Living Wage as Soviet Plot: Da or Nyet?
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Thursday, Apr 19, 2012
Wikicommons/City Limits
A Soviet propaganda poster from the immediate post-World War II era. In it, a Russian worker resists the lure of consumer luxuries offered by a Western mogul, who is also offering the NATO alliance (that's the document hiding the bayonet-tipped rifle). The quote at the bottom is from Stalin: "The peoples of the world do not want a repeat of the disasters of war."
Mayor Bloomberg does not like a proposal to require some recipients of city subsidies to pay their employees a "living wage." He detests the idea so much, in fact, that he has twice compared it to something out of the Evil Empire, Soviet Russia.
It's a comparison that at least some Soviet scholars take issue with.
The mayor said last week during his regular radio appearance that "the last time we really had a big managed economy was the USSR, and that didn't work out so well."
This echoed his comments in October: "The last time people tried to set rates, basically, was in the Soviet Union, and that didn't work out very well. I don't think we want to go in that direction."
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Related topic categories: The Economy, History, Living Wage
Heart Attacks Are Biggest Threat to Firefighters
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Monday, Apr 16, 2012
Jim Hendersen (inset: FDNY)/City Limits
Lt. Richard Nappi and his company's Bushwick house.
Forty-seven-year-old Lt. Richard Nappi of Engine 237, a 17-year veteran of the FDNY, was felled by an apparent heart attack Monday after battling a warehouse blaze in Bushwick.
After leading his company into the building to begin fighting the flames, Nappi "became overheated and collapsed," the FDNY said in a statement. Taken to the street by fellow firefighters, he was at first conscious and alert, but went into cardiac arrest after being placed in an ambulance. He died at Woodhull Hospital.
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Related topic categories: Activism and Volunteerism, Health and Environment, FDNY, Firefighter Fatalities
Food Stamp Shortfall Linked to Homelessness
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Wednesday, Apr 11, 2012
Abrahami/Adi Talwar/City Limits
The gap between the typical cost of a family's food and average food stamp benefits may be one reason New York City has seen near-record numbers of families at place like the Department of Homeless Services' PATH intake center (right).
While it doesn't endear him to the food-stamp-hatin' Newt Gingrich crowd, Mayor Bloomberg's expansion of the federal nutrition benefit might rank as one of the signal accomplishments of his mayoralty. From January 2003 to the first month of this year, the number of New Yorkers receiving food stamp benefits increased from 830,000 to more than 1.8 million, a leap of 118 percent.
But a new report by the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness finds that food stamps are still having a less beneficial impact than you might think—for reasons beyond Bloomberg's control. The study concludes that the average food stamp benefit covers only part of a family's food bill in New York City, meaning food stamp recipients might still have to choose between dinner and rent.
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Related topic categories: Hunger, The Economy
Prison Abuse Investigation Wins National Award
Posted by
City Limits
Tuesday, Apr 10, 2012
Marc Fader/City Limits
Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan. In one national survey, its inmates reported the highest rate of staff sexual abuse of any jail or prison in the country.
City Limits magazine's May 2011 report on staff sexual abuse of women inmates in New York State prisons won the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Magazine Investigative Reporting (Regional/Local Circulation), the national Society of Professional Journalists
announced Tuesday.
In "Behind Bars," reporter and writer Kelly Virella found flaws in state policies for recording, investigating and punishing sexual abuse.
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Related topic categories: Workforce and Labor, Justice, Sexual Abuse of Female Inmates
City Limits Criminal Justice Reporting Honored
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Friday, Mar 30, 2012
Marc Fader/City Limits
The guard tower at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility.
According to city data, 30 percent of New York City's homeless shelter entrants have been incarcerated. According to a Justice Department survey, in 2008 and 2009 Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan had the highest inmate-reported rate of staff sexual abuse of any prison or jail in the country that participated in the research.
According to the National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD), City Limits' reporting on both stories was among the best examples in 2011 of reporting that was able to "skillfully bring home to us the critical issues that affect justice and safety in our nation.”
