
Posted at 2:00 PM, Jun 30, 2009 in Immigration | Labor
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Harry Moroz
The recession currently gripping the United States economy is the culmination of nearly a decade of poor job growth, stagnant wages, and growing inequality that has squeezed middle-class households across the country. An economy overly reliant on the profits of the financial services sector and driven by resource-intensive industries saw real median household income decline by 0.6 percent between 2000 and 2007 and the poverty rate increase by 1.2 percent. The percentage of GDP belonging to wages and salaries in 2006 was never lower. Middle-class Americans’ standard of living is further threatened by human-caused climate change, which will result in more disease, heat-related death, extreme weather, and economic disruption if left unchecked.
The American Clean Energy and Security Act, which the House passed today, is a significant shift of government investment away from an unsustainable economy and environment that have not worked for middle-class families to ones that will be based on sustainable, equitable growth and good jobs. The Act will reduce the economy’s reliance on dirty fuels while for the first time making polluters pay the true cost of their emissions.
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Posted at 5:03 PM, Jun 26, 2009 in Economy | Employment | Energy & Environment
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Maureen Lane
Earlier this week the state Assembly in Albany voted to expand access to college education for people receiving welfare. This legislation could help many poor and vulnerable New Yorkers, but the gridlock in the state Senate is jeopardizing its future.
The leaders of the political circus upstate should take a moment to consider the story of someone like Hirah, whose life is literally in their hands and depends on their action.
When Hirah graduated from high school last year, the NYC welfare agency notified her that she must do 35 hours of workfare and that her college education does not count. She got into Hunter, and is the first in her family to go to college—no small feat for a teenager receiving public assistance. She even scored an internship and started with a full load of classes. “I was then assigned nine hours of WEP (Work Experience Program) to go along with my internship and my classes. I was so upset. I kept thinking to myself, ‘How will I be able to maintain a good GPA, take part in an internship, and fulfill the WEP requirement all at the same time?’,” she told me. “My mom was even more worried and scared than I was. My mom was afraid that our family’s case might get sanctioned and we would be left with no benefits. I am also afraid, right now, for my siblings. I do not want them to be in my same situation when it is their turn to go to college.”
She continued: “When I was given the WEP assignment regardless of having 13 class hours and 22 hours of internship- which adds up to 35 hours of work activity- I felt like welfare policies were placing obstacles in my way to prevent me from going to college. The hours I would have spent fulfilling the WEP requirement were going to replace the hours I would spend studying and doing homework. I was scared I might have to drop out of college. I was overwhelmed. Within the last three months, I have already missed classes because I had to attend appointments at my welfare center, at the team assessment group, at the job center, and at a fair hearing.”
Thousands of people like Hirah need access to education and training while receiving public benefits, especially right now, with welfare rolls growing, as the Wall Street Journal recently reported.
Posted at 9:59 AM, Jun 26, 2009 in
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Cristina Jimenez
Conservatives don’t seem to understand that anti-immigrant rhetoric and policies are not popular. In a recent conference, Pat Buchanan and others advocated for English-only initiatives. Most states, however, are enacting integrative immigration polices.
Ted Hesson, Long Island Wins blogger, tells us more about the American Cause National Conference:
You can’t hold a conference addressing English-only initiatives and then spell the word “conference” wrong. Amazingly, though, that’s what happened at the American Cause National Conference this past Saturday.
Read the rest of the story here
Posted at 3:32 PM, Jun 25, 2009 in Immigration
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John Petro
On the same day that New York City’s Rent Guidelines Board approved rent increases on rent stabilized apartments of three percent for one-year leases and six percent for two-year leases, San Francisco was taking bold action to strengthen renter protections.
New York’s increases will seriously hurt low-income renters that are already suffering from the highest rate of unemployment in this economic recession. But that doesn’t matter to the Rent Guidelines board which also approved extraordinarily high rent increases last year.
Several New York City officials - Speaker Christine Quinn and mayoral candidates William Thompson and Tony Avella - supported the efforts of tenants to freeze increases this year because of the increasing hardships being faced by low-income renters.
Mayor Bloomberg, who could have also stood up for these tenants, decided to keep silent on the issue, saying that he would leave the decision to the board (the mayor appoints the members of the board).
In contrast, the San Francisco Board of Supervisors approved a series of laws that will protect low-income renters in rent stabilized apartments. One of the law states that a landlord cannot increase a household’s rent above 33 percent of that household’s income. The law applies to households that are experiencing hardship, defined in the law as those who are unemployed, whose wages have fallen by 20 percent or more over the past year, or whose sole income is from government assistance.
Another law allows these same renters to add roommates to help them pay for their rent, even if the tenant’s lease forbids it. Lastly, the law prevents landlords from “banking” rent increases, in which allowable rent increases are saved up over time and then imposed all at once.
