ROBERT DOAR: I don’t know enough about it. I’ll go look into it. Obviously, HRA’s very good, it truly is very good, at helping people get into the employment world. So I’d like to find out what they’re doing that’s different. I’ll find out.
CITY LIMITS: What’s the latest with the HIV/AIDS Services Administration (HASA) and rent? (See City Limits Weekly #560, Nov. 6, 2006, Low-Income Tenants With HIV Get A Break From Federal Judge.)
ROBERT DOAR: That is very much in litigation, and you know, when we have issues that involve litigations, we don’t talk about it. And this one really fits that criteria. So I’m not going to get into that. ... The judge has issued an injunction. So we’re doing what the judge told us to do.
CITY LIMITS: So, this is your fifth day. Whether you’re here for two years or 10 years, do you feel like there are some things that you, whenever it is that you walk out of here, want to have done at HRA?
ROBERT DOAR: I want to have the ability for folks to access supports for working people to be, not seamless, because it can’t be totally seamless, but much easier than it is currently. That’s my number one objective.
And I believe that if you properly measure poverty, where you include all of the things you’ve done to address poverty, like the Earned Income Tax Credit, like the value of food stamps, like the value of health care coverage, and work, and earnings – if you do that correctly, and we do our job correctly going forward, we will make progress, important progress in reducing the percentage of children raised in households that are defined as in poverty. That’s what I would like to do.
If you look at the statistics on poverty for the state ... it’s significantly down from when we began in ’95, and I want that trend line to continue in New York City. Now, where is it over this whole period? I want to be honest, it’s down from when I started, and relative to where it’s been for the last 35 years; a little [down], but not as much. Poverty really peaked in 1994, and now it’s come down, and we want it to continue to come down.
CITY LIMITS: One last question: full-family sanctions, pro or con?
ROBERT DOAR: I don’t think it’s an issue right now. I worked for the Pataki administration, and I think that full-family sanctions, when properly implemented – and people know this about me – and with lots of sort of checks and balances, is an important tool to convey to people that the rules are the rules, with regard to certain requirements. But we don’t have it in New York, and we’re not going to have it. It’s not something that the legislature is going to do. ... I don’t think it was in the Spitzer budget. We’ve gotten along without it, and I guess we’ll just continue to get along without it and continue to do a good job.
