By Daniel Katzive
City Councilmember Gale Brewer and Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal announced a new program on Wednesday to support young people living in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) Amsterdam Houses and Amsterdam Addition developments, located between W. 61st and W. 65th Streets, Amsterdam and West End Avenues. Brewer was joined by City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams at the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center on West 65th Street to launch the initiative.
The “Creating Opportunities for Amsterdam” (COFA) program will feature direct, door-to-door outreach to young people living in the developments. Outreach workers, two of whom were at Wednesday’s event, will focus on young people “who may be orbiting criminal activity…restricting their activities due to health or disconnection…and whose aspirations for education and employment are difficult to realize,” according to a press release. The outreach team will connect these young people to services offered by partner organizations, and provide counseling to create and achieve “meaningful life plans.”
Councilmember Brewer said she believes this is the first time this direct approach has been tried and, if successful, it could provide a template for similar initiatives in other NYCHA developments.
COFA will be run jointly by Goddard Riverside, a nonprofit social-service organization supporting Upper West Siders and all New Yorkers from early childhood to older adulthood, and by Positive Influence, a youth program which started in the Amsterdam Houses. Roderick Jones, Executive Director of Goddard Riverside, said that staff has already been hired for COFA and he expects the program to be up and running in early March. The COFA initiative will leverage off existing programs offered by Goddard Riverside and other organizations.
Fordham University’s Graduate School of Social Service, which is based nearby at the University’s Lincoln Square campus, will also be involved, providing ongoing evaluation of the program’s effectiveness.
COFA is funded in part by a $100,000 grant allocated by Councilmember Brewer from Speaker Adams’ Community Safety and Victims Service Initiative, which provides funds to each City Council District for local community safety programs. At the launch event, Speaker Adams said, “safety is not just the absence of crime but a presence of well-being. This is the pathway to prevent crime before it ever occurs.” New York State Assemblymember Linda B. Rosenthal delivered an additional $125,000 in funding for the program.
The Amsterdam Houses were completed in 1947 and recently celebrated their 75th Anniversary. The 9.5 acre development stretches from West 61st Street to West 64th Street between West End and Amsterdam Avenues and comprises 13, 6- and 13-story buildings. The neighboring Amsterdam Addition is a 27-story building on West 65th Street between West End and Amsterdam Avenues, which also houses the Lincoln Square Neighborhood Center where COFA will be based, alongside other existing programs managed by Goddard Riverside.
I’m very happy about it. I see kids in need of this help very often at my children’s schools. They are really abandoned by their parents. Some of them have some sort of guardians who don’t care about them either. So naturally they are driven to whoever shows them any sort of attention and criminals are preying on that.
We need more activities and sincere care and warmth for these kids. They weren’t born under a lucky star so we need to help them.
Agreed. Social service programs with a real strategy and plan are a great idea. These kids need role models and something to do – a sense of purpose and that someone cares.
I also wish those who had no interest in taking on the responsibility of being an involved parent would not bring children into the world, but there is no way to accomplish that so it is great there are programs available.
Note that these programs are a great complement to increased policing, not in place of. In the long run, they will hopefully result in less need for policing.
Yes, if we can show these kids a way to a different kind of life, we will need less policing. However, no amount of social workers will help if we are deadline with adult career criminals, hence the need for policing.
There’s a huge labor shortage, especially for unskilled and entry level positions.
Anyone who truly wants a job can get one. I don’t understand how anyone’s “aspirations for employment are difficult to realize”.
Agreed. The fact that so many people don’t want to work is a disgrace.
We are talking about kids and ways to open more opportunities for them instead of them being limited to unskilled labor or taking a criminal path.
Somebody has to do “unskilled labor”.
People develop honor and pride and discipline doing any job to the best of their abilities.
And “unskilled labor” can often be a stepping stone to bigger and better things.
You should not be insulting any type of work.
You’re 100% correct. I don’t know how we’ve gotten to the place where the expectation for kids and young adults is not unskilled labor. In the past, nearly everybody of all colors started this way. Many McDonald’s workers became managers, with many even becoming franchise owners…as long as they worked at it.
In no way I was trying to insult any type of work, please don’t twist my words.
Yes, adults should work instead of committing crimes.
However, my comment was about something else entirely – snap kids out of the unhealthy environment and give them a chance to do something other than following the criminal path before it is too late.
Nothing reduces crime better than employment.
We’re at/near full employment by every commonly accepted metric. You’d think we’d be at/near zero crime.
How about adding free homework help for the kids? All that’s needed is a room with a couple of computers and one dedicated teacher. Add chairs for the kids as needed. Just a thought.
Orwellian language manipulation going on.
‘Safety’ is the absence of danger.
The ‘presence of well-being’ is comfort.
Demanding funding on the empty promise of reducing crime is ‘fraud’ and ‘extortion’.
what is unskilled labor. every task makes you think and evey task gives you some new learning experience. all labor requires some manual work which is an experience the unemployed, especially the young, do not want to encounter.
I can’t believe callous comments related to disadvantaged kids. As a mother of school age child I see these kids very often. They need help; otherwise they will slid into a life of crime as they don’t see anything else around them.
I’m appalled by all those recommendations of “unskilled labor” for the kids whose parents can’t or don’t want to care about them. Nothing is wrong with unskilled labor, but why are you ready to round up and send those kids to manual labor as a default? Send your own then if you see it as a valuable career path.
When my kids are older a plan to. Every kid should have experience in a service of manual labor job. I have a lot more respect for a high school kid who spends the summer serving ice cream than one thinks they are helping their resume doing nothing at mommy’s hedge fund.
As I noted earlier but got censored, there are lots of jobs available outside of NYC. And in those places, minimum wage is often a living wage.
I’m really confused why entry level service jobs are looked down at? Some of my best work experience was at a local McDonalds as a kid.
Every day, after school, I worked 4 hours.
I babysat on the weekend.
Why? I went to SUNY and didn’t want huge loans when I graduated. I also worked in College.
All 3 of my kids in high school worked too.
I don’t understand why this is looked down at?
Today, at age 63… I am still working and am quite tired of all the young men aggressively panhandling me for $. Are they too tired to get a job?
West Siders – STOP handing out $ to panhandlers!!! It just goes to drugs.
No one is hungry – we have a ton of food pantries on the UWS. I make a point of telling the panhandlers too, And then they’re not hungry, they just want the $.