Yet another challenge for the anti-poverty folks

(One
of an occasional series on Rochester’s anti-poverty efforts.)

The scene outside RochesterWorks
one cold, drizzly afternoon last week was pretty impressive: dozens of teenagers
were waiting in line. And cars, bumper to bumper, were bringing more.

They kept coming, from up the street and from around the
corner, where parents waited in cars…. The teenagers – more than 300 of them by
the end of the afternoon – were dropping off identification, work permits, and
other documents in the hopes of landing a summer job.

RochesterWorks provides free
employment and job training services, among them a Summer Youth Employment
Program. The teenagers who land a job will work for area businesses,
non-profits, and others for six weeks, earning minimum wage, learning, and
getting work experience and resume cred. Employers don’t foot the bill; the
salaries are paid for with federal funds.

The program is open to young people 14 to 21 years old, and
they have to be in middle school or high school. There are income-eligibility
limits, so many of the participants are low-income city residents who may
otherwise find it hard to get a job.

For many of them, says RochesterWorks
communications specialist Ruthann Campbell, this is the first work experience.
And these are real jobs – computer work, hospitality, clerical
– not gofer jobs with make-do assignments. Ninety-five percent of last year’s
participants successfully completed their summer job, Campbell says; some of
the remaining five percent dropped out of the program because they got other
jobs.

The 300 teenagers lining up that afternoon were among about
3700 who had turned in resumes for this summer’s
program. How many jobs will be available for them? RochesterWorks
doesn’t know yet, Campbell says; they’re always looking for more employers to
participate. But last year only 900 young people were employed through the
program.

The
same week that RochesterWorks was meeting with
the young job seekers, the Brookings Institution released yet another disturbing
report with a particular relevance to Rochester.

The subject this time was “the growing distance between
people and jobs in metropolitan America.” Throughout the country, says
Brookings, jobs are moving away from where people live. It’s true in cities and
in suburbs, but the problem is most acute in high-poverty census tracts.

The job migration, says Brookings, is doing serious damage.
For one thing, when employers move out of a city or a suburb, it affects the
tax base. It also reduces the number of retail services residents have nearby.

And it obviously has a major effect on residents’ job
opportunities – particularly if they’re poor.

“People who live closer to jobs are more likely to work,”
says the Brookings report. “They also face shorter job searches and spells of
joblessness.”

And while the report notes that job proximity isn’t the only
challenge poor residents face in getting a job, “living closer to jobs
increases the likelihood of working and leaving welfare. Proximity matters for
lower-income, lower-skill workers in particular because they tend to be more
constrained by the cost of housing and commuting.”

Nationally, the number of jobs close
to residents declined by 6 percent between 2000 and 2012. In the 96 metro areas
that Brookings studied, the decline was a bit more: 7 percent.

But in the sprawling Greater Rochester area as a whole, the
decline was 11.7 percent. In the concentrated-poverty neighborhoods of the City
of Rochester, it was more than 12 percent – and in some neighborhoods, it was
over 22 percent.

Last week, the Rochester-Monroe Anti-Poverty Initiative –
the big new effort to eliminate poverty – announced the members of its steering
committee. All 26 of them need to read the Brookings report.

As I’ve said before, I worry that the Anti-Poverty
Initiative will do little more than tinker around the edges. Its leaders insist
that won’t happen, and maybe it won’t. But our poverty problem didn’t spring up
just last year. Poverty and its destructive concentration have been building in
Rochester for decades.

It’s just gotten worse – because we haven’t been willing to do
the hard things. We haven’t even talked about the hard things. We’ve tried to
eradicate poverty with programs, with agency “cooperation,” not with systemic
changes.

What changes and what hard things?

We need to concentrate development and job creation in the
city, for one thing, so that the neediest residents have a better chance at
employment. Stop the sprawl-fostering competition for development between the
city and its suburbs. Stop subsidizing sprawl. Get suburban leaders to agree
that creating a strong economic core for the region – creating a strong city –
is in everybody’s interest.

Another: raise the minimum wage so that employed poor people
will be at least slightly less poor.

But
that won’t be enough. The Anti-Poverty leaders will find a particularly
sobering warning in the Brookings Report: For some people, job proximity isn’t
the biggest challenge. Poor and minority residents may stay unemployed “even
when they live close to jobs,” says the report. “For instance, for poor
residents living in areas of concentrated poverty, the positive effects of job
proximity diminish or can disappear altogether.”

Diminish
or can disappear altogether.

Because many lack the education and skill
to get a job. Countering that will require strong schools. Early childhood education.Parenting
support.Extensive job training.

That’ll cost money, both public and private. And it’ll take
enormous changes – in government, in schools, in business practices.

In her State of the City address in February, Rochester Mayor
Lovely Warren said something that should be read aloud before every meeting of
the Anti-Poverty steering committee:

“The best way to move children out of poverty is to ensure
that they have access to a quality education and that their parents have access
to sustainable, living-wage jobs.”

Warren’s absolutely right.

And tinkering won’t do it. Only dealing with the hard things
will.

This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2015.