Results tagged “poverty”

According to a survey of low-income New Yorkers, Crain's reports that "two-thirds have less than $1,000 in savings to fall back on should even tougher times hit, while one-third have no savings at all."

With all the talk that the recession has taken its biggest bite out of those in the top income brackets, it hasn't stopped the income gap in Manhattan being the greatest of any county in the country according to new census data. Other head-scratching numbers among the wealthy recorded in last year's census, the number of New Yorkers making over $200K rose by 19,000 and the median income among the top five percent jumped up to $857,000. The income disparities for the state also remain the largest in the nation.

Yesterday, weather apparently prevented Mayor Bloomberg from giving a speech at the NAACP convention in Cleveland yesterday, but, in his place, Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said the city found 23% of NYC residents are living in poverty, above the 19% the U.S. Census Bureau found.

Mayor Bloomberg is bringing his bottom-line approach to governance to the issue of poverty; specifically, where is the poverty line and who is below it? The Mayor is dissatisfied with the current federal standard for judging who is poor and who is not, which is based on the cost of groceries to feed a family. The current federal standard is 42 years old and criticized by many as totally off-base and outdated, especially since it discounts other costs of living, such as rent, utilities, and childcare.

It’s not Tracy Letts’s fault that his play, August: Osage County, has been breathlessly overhyped by the critics, from the Times’s Charles Isherwood on down. It’s also not his fault that compared to many other Broadway spectacles the play stands out as a polestar of humor and intelligence. Still, it’s difficult to disassociate the play from the deafening buzz; August: Osage County is being heralded as an Important Theatrical Event, when it’s really just a well-crafted new play that happens to stand out among Broadway’s other lowbrow pygmies. (Tom Stoppard’s Rock ‘n’ Roll is well acted but as affectless as it is thought-provoking; the current revival of Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming is absolutely magnificent but, obviously, not the New American Drama critics lust after.)

The City Council's Committee on Government Operations met this week to talk about possible changes to how much money council members make. Questions were raised about how raises were determined, leadership bonuses, and whether outside work should remain permitted. After a 25% increase in base pay in 2006, council members earn $112,500 annually. They can earn an additional $10,000 a year on average if a member holds a leadership position. In addition, members can hold...

The Bureau of Labor Statistics has released data showing Manhattan as the country's highest paid place. Thanks to financial executives' salaries, the average weekly salary for a Manhattanite is $2,821. The next highest weekly salary in the country is Fairfield, Connecticut - $1,979. The figure reflect the heady first quarter of 2007. The rest of New York City residents make more modest amounts. Queens residents make an average of $831/week, followed by $788 made in...

The financial markets may be taking a hit lately, but Wall Street is still planning about $38 billion in bonuses this year. Bloomberg News reports that the money was thanks to "a record $9 billion of fees for arranging acquisitions and $5 billion for underwriting initial public offerings and sales of junk bonds." This translate to an average Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Lehman Brothers or Bear Stearns worker getting over $200,000 in bonuses....

The Critical Mass Halloween Ride is tonight! If you go, get some good pictures!

Last night, a memorial bike ride was held in memory of Craig Murphey. Murphey, a 26-year-old who worked at the West Harlem Action Network Against Poverty, was biking when he was hit by an oil truck at Union Avenue and Ten Eyck Street in Williamsburg.

This morning, President Bush is addressing the 62nd United Nations General Assembly. He is expected to discuss "global fight against terrorism, tyranny and poverty," as well as sanctions against Myanmar in support of the protest organized by Buddhist monks. However, he will only mention Iran briefly, and will opt to cover "broad themes." A White House spokesman said, "The president wanted this speech to focus on many other issues that are facing the world -- issues that people in Sudan and Zimbabwe and Burma and countless other countries are dealing with," referring to the United Nations' mission to ensuring freedom.

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: an unusual trauma at Pennsylvania and Flatlands Aves. in Brooklyn, a church robbery on West 31st St. in Manhattan, and a found DOA on Furman St. at the piers in Brooklyn.
• State officials are now thinking that the best way to reincarnate the glory days of the old Penn Station is not to build two office towers on top of the Farley Post Office building.
• They've arrested the man who allegedly beat and robbed 101-year-old Rose Morat, but cops are now searching for another man who did the same to a 79-year-old grandmother in the elevator of her apartment building in Queens.
• Since the rack rate of the average hotel room in NYC is now about $350 a night, perhaps it was inevitable that we would see the proliferation of illegal hotels.
• The Atlantic City Sands Casino will be imploded Vegas-style next month, with accompanying fireworks by Grucci and a laser light show.
• Staring down a projected $3.6 billion budget deficit, Gov. Spitzer is pledging to not increase state spending by more than 5.3% or so next year.
• Mayors Bloomberg and Giuliani are both out of New York, remotely tugging over the mantle of 9/11 as their political legacy. Perhaps our next mayor will oversee the construction of something at the site of the World Trade Center.
• The number of New Yorkers on the Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans rose from 45 to 64, as that group's wealth jumped 370% from last year, to $224 billion. The city still has almost two million people living below the poverty line, however, so don't let the Forbes thing go to your head.

Yesterday, the U.S. Census released data showing that the number of New Yorkers living in poverty increased, though the national number dropped. With more than 1.54 million New Yorkers in poverty, that makes it a 2% increase from last year, a change the city attributes to how the data was collected. Still, Mayor Bloomberg said, "Whether the numbers are overstated or understated, there is no question that they are much too high and you have to keep working on finding ways to reduce the poverty level."

