Pointing to Congress, the city warns already-threatened anti-poverty programs that there may be no more money
Client of the Fortune Society. David Y. Lee, via fortunesociety.org
1:38 pm Sep. 28, 2011
The Bloomberg administration has informed a number of nonprofit organizations that the city's poorest residents rely upon that it can't give them any more money to operate until Congress resolves its budget dispute.
The cutoff of further disbursement to the federally supported, city-backed poverty-alleviation programs comes as the programs' funding is already under threat in Washington, and at a moment when New York City's population of people living beneath the poverty line is at its highest since 2000.
The city's Department of Youth and Community Development, which disburses city, state and federal funds to community organizations, has a budget of approximately $300 million. Of that, $30 million comes from what are known as Community Service Block Grants (CSBG), which are particularly valuable to the city because they don't come encumbered with too many restrictions on how they are spent.
"CSBG is an interesting animal, because it really is a flexible pot of anti-poverty money, so localities can use it for a variety of services, as long as it's serving low-income people," Suzanne Lynn, the department's deputy commissioner, who oversees the block grants, told Capital.
One in five New Yorkers, or more than 1.6 million city residents, live in poverty, according to the most recent census numbers. Many of those who live in poverty are children. And the census numbers are widely thought to undercount the poor, since they fail to take into account the New York's high cost of living. The federal poverty threshold for an individual is $10,890, and for a family of four, $22,350, laughable numbers by city standards.
In February, when President Obama released his budget for the 2012 fiscal year, he proposed cutting Community Service Block Grant funding in half, from $700 million to $350 million, to the consternation of anti-poverty groups.
This current budget impasse puts even that funding in doubt. Congress rarely passes proper budgets these days, instead relying on stop-gap measures known as continuing resolutions, which the House Republicans have taken to using as a lever to impel the Democratic-controlled Senate and the White House to agree to new spending cuts.
It's not at all clear that the federal government will fund these block grants in the next continuing resolution, whenever said resolution gets passed.
Meanwhile, the department's communications with its service providers have become increasingly colored by uncertainty.
On July 26, Lynn sent an email to community-based organizations warning that, "At a minimum, we expect a 50% reduction to CSBG nationally ... In anticipation of a likely reduction, our state oversight agency, the NYS Department of State, has instructed all Community Action Agencies in the state (including DYCD) to submit refunding applications for FFY 12 for half the amount of CSBG funding available under FFY 11."
On August 20, Lynn sent an even more dire-sounding email, saying, "When Congress returns from its August recess in September, it will start the process for passing a budget for FFY 12 which starts on October 1 ... At this point, we do not have enough information to be able to predict what Congress will do in September. Therefore, until there is a budget or CR passed, we will not be able to issue payments beyond the initial advance amount."
In a brief phone interview yesterday, Lynn said, "We’ve heard a lot of possibilities about what could happen to the CSBG program, but nothing firm so far."
That could bode ill for a number of city initiatives that cater to poor New Yorkers, including senior services, English classes for immigrants, case management for families in crisis and programs to facilitate criminal reintegration into society.
Block grants currently pay for about 80 percent of the Fortune Society's fatherhood initiative, which works to reconnect formerly incarcerated men with their children.
"It connects them to the child support system so they are actively participating in their children’s lives financially, but it also connects them to their children emotionally," said Glenn Martin, Fortune's vice president of development and public affairs. "It tends to have a significant impact on recidivism."
Should the block grants be eliminated, Martin said the fatherhood initiative "would be decimated."
In the meantime, nonprofits will continue to wait for news of their fate, and the Bloomberg administration will continue to lobby for a reprieve.
"Thirty million may not seem like a lot of money in the context of New York City’s overall budget, but CSBG has played a really critical role in the social safety net here," said Lynn. "These are the services that the communities themselves have said are the most important to them."
A new version of a continuing resolution, with a reduced level of spending on emergency relief, was proposed by the Senate on Monday, but it still needs formal approval in the House.
