The city of Syracuse released a report revealing trends about poverty in the city as a guide for organizations trying to fight poverty. According to the report, 33 percent of Syracuse residents lived in poverty in 2016.

The report, entitled “Below the Line,” was released in November to determine how poverty was connected to other life circumstances and to provide a springboard for possible solutions, said Michelle Sczpanski, the city’s codes data and planning liaison. Overall, the report was intended to provide context for numbers presented in the U.S. Census’s American Community Survey, she said.

“There’s a lot of numbers (in the report), but it’s like there’s people behind that,” Sczpanski said. “There are really families that are dealing with these kinds of issues every single day.”

Syracuse Mayor Ben Walsh called for the creation of the report. It was a collaborative effort by Sczpanski and other members of the city’s Office of Accountability, Performance and Innovation and the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development.

Economic opportunity has been a primary focus of Walsh’s administration. On Monday, Walsh announced a joint initiative with County Executive Ryan McMahon that will provide work experience for homeless people in the community. The initiative will provide transportation to city- and county-identified work sites, designate pick-up locations and connect people to services, per the press release.

The report also marked five barriers that could affect poverty and economic opportunity in Syracuse: housing stability, educational outcomes, workforce participation, transportation and internet access.

“When we’re talking about poverty there’s a lot of kind of interconnected issues in play,” Sczpanski said. “If you have a problem in one of those areas it could have kind of ripple effects.”

When collecting data for the report, the city also discovered that it was lagging behind its peer cities — Rochester, Albany and Buffalo — in the examined areas, Sczpanski said.

Syracuse was the only city that experienced a substantial decline in full-time employment, 14 percent, from 2011 to 2017, according to the report. The peer cities also had smaller percentages of residents without internet access and individuals using public transportation without access to a vehicle.

A lack of reliable transportation is a roadblock for individuals looking to build a career, said Karan Kaplan, director of the Work Train initiative at CenterState CEO. Work Train connects  unemployed and underemployed people with companies looking to build strong work forces. It also works to systematically eliminate barriers to economic advancement, such as transportation.

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The Syracuse Metropolitan Transportation Council created “WorkLink,” a July 2017 report that showed Centro buses did not run when third or fourth shift, or late shift, workers needed them to, said Senior Transportation Planner Aaron McKeon, who led the creation of the report.

Sczepanski said the Centro schedules could have an impact on the number of people working those third and fourth shift jobs, and the city could provide funding to address that. The process of discovering connections between the different data provided by the Census was a main goal of the “Below the Line” report, she said.

The next step after the report’s release is to work with nonprofits and private sector partners to develop and implement solutions to problems highlighted in the report, Sczpanski added.

Frank Ridzi, vice president of community investment at the Central New York Community Foundation, said the organization’s efforts to fight poverty have become more collaborative. The Community Foundation helps organizations fighting poverty share data to become more coordinated, he said.

The charitable foundation distributes about $19 million a year in funding to central New York and is an active community partner in initiatives areas including housing, education and poverty, Ridzi said.

“When you look at poverty, it can be overwhelming as a concept,” Ridzi said. “But when you break it down, you start to see that living in poverty involves living in substandard housing, not having the resources you need to succeed in school, not having the job training or connection to employers that you need in order to have a career.”

Sczpanksi said part of the report’s purpose was to acknowledge the work Syracuse organizations have already done.

The Syracuse City School District’s third-grade English Language Arts proficiency rate, which has been connected to overall educational attainment, increased from 10 percent to 15 percent from 2013 to 2016. The SCSD is the only one of the state’s largest districts, which includes Buffalo, Rochester and Yonkers, to close the graduation achievement gap between black and white students, per the report.

Further examination of initially promising data can reveal more harmful trends, Sczpanksi said.  In housing stability, for example, the percentage of children 17 and under living in the same house for more than a year has increased, per the report. But 25 percent of all city residents have moved sometime in the last year and eviction numbers are often under reported, she added.

Walsh and the Department of Neighborhood and Business Development allocated funds to several organizations helping with evictions for 2018 to 2019, such as the Hiscock Legal Aid Society, which helps people solve legal problems preventing them from having permanent housing.

“These are really serious issues that are affecting a lot of families in our community, and it’s really important that we have a coordinated effort as a community to addressing them,” Sczpanksi said. “But also it’s important to celebrate the areas that we have made success.”

Published on December 11, 2018 at 7:58 pm

Contact India: irmiragl@syr.edu