2/3rds of the people in affordable housing are unemployed

This is unacceptable - in an effort to help we are ruining people's lives.

and the employed are the suckers paying for the unaffordable housing (which is most of manhattan, let's be honest).

i'm ususally a softy for the less fortunate, but this snippet is ridiculous. where exactly are these "inaccessbile" housing communities, b/c if they're not in the bermuda triangle then i don't want to read about this lame ass reason for unemployment. give me a break!

Bullshit. They don't live in the middle of the desert. There are buses and subways. Most people in this city commute an hour to get to work.

They have no one to blame but themselves. They are lucky they have homes.

Last year in the US for the first time ever over 1M high school seniors didn't graduate from high school. Imagine it. If the rate stays the same then in 30 years from now we'll have 30 million people from the ages of 16 to 46 who haven't graduated from high school. Right now there are 300,000,000 residents in the US.
These are national numbers obviously the graduation numbers in NYC are significantly worse than the national average.

We need tough love. We need to make this change gradually. We need to make it compassionately. We need to be firmly. We need to be lovingly. But, things have to change. In a city where people in a mailroom make $40,000 there are few excuses.

Baby boomers will be depending on us and 30 million uneducated people will be depending on us. We just can't afford it.

Jazzman - are you friends with Juiceman? Not really sure what you're talking about. Were the 1M seniors no longer able to access transportation to school? As for this study in the Real Deal, did they actually compare unemployment rates in fringe areas to unemployment rates in other, more accessible, areas? If anyone can dig up this study, that would be interesting. I can barely type on this new gadget hubby bought me. Nothing like enabling helplessness (that may be a double entendre). Perhaps the real report was eaten by the dog and this was what had to be sumbitted.

mom - I'm saying a lack of education leads to unemployment. We continue to have more and more kids dropping out. The education problem becomes a housing problem. We must stop giving free/cheap housing to people - you'd be surprised at how many kids would stay in school if they knew they would get free housing for life.

oops - knew they wouldn't get free housing for life.

It seems they are lumping in housing "projects" with other "affordable housing" so I'm not sure the numbers are meaningful. What would be much more meaningful to know is how some specific affordable housing segments are doing; for example the "20" in the 80/20 rental buildings.

jazzman, currently the educated can't find jobs. only 46% of people 16-24 are employed, and that includes part time. we no longer have the employment base to support the educated or the uneducated. the jobs have moved to china, but the people are still here.

good luck finding a solution. in case you haven't heard, those mailroom jobs have been disappearing rapidly. increased productivity, baby. decreased wages and benefits. good for the company's bottom line, you know.

The solution: More jobs

doing what?

ok bronxboy. to revise, good luck finding more jobs.

They are blaming public transportation for people who live in projects being unemployed? That is one of the dumbest things I have ever heard. Maybe some people wind up living in the projects because they choose not to work hard enough to support themselves.

Wow, it is truly shocking how disconnected from reality some people on this board actually are. You can't imagine that it may be very difficult to get a job if you live in co-op city or Rockaway or Coney Island and don't have a high school diploma? Not to mention the added difficulty if you have kids. You should all just stick to talking about apartments and keep out of the social discussions. $40K mail jobs, lol.

For those interested in the report, you should look at the report itself rather than the 100word synopsis from Real Deal:

http://prattcenter.net/report/public-housing-new-york-city-building-communities-opportunity

It appears that it was limited to NYCHA housing only. I looked at it briefly and feel that it could tell a much better story if more time was spent on the statistics. There's too much averaging, they need more percentiles.

oh heavens. disagreement w/ assessment of results does NOT equal disconnected and cold-hearted. thanks for the link. i'm interested to take a look.