Rent stabilized apartments in San Francisco make up 88 percent of the total. In New York, it’s 52 percent.
Supervisor Chris Daly, the sponsor of San Francisco’s legislation, stated, “This legislation makes sense give current economic conditions. These times are unprecedented. If the legislation is unprecedented, it is legislation for unprecedented times.”
San Francisco’s time of glory may be short lived, however. Their mayor, Gavin Newsom, seems to be as unsympathetic of the plight of low-income renters as New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg. The new laws are likely to be vetoed by Newsom.
Posted at 2:58 PM, Jun 25, 2009 in
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Amy Traub
Earlier this week, I had the opportunity to make the case for the Employee Free Choice Act in the pages of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. I described the critical role unions played - and continue to play - in creating the American middle class and explained how weakened regulations protecting the right to organize had allowed employers to launch ever nastier campaigns against their own employees. The stimulus plan will help create jobs, I argued, but it won’t do much for job quality. It is only when employees have the freedom to organize unions that they can improve their own job quality, lifting themselves into the middle class.
Providing an opposing viewpoint was Mac Irvin, a lawyer at an Atlanta firm advising employers in “union avoidance” tactics. EFCA, he argued, “will take away the right of employees to determine their own future by secret ballot.” How could I overlook such a critical point in my own essay?
Because it’s not true.
The Employee Free Choice Act takes away no employee rights to a union election. Under current law, many decisions about union representation are already made without a secret ballot vote, using the same majority sign-up process working people use to organize throughout most of the world, as well as under state labor law in many parts of the U.S. Under this process, employers must recognize the union when a majority of workers sign cards saying they want to unionize. Academic research has failed to detect any sign of the union bullying Mr. Irvin insists is rife in majority sign up cases.
The key here is that employers currently have the power to decide whether to call for an election or recognize the results of majority sign up. Under the Employee Free Choice Act, workers themselves would decide which method to use. What EFCA really puts a stop to is employer manipulation of the system: the increasingly common illegal firings, threats, surveillance and harassment that are a well-documented part of the current climate for employees trying to unionize. The situation is so bad, it has been denounced by international human rights organizations.
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Posted at 8:15 AM, Jun 25, 2009 in Labor
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Harry Moroz
South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s admission of an extramarital affair will dominate headlines for the next several days. I’ve been a rather avid Sanford-watcher for the past several months and have found quite a few opportunities to write about him. So while you soak up the sordid details of his trip, and marvel at the frankness of his press conference, here are a few things to keep in mind.
Governor Sanford refused federal stimulus funds for South Carolina until the state Supreme Court forced him to accept them:
The role of ideology and politics in Sanford’s crusade against stimulus funding is less interesting. His ideological position is weak: government spending now is vital to ensure that future generations are actually capable of paying off future interest on debt accrued at present, not to mention that spending now will make future generations better off by investing in a new economy of energy efficiency, solid infrastructure, and green jobs. That this ideological positioning fits perfectly with Sanford’s need to distinguish himself as a presidential contender certainly does not bolster his argument for rejecting the funds.
In the same vein, Sanford penned an op-ed arguing that his four sons would be worse off because of government spending during the economic downturn :
[T]he forgotten point of the stimulus debate [is that] running a high deficit can actually drive future economic success. Put simply, future generations - such as, for instance, South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford’s four boys - would be worse off without the stimulus package, even if government debt balloons. Of course, the catch is that the government must spend on policies that provide a return to the future generations that will pay the future interest on current debt- the government must invest.
Sanford sent a letter to President Bush urging him not to use TARP funds to bail out the auto industry because TARP funds were intended to shore up the financial sector:
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Posted at 4:10 PM, Jun 24, 2009 in
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Harry Moroz
While most of the country tries to figure out what health insurance exchanges and health insurance cooperatives are (and what exactly South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford was doing in Argentina), Speaker Pelosi has snuck game-changing climate change legislation onto the House of Representatives calendar for a vote - and likely passage - this Friday.
In addition to a renewable energy standard, the bill establishes a cap-and-trade system (two, actually: one for greenhouse gases and a separate one for hydrofluorocarbons) designed to reduce emissions 17% by 2020 and 83% by 2050 compared to 2005 levels. Limited emissions allowances will be both auctioned and sold to polluters, who can then purchase more allowances to emit more or sell allowances that are not needed because of energy efficiency improvements.
