Incomes Up 14% through Opportunity NYC

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is hosting the Organization of American States today to discuss anti-poverty initiatives in the Americas.  Featured at the meeting with be the City of New York's Opportunity NYC, a program of conditional cash transfers to low-income families to reward them for specific behaviors: attending school, attending doctor's appointments, working full-time, etc.  The Bloomberg Administration, which launched the initiative as one of many anti-poverty programs managed collectively through its Center for Economic Opportunity, has renewed the program for a third year.

The program is both promising and controversial for providing what many deem paternalistic incentives that isolate behavior as the reason households are poor.  I agree.  But let's face it: Opportunity NYC is increasing annual household incomes by as much as 14% per year.  Do we really want to condemn such a result?

Dana Goldstein does a great job weighing the pros and cons and summarizing the very legitimate criticism of Opportunity NYC: it focuses on behavior rather than the structures that keep people from finding work or affordable housing; it is expensive and possibly not providing the right bang for the buck that the feds and philanthropies will want to see, making it not easily scalable; it conditions people to only respond to incentives rather than making permanent changes in their behavior.  These are liberal and conservative criticisms, by the way.

It's all true.  We could do a lot more long-term work if we plowed that money into affordable housing or subsidizing more deeply higher education. The program reinforces ugly "culture of poverty" beliefs that I'm building a career trying to refute. But, until we get our priorities in order, this program is providing families with an additional $3k per year on annual incomes of about $22,000. That's almost 14% more in take-home income for what are primarily single moms and their kids. Do you realize how far that additional $3,000 can go?

Goldstein focuses on Groundwork, an East NY non-profit that I wrote about in one of my first Poverty in America posts, and its social services for low-income families that have been bolstered via Opportunity NYC. In my post, I wrote:

Its family and child programs, beyond just “modeling” proper behavior, provide books; music, arts and sports programs; field and camping trips; literacy training; tutoring; test prep; paid internships; financial incentives; parent support groups; mental health services and preventative healthcare; and income supplements. These kids and their parents now have access to the stuff that most middle-class families get through high performing suburban and private schools or their checkbooks.

$3,000 per year for low-income families also puts some of these resources within reach: a new freezer for storing food purchased in bulk; nursing classes; a car to get to school or work.  Some of the children in these families stand a real chance of working their way out of poverty with this kind of tangible assistance.

My theory of change is that we all play different roles in reforming the system to make it safer and more just.  Some of us are grassroots, frontline activists; some of us are professionals working inside the system; some of us are beneficiaries of and spokespersons for the change we need.  Opportunity NYC has A LOT of flaws, and I'm pleased to see organizations like the Drum Major Institute push back on this model.  OTOH, I'm happy to see low-income families in NYC receive substantial cash flow over which they have some control to spend as they need and wish.

What do you think?  How would you respond to Opportunity NYC?

(Photo titled "Phat Wad, Break Me Off Some" by Refracted Moments)