90% of the country is employed - clearly jobs are out there - but this problem is much bigger than 2009 - it existed in 2007 when jobs were plentiful - why weren't they employed in 2007?
What kind of jobs should they get you ask? How about these people get jobs like doctors, lawyers, accountants, engineers, advertisers - that is, unless you think they aren't smart enough for those jobs - I realize the ship has sailed for many of them and that the doors to these jobs have closed - you can't make bad choices your entire life and not expect that their will be consequences. But the doors are still open for today's high school kids. If they knew they wouldn't get free housing, free health care, free food, free furniture (yes there are programs that give people nearly $4,000 to buy their furniture), free cell phones (a new program), and free utilities their entire life then they'd stay in school.

mmarquez -truth is the turnover rate in the projects is less than 3% annually. If you negate vacancy due to death it's less than 1.5%. The projects are TEMPORARY housing. There is nothing temporary about a 1.5% turnover rate.

And my point about the mail room is valid. There are jobs all over this city where you can make $40K per year with ZERO skills. The only skill you need is the ability to get up at 7 am every morning take a shower and put on some clean clothes. Then stay busy for 8 hours through the day. We are way too soft on the uneducated. They have no reason to work. We are ruining their lives with our handouts. I realize these handouts are well intentioned but they are failing. We need to slowly, humanly, compassionately ween them of these handouts, and for the kids, we need to make ensure they know that these handouts will never be available to them. Essentially grandfathering in our bad policy to those people who's lives we've already ruined but we must change for the younger generations.

AR -"only 46% of people 16-24 are employed" I miss your point here - I would hope that number would be 80% of them are unemployed. They should be in school.

the mailroom can be a dangerous work environment. anyone watch It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? Remember what it did to Charlie?! Plus, you have to be literate.

Co-op city is not out in the boonies. In fact, when it was built the tenants were predominantly lower and middle class Jews who had been dislocated from their homes in the middle of the Tremont section (center of it) by the Cross-Bronx Expressway and then the crumbling of the remainder of the neighborhood when the other two parts couldn't survive the evisceration and seperation. Those Co-op city residents still had jobs, still raised kids, and often thrived (and then moved out).

Just remember that the MORE you give someone in the way of subsidies (or handouts) for food and shelter and the more entry level jobs you chase away, the more likely it is that these people will not work and remain warehoused and supported by society.

uwsmom - I was referring specifically to such comments as :

"They have no one to blame but themselves. They are lucky they have homes."
and
"Maybe some people wind up living in the projects because they choose not to work hard enough to support themselves."

Jazzman - I think we agree on most points. Poverty is easy to fall into, and hard to get out of. Doubly so if you are born into it, and surrounded by it. However, I don't think you are realistic on how many $40K jobs are available that require no skills and are 9-5. Every job that is posted gets hundreds of responses. All the senior people who were laid off take the entry level jobs, and then the entry level people take the menial jobs, and so forth.

I have a friend who just graduated with his MS in engineering from Columbia and took a job driving pedicabs after looking for more relevant work for 6 months. And its not because he likes riding bikes so much. He then went back to get a second master's in something more concentrated.

Jazzman - we did not service to these people by driving out the light industrial businesses from this city, by changing the priorities in schools from the 3 R's to diversity/arts/athletics, and by constantly increasing the areas of life that are subsidized and then the amounts of those subsidies.

I would argue that raising the minimum wage hurt too, but in truth it didn't because someone who is 15-18 usually is smart enough to figure out that the subsidies amount to more than they would get from even the higher minimum wages. It is actually a rational decision. Healthy people who are poor often are that way because they don't have the ability to see past short term decisions. That a min wage job will lead to better wages and start to earn more than welfare programs is just too far out for them to see. The more benefits, the farther out is the point where you make more than minimum. Raise minimum wage and you reduce the number of low skilled jobs available in the city. Vicious cycle.

In 1971, only 1/3 of households below the poverty line had cars, today it is over 60%. not all households had phones, today there is a huge penetration of CELL PHONES into this demographic. Never forget that the poor have professional advocates, and that the reason the poverty "rate" stays the same in this country is that poverty has regularly been defined down (or is that "up"?).

