Federal Housing and Retraining Program (HRP)
Exhibit 3:
Economic Distress Information
Recruitment Area
The Area is a diverse collection of many communities which includes mixed use residential, retail and small manufacturing firms located in the northern area of The Area. The Area is an ethnic blend with a predominance of Minorities, a large Polish population in north and a significant Chinese population in the south, and the rest of the mix is Hispanic, other Asians and Pacific Islanders and Black. The population has been in continual decline throughout the 19X0's until the last decade. One cause of the population exodus has been the decline of the previously dominant manufacturing base that sustained the community throughout the years between the world war to the 19X0's.
The Area is particularly vulnerable and dependent on expanding employment opportunities for both cultural and demographic reasons. Culturally, the predominance of Hispanic and Chinese populations feature large extended families with many children and therefore require greater financial resources to sustain themselves in difficult times. Furthermore the Chinese population is confined to the area and is unable to search for opportunities elsewhere. Demographically, the population of the Area is unusually youthful. More than one third of the population is under 28 years of age with the majority under 18.
The poverty rate is overwhelming. The Area has one of the highest poverty rates in all of The City. Over one third of the population is below the poverty line. Over 50% of the residents are foreign born and have great difficulty in speaking and writing English. The unemployment rate is over 10% with some census tracts over 20%. And this does not account for the hidden unemployment and underemployment that is pervasive in the local area.
From the figures available at the present time the future looks no better. Half of the available population is in the labor force. Much of this can be traced to the lack of available employable skills, or a mismatch between the skills of the residents and those required by regional industries. Most of the members of the local community who are employed work in low wage jobs such as machine operators, clerical support, service work, sales and general labor. thirteen percent of the population are professionals, managers, or in technical positions, another twelve percent are involved in the crafts. With the emerging young population entering the work force, the Area is drastically in need of new employment possibilities.
The Area, as is the case in many of the neighborhoods of The City, has been losing manufacturing jobs. The firms that provided these positions in the past have and continue to move to other parts of the country and abroad. One in five manufacturing plants left the Area in the last fifteen years but the number of jobs that disappeared in that period in these industries declined by 41%. Those industries that remaining utilize fewer and fewer workers, emphasizing basic skills and experiencing high turnover because of the nature of the employment and the low wages that these jobs pay.
Many of the manufacturing firms that still employed local individuals tend to hire immigrants as machine operators and for other low skilled positions. Technical and skilled positions in local businesses employed educated residents, however, for these skilled positions there is little if any turnover and thus no opportunity for new employment for the emerging youthful population.
The Area is facing an inevitable crisis involving the continuing viability of the surrounding communities and industries to support and employed the local population. Without a significant change in the current trends younger people will be forced to leave to find employment to support their families.
One of the potential areas of economic growth in the next decade is likely to be housing construction. The housing situation is in crisis. After the initial population loss between 19X0 to the 19X0's, the population rose dramatically in the late 19X0's and increased by close to 10% officially in the last decade. Unofficially, we believe the growth was even more dramatic, if only because of the number of immigrants (1/3rd of the community) and the potential for under-reporting in a region where large families, language skills, and closed communities make official census reporting extraordinarily difficult. Thus housing is at a premium and affordable housing even more precious.
With recent changes in zoning concomitant with huge increases in the number of young families it is extremely likely that housing production in the area will be a major development sector in the local economy. Space has been at a premium for the past several years, however the rezoning of vacant industrial space and the federal government's abandonment of the waterfront will provide vast tracts of necessary space for the expansion of both market rate and assisted housing.
In these circumstances training for the construction trades has the potential to have a major impact on the local labor force. The likelihood of both union and non-union employment in construction for building both housing and the resulting infrastructure improvements is likely to be a growth industry in the near future. Training dollars for the purposes of instructing young people in the capability of performing construction work and related tasks is liable to be well spent.
Job training and education is not a luxury for this community and its citizens, it is a necessity.
(see related census data and other information from Community Needs: 199X, The Area as attached in Appendix A)
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Housing Area
The community in which the housing site is located is one in which housing has been identified as a critical need. The shortage of affordable and assisted housing is at a crisis level. Overcrowding is rampant and homelessness pronounced. It will be unlikely that public housing construction alone will be able to effect any change in the near future. Although The City has 2000 units of public housing in development, there is difficulty in finding sites which meet both Federal Housing criteria and are able to pass community standards.
Thus the need for affordable housing will primarily be the province of public-private partnerships, who will have the backing of community support and the capability of producing affordable housing for the residents of the local community.
This will be especially true in the Area where there is a preponderance of public housing (6506 units) as a percentage of assisted units and a resistance to new public housing construction a small portion of the units will go to local residents.
New ways must be found to finance and construct affordable housing. From the census data it can readily be observed that the Area experienced a growth of only 661 units (1.21%) in the past decade, while the population increased by nearly ten percent. Most of the new construction was of market rate units, which had no effect on the population requiring assisted housing.
The vacancy rate of all rental housing in The City is under 5% and in the Area the shortages are even more severe. There is no available public housing and there are over 200,000 families on the waiting lists. There are large numbers of substandard and deteriorated units and many abandoned buildings.
It should also be noted that there are large numbers of young families who as yet are unable to afford the full cost of market rate housing because of their incipient position in the workforce and the wages that the positions that they hold now pay.
It is clear from even a cursory reading of the data that there is a drastic need for new construction of affordable units and within this program the HRP initiative may play an essential role.
(see related census data and other information from Community Needs: 199X, The Area as attached in Appendix A)
To Sample Grant Application No. 3, Exhibit 4 |