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Related topic categories: Homelessness, Workforce and Labor, Justice, Housing Policy, Sexual Abuse of Female Inmates, Corrections
Some Nabes Lag In Broadband Access
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Friday, Mar 23, 2012
American University, Google, Census Bureau/City Limits
Broadband penetration in the Bronx. The more purple the area, the more households have broadband. To see the national map, and look up your own address, go
here.
Three of New York's boroughs are among the eight least broadband-connected counties in New York State, according to data published Friday.
On the federal government's five-point scale of broadband penetration, the Bronx, Brooklyn and Queens—along with Montgomery, Cattaraugus, Greene, Schoharie and Cayuga counties—score a 3, meaning 400 to 600 out of every 1,000 households have the ability to upload and download data at broadband speeds.
Manhattan and Staten Island each earn a score of 4 on the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) scale, meaning that 600 to 800 homes out of 1,000 are subscribed.
Ten N
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Related topic categories: Arts and Culture
A Headstone for Jashawn Parker
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Tuesday, Mar 20, 2012
When
City Limits reporters met with Paul Parker recently to discuss the 2002 fire that killed his eight-year-old son—one of several troubling incidents at
buildings linked to a Westchester real-estate operation—he asked for a ride to the cemetery to visit Jashawn. It took Paul awhile to find the grave because he had never been able to afford a headstone.
A nonprofit in the Norwood neighborhood where Jashawn lived and died has started a fund to collect the $1,200 needed to purchase a headstone for the gravesite. Checks made out to Bronx Jewish Community Council with "Jashawn Parker" in the memo line can be sent to: Sally Dunford, Bronx Jewish Community Council, 3176 Bainbridge Ave., Bronx, NY 10467. The donations will be tax deductible.
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Related topic categories: Housing and Development
Report Sees Renters' Crisis
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Wednesday, Mar 14, 2012
In the idealized version of the world that exists on an economics professor's chalkboard, financial systems save themselves from disaster. Like a heated-up athlete breaking into a cooling sweat, the economy is supposed to self-correct.
So when a housing market collapse kicked America into recession four years ago, it was reasonable to hope that one benefit of the slowdown would be to reduce housing costs for low-income people, who had struggled to keep up with rising rents during the boom.
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Related topic categories: Housing and Development, Housing Policy, Affordable Housing
As NYCHA Seeks Flexibility, Tenant Advocates Concerned
Posted by
Jarrett Murphy
Tuesday, Mar 13, 2012
Marc Fader/City Limits
First Houses, on the Lower East Side, is where public housing began in the United States. New York is the only city to create its own public housing, and New York is one of only four states to have its own public housing program, on top of the federal one.
New York's public housing authority is hoping to enroll in a national program that will provide it with budgetary flexibility. But advocates for the authority's half-million residents are pressing for assurances that the move will not threaten tenants' rights.
At his agency's annual City Council budget hearing, New York City Housing Authority Chairman John Rhea said that, outside of New York and Los Angeles, virtually every large public housing entity in the country has adopted the Moving to Work program.
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Related topic categories: Housing and Development, Housing Policy, Affordable Housing, Public Housing (Last Stand)
Veterans of 'Battle of Brooklyn' Tell War Stories in Bronx
Posted by
Jordan Moss
Tuesday, Mar 13, 2012
Jordan Moss/City Limits
A panel discussed the "Battle for Brooklyn" after its showing at the Bronx Documentary Center. From left, Atlantic Yards opponent Daniel Goldstein, filmmaker Michael Ganlinsky, Council Member Letitia James, Good Jobs NY director Bettina Damiani and Bronx activist Mychal Johnson.
They came to watch the “Battle for Brooklyn.”
They left armed with some advice for their fledgling fight in the Bronx.
The documentary film, shown at the Bronx Documentary Center in Melrose last Thursday evening, chronicles the seven-year civic trench war against the Atlantic Yards development project in downtown Brooklyn.
About 30 south Bronx residents and activists, all adamantly opposed to Fresh Direct building a factory in the south Bronx’s Harlem River Yards, came to see it and learn some lessons about what they’re up against.
The B
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Related topic categories: Economic Development, Housing and Development
