Tag: City Hall

The Daily News recently ran a series of articles outing “no-bid” contracts at New York City’s Department of Education. As someone who spent nearly 20 years as a “provisional” public employee, I’m not surprised.

Whether the government is hiring public employees or companies, it faces what I call the “dilemma of discretion.” Allow public sector managers to hire and fire who they please, and the government runs the risk of having their brother-in-law – or the brother-in-law of a politico who is in a position to threaten them – hired. But bind that manager with all kinds of rules, such as a requirement to accept the lowest “responsible” bidder, to hire those who score highest on a civil service test, and to only fire an employee or contractor after a complicated series of steps, and you create a legalistic playground for those who seek to get paid to do a job without actually doing it. Thus the tendency of those trying to improve public services, as well as those trying to steal, to hire provisionals or “consultants,” which New York’s public agencies are stuffed with, and to enter into no-bid contracts.

As I mentioned here, the fact that there are many poor people in New York City is, in some ways, a phony issue.  According to 2005 data from the Census Bureau, the New York Metropolitan Area as a whole had a poverty rate of 12.6%, below the national average of 13.3%.  Poverty is high in New York City because it is the part of the metropolitan area where the poor are permitted to live; taking regional and national economic trends as a given, the more places for the poor to live a municipality provides, the more poverty it will have.  A better focus for public policy is how well the poor live in New York City, and to what extent the city provides an environment their families to advance out of poverty, if not in this generation than in the next.   In my view, the city is a worse place to be poor today than it was 50 years ago.  That is the real issue.

As I mentioned here, the fact that there are many poor people in New York City is, in some ways, a phony issue.  According to 2005 data from the Census Bureau, the New York Metropolitan Area as a whole had a poverty rate of 12.6%, below the national average of 13.3%.  Poverty is high in New York City because it is the part of the metropolitan area where the poor are permitted to live; taking regional and national economic trends as a given, the more places for the poor to live a municipality provides, the more poverty it will have.  A better focus for public policy is how well the poor live in New York City, and to what extent the city provides an environment their families to advance out of poverty, if not in this generation than in the next.   In my view, the city is a worse place to be poor today than it was 50 years ago.  That is the real issue.

As I mentioned here, the fact that there are many poor people in New York City is, in some ways, a phony issue.  According to 2005 data from the Census Bureau, the New York Metropolitan Area as a whole had a poverty rate of 12.6%, below the national average of 13.3%.  Poverty is high in New York City because it is the part of the metropolitan area where the poor are permitted to live; taking regional and national economic trends as a given, the more places for the poor to live a municipality provides, the more poverty it will have.  A better focus for public policy is how well the poor live in New York City, and to what extent the city provides an environment their families to advance out of poverty, if not in this generation than in the next.   In my view, the city is a worse place to be poor today than it was 50 years ago.  That is the real issue.

As I mentioned here, the fact that there are many poor people in New York City is, in some ways, a phony issue.  According to 2005 data from the Census Bureau, the New York Metropolitan Area as a whole had a poverty rate of 12.6%, below the national average of 13.3%.  Poverty is high in New York City because it is the part of the metropolitan area where the poor are permitted to live; taking regional and national economic trends as a given, the more places for the poor to live a municipality provides, the more poverty it will have.  A better focus for public policy is how well the poor live in New York City, and to what extent the city provides an environment their families to advance out of poverty, if not in this generation than in the next.   In my view, the city is a worse place to be poor today than it was 50 years ago.  That is the real issue.

The big story in New York real estate in recent weeks has been the potential sale, for a purported asking price of $5 billion, of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two huge “middle class” housing developments on Manhattan’s East Side, by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, their developer and long time owner.  Metlife had previously sold its other large New York City housing projects, such as Parkchester in the Bronx.  Immediately, politicos have rallied to the side of the potentially embattled tenants of these developments, most of whom benefit from rent stabilization.  The local council member has proposed a tenant buyout, which he says will be possible with union pension fund money, “socially conscious” investors, and city subsidies.  If the existing tenants want to make a bid for the place, more power to them, although I advise that we are in a real estate bubble and any buyer will likely pay too much – one reason Metlife is selling.  But if they want to put city pension fund money at risk, given that the city would be required to raise taxes and cut services to make up any losses, and to receive tax breaks, I say forget it.  Since Stuytown and Peter Cooper village are large enough to be their own census tracts, we can use 2000 census data to find out some characteristics of those who live there.  And like Waterside Plaza, another development that was granted a city tax subsidy in exchange for a continued great rent deal for the tenants, residents of these developments are MUCH better off than most of the rest of us.