As Americans continue their race slow, labored walk towards larger and larger coffins, New Yorkers are not far behind. According to a study published yesterday by the Trust for America’s Health, obesity rates rose in 31 U.S. States last year including New York where 22.4% of adults are obese – up by 0.7% from 2005.

The New York Times details how it was not for a lack of trying that homeless grew during Bloomberg's tenure in office. The city spent $79 million on initiatives to fight the problem, including a Compstat-like program to track incidences of homelessness and identify trends that could be corrected before they became full-fledged problems. Bloomberg took on programs that he thought encouraged people in marginal housing to become homeless, and met stiff opposition.

The city's deputy mayor of health and human services Linda Gibbs announced some details of how the cash-incentives-to-the-poor program will work yesterday. Students (whose schools participate in the program and whose families meet the critieria) would get $25/month for at least 95% elementary school attendance and 50%/month at the high school level, $600 for each of the five Regents exams passed, $300 for taking 11 high school credits a year, $50 for getting a library card and $50 for taking the PSAT. Additionally, some families will qualify for $150/month for working 30 hours a week and $600 for every 140 hours of job training.

John Gotti Jr., son of Gambino mob boss John Gotti and long suspected of still being in the mob (even though his last trial ended in a mistrial) tells the Post he's moving out of New York because he's a bit cash-strapped. The Post touts his "don-sizing" of his Oyster Bay mansion - we wonder if any mob lore fans will want to buy Gotti's 1.96 acre home. Gotti Jr. said, "We're going to move out east at first [within Long Island so his son can finish high school], and then, in a year, to Florida or South Carolina, where it's cheaper." Watch out, Dirty South!

Of the world’s total population of 6.5 billion, 90% (that's 5.8 billion people) have little or no access to things the rest of us take for granted - with nearly half not having regular access to food, clean water, or shelter. Design for the Other 90% is an exhibit on view at Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum through September 23rd, and it focuses on affordable and innovative products not geared towards the 10% getting Crate and Barrel catalogs in the mail.

Can't a guy change his website without people suddenly asking questions about it? Well, if you're the billionaire mayor of the country's largest city who may or may not have presidential/gubernatorial leanings, then no. And not when he announces to to the press, either.

After looking across the pond for his congestion pricing scheme (London introduced congestion pricing in 2003 and extended it westward this February), Mayor Bloomberg is travelling south of the border to Mexico on a fact-finding trip to fight poverty. The subject of the mayor's journey is a program dubbed Conditional Cash in the U.S., but called Oportunidades in Mexico. Oportunidades pays poor Mexican women unrestricted cash bonuses for behaving in a manner that officials hope will break that country's persistent cycle of poverty. Goals that must be met include regular school attendance by a family's children, showing up for scheduled medical appointments, and following dietary guidelines that may include feeding children necessary dietary supplements. Compliant women must then travel once a month to a distribution center where they are paid an amount of money dependent on their circumstances, such as how many children they have. Oportunidades is not an employment program, but an effort to increase people's social capital by inculcating self-beneficial values and behavior.

On Tuesday "The Oprah Winfrey Show" became a platform for the Hip-Hop community to respond to the Don Imus controversy with a panel discussion featuring Russell Simmons, Dr. Benjamin Chavis, Kevin Liles, Common and more.

- Employment and training incentives will promote increased employment and earnings or combine work activities with specific job training activities. For instance, exemplary attendance in elementary could earn $25 every two months, while exemplary high school attendance earns $50. Getting high scores on exams is worth $200-300, and things like going for check-ups or keeping a job would also be rewards. The city estimates families will earn $3,000-5,000.

A look at some noteworthy programs this week:

From HealthCareThatWorks comes this informative new mashup, showing all of the hospitals in the city, including the ones slated for closure or reduction in services. If you look at the map, one thing is obvious:

A report from the New York City Coalition for Educational Justice says that many city middle schools are "pathways to failure." Ouch. The group also has some damning statistics: Though 50% of white students can read at eighth grade levels, only 25% of Hispanic and African-American students can (and only 22% of eighth grade students at high poverty schools can read at eighth grade levels). From the Sun:

Accelerated math courses are offered at 57% of high-performing schools, which have higher proportions of white students and lower proportions of high-poverty students, and only 17% of low-performing schools, which tend to have more minority and highpoverty students. Among teachers at the low-performing middle schools, 25% weren't highly qualified under No Child Left Behind requirements, compared to 17% at high-performing schools.

God Shed His Grace on Thee, by Brunocerous.

Yesterday, Joseph Bruno, the NY State Senate's majority leader, revealed that the FBI was investigating him for his "outside business interests." Wow, is being investigated by the feds the new black for Republicans? Or is being investigation something most politicians need to go through (we're talking to you, Alan Hevesi!)? Republican Bruno called a press conference and told reporters, "I have nothing to hide. They are going into background over the past five or six years."

Light and Oil on Water by mdpNY.

MOVIE: In their ongoing series about The Next Generation of Film, the Film Society at Lincoln Center has been bringing award winning filmmakers to the Upper West Side to discuss the behind the scenes of their work. This newest installment features Ben Affleck, the Oscar winner who seems to be on the road back from being a celeb couple punch line with his work in the recent film, , it's rude. - Karen Wilson