In recent days, progress on the bill had been stalled by negotiations between Collin Peterson, the Democratic Chairman of the House Agriculture Committee, and Henry Waxman, Chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee. At issue were the interests of rural constituents. Peterson and other farm-state representatives wanted more emissions allowances to be issued to rural electricity cooperatives and requested that the Department of Agriculture, instead of the Environmental Protection Agency (which is, evidently, in the pocket of large cities), to determine which offsets, schemes that farmers could use to make money by soaking up emissions, are acceptable. Debate, then, in these last critical days has focused on rural areas; the legislation’s impact on cities has been largely ignored.
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Posted at 1:08 PM, Jun 24, 2009 in Cities | Energy & Environment
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Cristina Jimenez
A twice-postponed immigration reform meeting between the Obama administration and key Congressional leaders is scheduled for Thursday. It’s clear that Obama intends to push for immigration reform, as he said again on Friday, but a timeline has not been provided.
The DREAM Act and other immigration bills will be part of the discussion. Days away from the White House meeting, hundreds of students across the country will be drawing national attention to the DREAM Act. Today, students will participate in a National DREAM Graduation ceremony in the steps of the U.S. Capitol to call for swift passage of the DREAM Act. Solidarity events are being held from coast to coast.
The DREAM Act, first introduced in Congress in 2001, has strong bipartisan support. The President and leadership from both chambers support it. Educators, including the College Board and presidents of Harvard and Stanford Universities, have announced their support. In the last few weeks, businesses (Microsoft, NYC’s CEOs and others) have also endorsed it.
Students can’t continue to be denied educational and economic opportunities. Limiting their contributions and advancement hurts our economy and the country at large. The DREAM Act should not have to wait another year to be passed.
Posted at 2:22 PM, Jun 23, 2009 in Education | Immigration
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Amy Traub
“Our clients receive happy, appreciative employees that will thank you for allowing them the opportunity to work for you,” boasted Kansas City staffing company Giant Labor Solutions. Contract for workforce needs with their company and “your recruiting, hiring, and payroll expenses will dramatically drop.”
What a pity trifles like alleged racketeering, forced labor trafficking, wire fraud and money laundering can come between employers and a cheap, compliant workforce.
As Thomas Frank describes the federal charges against Giant Labor in a recent Wall Street Journal column:
“The Kansas City ring recruited hundreds of workers from Jamaica, the Philippines, and the Dominican Republic with promises of visas through the federal H-2B seasonal worker program. To get the process started, however, the indictment says that workers had to pay the accused racketeers hefty fees.
“Once in America, the workers found themselves at the mercy of the traffickers, who allegedly kept “them as modern-day slaves under threat of deportation,” in the words of James Gibbons of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The recruiters apparently took care to keep the workers in debt, charging them fees for uniforms, for transportation, and for rent in overcrowded apartments. Paychecks would frequently show “negative earnings,” in the words of the indictment. And if the workers refused to go along with the scheme, the traffickers held the ultimate trump card, the indictment claims: They “threatened to cancel the immigration status” of the workers, rendering them instantly illegal.”
The situation vividly illustrates the perils of guest worker programs. But it’s not only the trafficked immigrants who lost out at Giant Labor.
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Posted at 8:26 AM, Jun 23, 2009 in Immigration | Labor
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John Petro
Atlanta, like many other US cities, is demolishing its public housing. The projects have come to be associated with crime and hopeless poverty. It was a mistake, many critics say, to have the federal government build housing for low-income individuals. In Saturday’s New York Times:
“We’ve realized that concentrating families in poverty is very destructive,” said Renée L. Glover, the executive director of the Atlanta Housing Authority. “It’s destructive to the families, the neighborhoods and the city.”
The new trend is to invite private developers to create mixed-income housing on the sites of newly demolished public housing. The federal government, through its HOPE VI program, has provided $391 million in grant money between 1996 and 2003 for the demolition of public housing projects.
The federal government has gotten out of the public housing business and has shifted its focus to providing Housing Choice Vouchers to low-income households. Instead of building housing, HUD pays the difference between what low-income households can afford to pay in rent, about 40 percent of the household income, and the market rate.
The shift from physical housing to vouchers is intended to disperse concentrations of poverty and to give participating households some choice in the location and type of housing they live in. The shift also represents an ideological shift, one that distrusts government and believes that the market can provide housing for all (with a little bit of subsidy).
However, the federal government has not been living up to its obligations. If you are a low-income household that wishes to participate in the Housing Choice Voucher program in Atlanta, you must have a lot of patience. According to HUD:
Since the demand for housing assistance often exceeds the limited resources available to HUD and the local housing agencies, long waiting periods are common. In fact, a PHA may close its waiting list when it has more families on the list than can be assisted in the near future.
Atlanta does indeed have a waiting list. That list was closed in 2001. As of 2007, there were still 22,000 names on it.
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Posted at 10:29 AM, Jun 22, 2009 in Urban Affairs
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