"Baby boomers will be depending on us and 30 million uneducated people will be depending on us. We just can't afford it. "

i don't buy this. if gen x and gen y want to make more efforts, they should do it for themselves, not cause of what others expect to get from them, imho. just take into account that the whole rat race mentality is already total nonsense for gen x and they know most of them will never be able to retire. it just doesn't make sense for many to work hard when they know they will not enjoy the 20-30 years of leisure at the end (as the old baby boomers and older now expect).

one of the drawbacks of the projects is that it had hurt labor mobility. given that most of the subsidy is in fact paid by the feds, why not making it mobile? (ie: you can take the subsidy with you whenever you find a job). guess section 8 tried to accomplish this.

"I have a friend who just graduated with his MS in engineering from Columbia and took a job driving pedicabs after looking for more relevant work for 6 months. And its not because he likes riding bikes so much. He then went back to get a second master's in something more concentrated."

a lot of graduates from ivy's are postponing entering into the labor mkt even more by traveling and postponing housing formation, for ex. they are basically turning the retirement notion upside down. super interesting demographically wise imho.

last but not least, take into account that many of them do work off the books. think nannies, cleaning, construction, small biz (like retail)... guess this report didn't adjust for that.

MMarquez - while it may be easy to fall into poverty, historically in this country it has also been easy to get out of it. One need only be willing to work hard. But most of the people in the projects suffer from more than poor education. They suffer from as horrible culture in which they grow up. I can tell you from the perspective of someone who has run a business for decades in the city and then outside (NJ) and was once situated outside a project. When we moved into that facility we thought the project would be a ready source of labor. Instead we quickly developed an unspoken rule that you never employed someone from there.

The first thing you noticed was that the people who worked there were devoid of basic work skills. When I say basic, I mean the ability to be at work at 8am (8-4:30, like most factories), not 8:15, 8:30 or 9, and to show up all 5 days in the week. If it had only been a percentage you could work to find the ones that were good, but we NEVER found those. The next problem came each time we were desperate for more hands and would try the projects again (yes, every few years we would forget the rule). We would again experience the poor work ethic, but invariably a week or two after we would start hiring we would experience break-ins. That ended our social experiment.

I'm finishing up my advanced degree soon and can tell you from personal experience that it is very hard to find a job right now. Many companies are not hiring, and even when I apply to jobs that I am overqualified for, I do not even get an acknowledgment of the application. It sure would be nice to be able to afford to go traveling rather than look for a job.

Wow. Those folks that lived in the projects across the street from me growing up must have had it tough. They walked a full 35 feet more than I did to the bus stop to our high school. No wonder they dropped out. They could not possibly be expected to work now, they never figured out how to cross the street to the bus stop 25 years ago.

Everyone always jumps to the no education, "zero skills" means you can't find a job other than flipping burgers. There are no skill prerequisites to join NYPD, NYFD, DSNY, MTA or dozens of other civil servant positions. Of course, you could learn a skill, and then you would lose the "unskilled" label.

People who are on the dole can't or won't wean themselves off it. It would be more interesting to see a study of what percentage of affordable housing residents are second or third generation. Why get a paying job that might cause you to lose basically free housing.

> The solution: More jobs

More jobs wouldn't help a lick if these folks aren't qualified for them.

They need to finish high school and get basic skills. Nothing wrong with vocational training.

But, if you drop out of high school, noone to blame but the family.

marquez, go cry me a river. Who told anyone to have children if they didn't have the means to support them? Who forced everyone to drop out of high school? If you live in the Rockaways and need to get to a job, then get up early enough to get on the train and get to your job. Develop some skill or expertise to make enough to move out of the projects. I grew up with people with limited means and who were not college oriented, but they were hard workers who trained to develop other skills and became electricians, carpenters, plumbers, mechanics, police officers, firefighters, etc. They do well enough to support themselves and their families and not live in the projects. People should accept responsibility for their own life decisions.

" People who are on the dole can't or won't wean themselves off it. It would be more interesting to see a study of what percentage of affordable housing residents are second or third generation. Why get a paying job that might cause you to lose basically free housing."

yep, that's a big problem. when marginal tax rates are calculated correctly, they are at more than 50% even for the very low income folks (due to losing benefits and tax credits). hence, it doesn't really pay to work unless they do it off the books. i would go long this underground economy if earned income taxes and FICA taxes increase.

sure, off the books workers don't get the SS benefits, but most of the youngsters get it that those benefits are not gonna be there anyway, so there's no loss. the unemployment benefits though are a bigger loss.

