News and Resources

 
"People are describing the OST awards as a bloodbath," said Wackstein. "When the EarlyLearn awards are announced, it's going to be just as serious." 

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 City budgetary cuts may produce thousands of “latch key” Queens children if funds to day care and after-school programs remain slashed.

Allocations to the Administration for Children’s Services is down more than $30 million in the city’s preliminary budget for the 2013 Fiscal Year.

“Thousands of families won’t be able to have access to affordable child care,” said Gregory Brender, policy advisor for United Neighborhood Houses. “They’ll face a horrible choice of leaving their kids at home or not going to work. We can’t have these children become latch key kids.”

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For public housing resident Wanda Marte, losing city subsidized childcare at the Hudson Guild in Chelsea would mean parting with a service that gives her a fighting chance to get ahead.

“I don’t know what I would do,” Marte said recently at the nonprofit on W. 26th St. “It’s very good to have a place like this. It gives us parents an opportunity to go work and have a better life.”

Marte, 38, moved into the Elliott-Chelsea Houses next to the center — and a short walk from trendy cafes and galleries — in March after a year in a shelter.

Now, the program she depends on for childcare, and many others like it across the city, are imperiled by proposed cuts — simply because the providers are located in predominantly wealthy areas.

An analysis from United Neighborhood Houses released to the Daily News shows the Bloomberg administration is determining which nonprofits should get childcare funding based largely on a zip code’s affluence.

“In the absence of (budget) money, they are having to come up with these bizarre schemes,” said Nancy Wackstein, the advocacy group’s executive director.

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 The New York Nonprofit Press published an op-ed co-written by UNH Executive Director Nancy Wackstein and Executive Director of UNH Member University Settlement Society, Michael Zisser. This piece was a response to the recent closing of the historical Hull House in Chicago, one of the premiere settlement houses in this country, and tells the positive story about the effectiveness of settlement houses in recent decades in NYC.

"...The right story to tell is not about the unique issues confronting Hull House, which may never be fully known to the public, but instead about the incredible inventiveness, creativity, innovation, efficiency and effectiveness that has characterized the settlement house movement in recent decades. In New York City, there are now more than 37 independent settlement houses and community centers, which make up the membership of United Neighborhood Houses of New York. These  non-profit organizations serve more than 500,000 people each year across the five boroughs, operate from more than 400 sites, employ more than 10,000 staff, and have an aggregate budget from a combination of public and private sources that exceeds half a billion dollars each year.   UNH members are major employers in their communities and in many cases are significant economic engines, as well, through their purchase of goods and services."

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New York City plans to cut financing for an after-school program that opened under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, a move that advocates say could cut the number of seats for children nearly in half next year.

Nancy Wackstein, executive director of United Neighborhood Houses — an association of New York settlement houses and community centers — estimated that because of budget cuts, 23,000 children of elementary and middle school age would lose access to the program next year.

“When the school dismissal bell rings and parents are still at work, many of their elementary and middle school children will have nowhere to go,” Ms. Wackstein said in a statement.

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Now halfway through its third season, Citi Field Kids is an educational and motivational community-based initiative for New York City middle- and high- school students developed by Citi in collaboration with the Jackie Robinson Foundation, United Neighborhood Houses of New York and the Mets. Launched in 2009 in conjunction with Major League Baseball's annual Jackie Robinson Day, Citi Field Kids has hosted more than 2,500 students.

 

 Citi's Wes Moore

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Nancy Wackstein, Executive Director of United Neighborhood Houses, releases a statement regarding the Mayor's FY 2012 Executive Budget. Read the full statement here>>