ALBANY N.Y.
Gov. Eliot Spitzer on Monday detailed a plan to better help the working poor rise from welfare to the middle class, including lowering the costs and increasing the availability of housing and day care.
Spitzer ordered 17 state agencies to team up to try to end what he has called a “perfect storm of unaffordability.” The Economic Security Cabinet will also provide ways to improve job opportunities, training and education for families to move from welfare to the work force. The aim, Spitzer said, is a sustainable job that pays expenses and help a family become financially secure.
Advocates for the poor have long complained that government has done too little to bolster the working poor who, through extra training, education, services or by law left social services during the welfare reform efforts of the late 1990s.
Spitzer’s attention on Monday was welcomed even by some advocates for the poor who criticized the Democrat less than two weeks ago for vetoing a welfare-to-work bill. That bill would have required government to train recipients for higher-paying, “sustainable wage” jobs. Under the bill, local and state governments would have had to train recipients for jobs that pay $17 an hour or more and to find training and openings for nontraditional employment, such as women in construction. Spitzer said then that the Legislature’s bill was “neither targeted effectively nor administratively realistic.”
The Hunger Action Network of New York State had been disappointed by the veto, but applauded Spitzer’s action on Monday.
“The state needs to be making better policy choices to truly build ‘one New York’ for all of our residents, including the working poor and working people on welfare,” said Bich Ha Pham, executive director of Hunger Action of New York State. “Almost a half a million people receiving welfare in our state have dreams of joining the middle class and becoming economically secure.” But she said too many aren’t able to benefit from education and job training.