My wife has 2 cousins who live in nyc. They applied to take the firefighter's test and have been waiting for nearly 3 YEARS for the opportunity because so many people want to be fire fighters. Thousands of employees were laid off by the city and other public services this year. Do you think that those jobs are going to be replaced soon and then be filled by poor unskilled workers?

I'm not trying to say that the current setup of NYCHA housing doesn't make it much easier for people to not work. I'm just saying that it is very hard to get out of that position once you're in it. And shit, when all of your friends and family are doing it, why not live your life the same way? Why do they drop out of high school? I couldn't tell you, obviously they don't respect education for some reason.

issue is, that's where the growth in fertility rates it's coming from. the elderly kid themselves when thinking that gen x and y will provide for themselves for 20 or 30 years of leisure. the math is just not there imho.

"yep, that's a big problem. when marginal tax rates are calculated correctly, they are at more than 50% even for the very low income folks (due to losing benefits and tax credits). hence, it doesn't really pay to work unless they do it off the books. i would go long this underground economy if earned income taxes and FICA taxes increase."

Poor folks pay negative taxes. Thats why the marginal is so high... because they GET PAID if they don't work (and I'm not even talking welfare).

Best way to improve that... give out less handouts at the absolute bottom. Create a real incentive to work.

Its unfortunately, but if you make being lazy a good option, expect people to be lazy.

It might not sound nice, but you have to make poverty at least somewhat undesirable.

yep nyc, that's an option, maybe not in a democracy with so many people receiving "handouts" though.

at the end of the day the amount of work done might end up being even. take a rat race workaholic baby boomer that enjoys 20-30 years of retirement at the end versus a welfare recipient that enjoys leisure in a much more smoother way. works off the books through out his life, but each day has his spare time.

hence, both guys end up working about the same. the last arrangement might be the optimal one for younger people. that's all.

admin "they are at more than 50% even for the very low income folks " what are you talking about the bottom 50% of our country pay ZERO in income tax and in fact we pay them via the child tax credit, earned income credit etc.

All - I understand jobs are hard to find today. I understand there is plenty of "talent on the sidelines" and the chances of unskilled labor finding a job now are smaller. (AvUWS - I wish I too didn't learn the hard way. Thus my previous post about the job skills needed include waking up at 7am taking a shower, putting on clean clothes etc - it's amazing how my employees just couldn't do those 3 things on a consistent basis.) But these welfare problems persisted in 2007, the boom boom years. These problems run much deeper than this recession. Clinton did wonderful things to reduce our welfare rolls and it can be done again. Now is not the time to start eliminating benefits, but now IS THE PERFECT TIME to tell people we will be eliminating them in 5 years. Right now is the perfect time for people to go to a community college, trade school, or the like. Then in 2-4 years when they're done they'll be ready to work, they can build up some savings and move on and out. Jobs will come they should use this downtime to improve their skills as a poster above mentioned about a friend.

"the bottom 50% of our country pay ZERO in income tax"

they pay FICA though, which you are aware, seems like a waste of money and time for a young worker.

I agree with this: "Its unfortunately, but if you make being lazy a good option, expect people to be lazy."

But I think you're underestimating the number of people who live in the projects that are hard working and do not want to live there. And also the one's who ended up falling into that situation. Or maybe I'm just overestimating the amount of non-lazy people that live in the projects. Are there any statistics on this?

as i see it, it's not a clear cut hard working (equal good person) versus lazy (equals a mean one). different economic cycles give different returns for labor. the optimal thing to do is not to work hard when the returns are low and work hard when they are high.

if i get it right, return on labor will be much better once the elderly are not a burden and deficits are under control (say 15 years from now). so why not taking time out now and working hard later (remember chances are, young people now will have to work when old anyway)? seems a smart arrangement to me.

