News and Resources

 

June 26, 2012

United Neighborhood Houses Responds to the City Budget Agreement

Statement by Nancy Wackstein, Executive Director

“UNH welcomes the news of the restoration of funding for child care, afterschool and other key programs for working families, immigrants and older New Yorkers in the final budget agreement yesterday.  We are very pleased to see that the New York City Council and the Mayor came together to agree on a budget that supports vital programs in our communities.

Child care and after school programs faced unprecedented losses under the Mayor’s budget proposal; if enacted, these truly would have been disastrous for thousands of low-income families and children. We are gratified that our City’s leaders demonstrated commitment to children and families and economic vitality by restoring nearly $100 million to child care and $50 million to the Out-of-School Time (after school) system.  Children and youth across the city are assured of at least another year of essential programming and support.  

We are also pleased that funding for key services for seniors, disconnected youth and immigrants was maintained. Unfortunately, at this time, it appears there will be 4,000 fewer jobs for young people in the Summer Youth Employment Program.

UNH will continue to work to ensure that fundamental services for children, working families, seniors, and immigrants are priorities in our City.  The future of our City absolutely depends on adequately supporting those who are vulnerable and those who are doing everything possible to be self-sufficient.  UNH will continue to fight for City priorities that embrace those important values”.  

United Neighborhood Houses (UNH) is the membership organization of New York City settlement houses and community centers. Rooted in the history and values of the settlement house movement, UNH promotes and strengthens the neighborhood-based, multi-service approach to improving the lives of New Yorkers in need and the communities in which they live. UNH’s membership comprises one of the largest human service systems in new York City, with 38 agencies working at more than 400 sites to provide high quality services and activities to a half million New Yorkers each year. UNH supports its members through policy development, advocacy, and capacity building activities.

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Without raising the tax bar, education, child care, libraries and other city services will be spared – despite original concerns of heavy cuts – in the 2013 Fiscal Year budget, city officials announced Monday, June 25 attributing the balanced budget to several cost-saving methods.

“When times were better, the city set aside surplus revenue — and when the first storm clouds gathered in 2007, we began cutting budgets,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg. “These actions — and our work over the past decade to diversify the economy and make it less reliant on Wall Street — have allowed us avoid the severe service cuts that many other cities are facing.”

About $150 million will be added from the mayor’s May Executive Budget, which proposed a large child care cut, to the Administration for Children’s Services Child Care Program and the Department of Youth and Community Development Out-of-School Time program, ensuring child care stays well-funded in the City.

The funding is a major accomplishment for child care, said Gregory Brender, policy advisor for United Neighborhood Houses.

Read the full article>>

After school in Sunnyside, kids dance, practice martial arts and perfect their downward facing dog.

"It gives me the opportunity to learn new things," said one student.

But living in their neighborhood may end up costing them. Faced with a budget deficit, the city is slashing day care and after-school programs. Advocates charge 47,000 seats could be eliminated.

At the same time, both the Administration for Children's Services and the city's Department of Youth and Community Development are restructuring how they deliver programs.

They are ranking services by zip codes and prioritizing certain programs by poverty levels. That means some areas, like the Upper East Side, parts of Brooklyn and Sunnyside, may miss out on funding.

But Chelsea still has public housing projects. Critics of the city's new policy said those residents or lower-income ones elsewhere in the neighborhood are unfairly targeted.

"This was deeply flawed because within many of the zip codes that were either non-targeted by ACS or non-priority by DYCD, there are pockets of need," said Gregory Bender of United Neighborhood Houses.

Read the full article>> 

Citi Field Kids, which is an educational and motivational community-based initiative for New York City school students in developed by Citi in collaboration with the Jackie Robinson Foundation. In the first edition of the program, Jake Ballard and Kari Miller spoke about overcoming obstacles.

Children’s classrooms will remain unaffected in Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s 11th executive budget — but kids may have nowhere to go after the final bell rings.

The $68.7 million balanced budget includes no tax increases, but presents deep cuts to after-school programs, day care and fire companies while retaining more than 2,500 teacher positions the mayor proposed eliminating in his preliminary plan.

United Neighborhood Houses (UNH) called Bloomberg’s “lack of commitment” to children “nothing short of disgraceful.” 

Read the full article>> 

                                                     

For Immediate Release: May 3, 2012
Contact: Annetta Seecharran, Director of Policy and Advocacy, (212) 967-0322 x329

United Neighborhood Houses Responds to the Mayor’s Failure to Restore Funding for Child Care and After-School in his Executive Budget

“United Neighborhood Houses (UNH) is outraged by the lack of commitment to children, working families, and older adults that is revealed in the Mayor’s Executive Budget this year.

The Mayor’s complete failure to restore funds to child care and after-school programs, including Out-of-School Time (OST), is nothing short of disgraceful. It is a hit to not only the 47,000 children who will lose the critical educational and social support they are provided through these programs, but to their parents, who will be forced to quit their jobs to take care of their children or leave them alone after the school day ends.  Thousands of jobs will be lost at non-profit agencies with the shuttering of these programs. In the UNH agency network alone, over 50% of OST programs, which service approximately 6,000 children, are already slated for closure.

This budget devastates the infrastructure that keeps hard-working parents in their jobs, provides children and youth with productive educational opportunities, and strengthens the current and future generations of New Yorkers. The fact that services supporting low-income communities including after-school and child care programs have failed to rise to the top of the Mayor’s priority list is shameful.”

United Neighborhood Houses (UNH) is the membership organization of New York City settlement houses and community centers. Rooted in the history and values of the settlement house movement, UNH promotes and strengthens the neighborhood-based, multi-service approach to improving the lives of New Yorkers in need and the communities in which they live. UNH’s membership comprises one of the largest human service systems in new York City, with 37 agencies working at more than 400 sites to provide high quality services and activities to a half million New Yorkers each year. UNH supports its members through policy development, advocacy, and capacity building activities.

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Download statement here. 

But Sara Cavasos had a pressing concern of a different sort, one she shared yesterday with 300-plus people at a rally at Temple Emanu-El in Port Richmond.

She spoke about how proposed cuts to the federal budget would shred the safety net for her and her mother, which includes quarters in a family shelter.

“It’s really hard,” she quavered through tears, as her mother stood beside her. “I don’t know what to do, one day to the next. And if you cut the programs, what will people like us do?”

The rally kicked off a campaign to fight the proposed cuts to the Community Service Block Grant Program that would cost the city $31 million. Staten Island services like immigrant assistance, healthy families, after-school programs and housing assistance would lose $750,000, said Suzanne Lynn, deputy commissioner for the Department of Youth and Community Development.

Kevin Douglas of United Neighborhood Houses, part of a coalition of citywide organizations leading the charge against the cuts, urged Islanders to fight back via petitions, letters, meetings and online efforts. The same cuts were proposed last year, Douglas noted, but an all-out community effort rolled them back. “This money is important to you,” Douglas said. “If it is eliminated, we are all going to suffer.”