Advancing Opportunity in New York City

Next Steps for the City, Lessons for the Nation

April 21, 2009, 9:00am – 10:30am

About This Event

“Forty million people in the United States live below the poverty line. Nearly one in every five children in the United States is currently growing up in outright poverty,” said John Podesta, President and CEO of the Center for American Progress on Tuesday. Podesta highlighted the state of poverty in the United States in his introduction of New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at an event that examined the city’s efforts to fight poverty and what lessons other urban centers and the nation can learn from its work.

Bloomberg gave featured remarks at the event that were followed by a panel discussion moderated by CAP Senior Fellow Mark Greenberg. The discussion examined New York City’s antipoverty crusade and included Special Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs Derek Douglas, New York City’s Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Linda Gibbs, and Brookings Institution Senior Fellow Ron Haskins.

“We’re confronting the biggest economic and social challenges that America has seen in decades,” said Bloomberg, “and in times like these we should definitely not continue to do the same old things in the same old ways.” New York City is definitely not looking at the same old solutions and is at the forefront of finding new ways to deal with the mounting poverty crisis afflicting urban areas across the United States. For instance, in 2006 Bloomberg implemented the Center for Economic Opportunity, or CEO, a large-scale and innovative project to combat the problems of poverty in New York City. The project targets young adults, the working poor, and children in particular.

Bloomberg also noted that, “we need a stronger strategic vision for achieving measurable results in reducing poverty, particularly in urban areas where poverty has become engrained and endemic.” CEO is searching for such measurable results on poverty reduction: It not only pioneers new antipoverty projects, but it also takes a focused and data-driven approach in assessing its programs’ effectiveness. This approach allows the center to best allocate its resources toward the initiatives that will most help the community. “In science finding things that don’t work is often times just as valuable as finding things that do,” reminded Bloomberg.

New York City can be a valuable model for other urban areas struggling with poverty across the country. CEO’s successful efforts include helping individuals already working in the medical field become certified nurses, making college schedules more realistic for working adults, and ensuring that income tax credits go to those who are eligible. The city also proposed a Federal Urban Innovation Fund to deal with poverty.

But despite local success, Bloomberg argued that the federal government also has a role to play in encouraging and replicating local initiatives and innovations to reduce poverty such as CEO.

According to Douglas, tackling poverty is something the new administration takes seriously. “Poverty and the urban agenda are high priorities for President Obama, which is why he created the Office of Urban Affairs,” he said. This new office allows the administration to better address the problems specific to urban areas, which are becoming more pressing in today’s economic environment.

Programs to combat urban poverty must be designed locally as each city is unique and problems vary district by district. The president, however, can create focus by combining the forces of multiple government agencies. Doing this will “build human capital and reduce the cycles of poverty,” said Gibbs.

However, today’s unstable economic climate only adds to the challenge of combating poverty even though the political will exists to address the issue. “It’s a bad idea to make big policy ideas in a recession,” Haskins argued to the contrary, “because this too shall pass, which is why it’s risky for programs to become reliant on stimulus funds.”

All in all, New York City pooled private and public resources to create a truly innovative antipoverty program and its lessons of success and failure will provide valuable tools for other urban areas in the fight against poverty. With renewed interest and political will on the issue there’s an opening to do something about it.

Gibbs concluded, “This is a unique opportunity to test, innovate, experiment, and find out what works that is probably not going to be replicated in our lifetimes.”

Featured Remarks:
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, New York City

Introduction by:
John Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress

Panel Discussion:
Derek Douglas, Special Assistant to the President for Urban Affairs
Linda Gibbs, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, New York City
Ron Haskins, Senior Fellow, Brookings Institution

Moderated by:
Mark Greenberg, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress

Location

Center for American Progress
1333 H St. NW, 10th Floor
Washington, DC 20005