Okay people I really, really resent the idea that unemployment is the result of laziness. I have worked my a$$ off (wish that were a literal statement) since I was 12 and baby sitting, getting my working papers and checking groceries at D'Agostinos the minute I was eligible and working with incredible commitment and passion ever since, often at the expense of personal priorities. I went to the office the day my father died (to make sure things were in order so I could go on 5 days leave) and was off on a business trip three days before I lost my Mom. I have missed important times happy and sad for people who are important to me. And I have taken immense pride in the quality of my work and the satisfaction of my Clients.
Now I find myself unemployed. Unlucky, yeah...Maybe not the best politican or self-promoter, yeah I'll admit to that too. Even naivite played a role....
But laziness? No. Not ever. Except when it comes to laundry or changing the cat box.

"Thus my previous post about the job skills needed include waking up at 7am taking a shower, putting on clean clothes etc - it's amazing how my employees just couldn't do those 3 things on a consistent basis.)"

Excellent points. Its amazing how much laziness I see, and I'm actually thinking of college grads. With the boom years and the big salaries and the dot coms, there is such a sense of entitlement.

Entry level employees don't want to do entry level work, they think because they took 1 class, they can be more "strategic" and not have to actually do the work.

I remember in the late 80s, folks would talk about "pick XXX or YYY major in college for the best chance of getting A job". Not the best job ever, not the one with the highest salary, not the one where you are ceo in a week... just having A job was a good thing.

Extended recesssions often have a silver lining in this sense...

"Now is not the time to start eliminating benefits, but now IS THE PERFECT TIME to tell people we will be eliminating them in 5 years. Right now is the perfect time for people to go to a community college, trade school, or the like. Then in 2-4 years when they're done they'll be ready to work, they can build up some savings and move on and out. Jobs will come they should use this downtime to improve their skills as a poster above mentioned about a friend. "

Agreed again!

I think one of the worst things to happen in our country was the liberal idea of "access" to education, which actually destroyed many great instutions (CUNY, anyone). I'm all for opportunity, but now most CUNY students have to take remedial english or math (yes, more than 50%).

There was NOTHING wrong with sending some kids to vocational schools, but idiots yelled, and everyone got to go to college.. making college what high school used to be.

"But I think you're underestimating the number of people who live in the projects that are hard working and do not want to live there. And also the one's who ended up falling into that situation. Or maybe I'm just overestimating the amount of non-lazy people that live in the projects. Are there any statistics on this?"

I'm sure they exist, but you only need some to create a horrible culture and a cycle of poverty. If we give the incentive to 20% of the project-dwellers to not work and just take handouts... their kids are going to the same school as the hard-working kids. Those schools get DESTROYED. When you have a class of 30 kids, and 6 troublemakers whose parents won't discipline them, the other 24 aren't learning anything no matter what. And how many drug dealers does one project need?

Creating incentives for even one person to be lazy is simply horrible.

"Okay people I really, really resent the idea that unemployment is the result of laziness."

No one said that.
Plenty of hard-working folks are now unemployed.

somehwereelse "And how many drug dealers does one project need?"
Funny this comment just reminded me of a theory out there that says we can't get rid of the projects because right now all of the drug turf is defined and basically agreed to among different dealers. If we were to eliminate the projects and make everyone move to different neighborhoods then we'd have wide spread violence across the city as turf would be fought over by the displaced dealers. Personally I say bring on the war. Let them shoot each other. Sure they will shoot innocent bystanders but aren't they already killing more people now? Better for us if they shoot a few innocent bystanders than have them slowly poison to death hundreds.

But part of why these guys can control their turf so easily is because they are projects... one central elevator bank that you can easily cut off...

and you raise another good point... if the violence becomes more visible, maybe the city will do something about it. Agreed, a few shootings to save thousands from poverty, sickness, and even other deaths works for me.

Based on personal experience, I think 2 "project" kids in a class of 22 is manageable.

We'd be lucky if it were just 9%.

And if you don't think 9% of a class can spoil it... wow...