The big story in New York real estate in recent weeks has been the potential sale, for a purported asking price of $5 billion, of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two huge “middle class” housing developments on Manhattan’s East Side, by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, their developer and long time owner.  Metlife had previously sold its other large New York City housing projects, such as Parkchester in the Bronx.  Immediately, politicos have rallied to the side of the potentially embattled tenants of these developments, most of whom benefit from rent stabilization.  The local council member has proposed a tenant buyout, which he says will be possible with union pension fund money, “socially conscious” investors, and city subsidies.  If the existing tenants want to make a bid for the place, more power to them, although I advise that we are in a real estate bubble and any buyer will likely pay too much – one reason Metlife is selling.  But if they want to put city pension fund money at risk, given that the city would be required to raise taxes and cut services to make up any losses, and to receive tax breaks, I say forget it.  Since Stuytown and Peter Cooper village are large enough to be their own census tracts, we can use 2000 census data to find out some characteristics of those who live there.  And like Waterside Plaza, another development that was granted a city tax subsidy in exchange for a continued great rent deal for the tenants, residents of these developments are MUCH better off than most of the rest of us.

The big story in New York real estate in recent weeks has been the potential sale, for a purported asking price of $5 billion, of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two huge “middle class” housing developments on Manhattan’s East Side, by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, their developer and long time owner.  Metlife had previously sold its other large New York City housing projects, such as Parkchester in the Bronx.  Immediately, politicos have rallied to the side of the potentially embattled tenants of these developments, most of whom benefit from rent stabilization.  The local council member has proposed a tenant buyout, which he says will be possible with union pension fund money, “socially conscious” investors, and city subsidies.  If the existing tenants want to make a bid for the place, more power to them, although I advise that we are in a real estate bubble and any buyer will likely pay too much – one reason Metlife is selling.  But if they want to put city pension fund money at risk, given that the city would be required to raise taxes and cut services to make up any losses, and to receive tax breaks, I say forget it.  Since Stuytown and Peter Cooper village are large enough to be their own census tracts, we can use 2000 census data to find out some characteristics of those who live there.  And like Waterside Plaza, another development that was granted a city tax subsidy in exchange for a continued great rent deal for the tenants, residents of these developments are MUCH better off than most of the rest of us.

The big story in New York real estate in recent weeks has been the potential sale, for a purported asking price of $5 billion, of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, two huge “middle class” housing developments on Manhattan’s East Side, by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, their developer and long time owner.  Metlife had previously sold its other large New York City housing projects, such as Parkchester in the Bronx.  Immediately, politicos have rallied to the side of the potentially embattled tenants of these developments, most of whom benefit from rent stabilization.  The local council member has proposed a tenant buyout, which he says will be possible with union pension fund money, “socially conscious” investors, and city subsidies.  If the existing tenants want to make a bid for the place, more power to them, although I advise that we are in a real estate bubble and any buyer will likely pay too much – one reason Metlife is selling.  But if they want to put city pension fund money at risk, given that the city would be required to raise taxes and cut services to make up any losses, and to receive tax breaks, I say forget it.  Since Stuytown and Peter Cooper village are large enough to be their own census tracts, we can use 2000 census data to find out some characteristics of those who live there.  And like Waterside Plaza, another development that was granted a city tax subsidy in exchange for a continued great rent deal for the tenants, residents of these developments are MUCH better off than most of the rest of us.

Most New Yorkers would agree that poverty and inequality are bad, and the data confirms that both are far above average in New York City.  Advocates for the poor report this constantly.  Their solution:  more money for their organizations, and more places for the poor to live.

As I wrote here, poverty and inequality may be explained by economic and social conditions and public policy at the national level.  At the local level, however, the level of poverty is primarily a product of migration:  who moves in (or is kept out), who moves out (or is pushed out), who is born and who dies off.  Local changes in the poverty rate may have nothing to do with whether individuals are getting richer or poorer whatsoever.  Even if the city succeeded in helping every poor person within its borders to advance out of poverty, its poverty rate would not go down if those formerly poor people moved out and were replaced by new poor people seeking to move up.  When people advocate for more low-income housing in New York City, they are advocating for the opportunity for more low-income people to live here, and thus a higher poverty rate.  Places with low poverty rates are generally affluent suburban jurisdictions that seek to exclude the poor, through zoning rules that keep the price of housing high (more on that in future essays).  Thus, the city’s high poverty rate is an inevitable by product of its accessibility to the poor, something that is in other ways desirable.