ReidCurry Consulting

The challenge is not to select a solution, but to select, evaluate and sustain the organizations that learn to successfully uproot its causes in any one of a hundred of unique ways.  This requires the insight of a person, not a program.  Poor health, crime, or any number of troubles caused by sporadic earnings and low wage poverty can push a family from just above to well below an admittedly arbitrary indicator of poverty.  For a four-member household, that earnings line is $20,650 (2007).  The solution to the problem could range from a confident smile to a perfect training placement.  This article documents these many, little miracles to confirm strategic investments.

A large number of organizations stand on the frontline of poverty in 20 community districts in three boroughs – Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx.  (See Table above) Poverty in these districts is dense and the percentage of household income below $30,000 is over 50% of households in these districts.  This alone represents 1.3 million people of the 2.6 million that live in the “poorer” neighborhoods.  Based on earnings alone, NYC has two populations, one that appears “unproductive” and the other is highly “productive”, yet they live within walking distance.  The U.S. Census recently reported Manhattan’s wealthiest 20 percent of households with income 40 times higher income than the poorest 20 percent — $351,333 on average compared with $8,855.  This translates nationally to 300,000 top earning households have as much wealth as 150 million Americans at the lower end of the economic spectrum.  Concerns about this gap abound.  Are we building a bifurcated society?  One fact is clear; New York City has made poverty a high priority for one reason, the nature of poverty itself is changing rapidly.

Point of service organizations depend on service quality and staff capacity to alleviate or uproot poverty.  Measures of alleviation are undemanding.  How a staff delivers quality remains the central challenge.  For example, many people are poor yet live well.  Should service organizations understand this better or find a way to honor it?  All of the people interviewed below found a way to say that it was not about an illusive “quality or style of life”, it was about finding potential and preventing its loss whether it is embodied in a person or a whole community.  New forms of environmentally sensitive or even “monastic” living would be pointless without a continuing way to build human potential and a full set of institutions that offered a path.

Warnings about the catastrophic consequences of not eliminating problems in our society caused by poverty are largely about the intolerable cost.  Introducing key performance indicators (KPIs) helps to understand of the full cost of poverty.  The idea behind the coalition, “Housing First” captures the consensus on this point.  The supportive housing approach proves that combining affordable rent with services offers substantially lower costs than hospital emergency rooms and court mandated adjudications.  The clients of supportive housing are mainly the homeless with a history of drug use.  However, supportive housing is a prescriptive solution to failings in the housing market.  This simple strategy works – affordable housing with timely services not only rebuilds self-esteem, it reveals the force for lasting change that exists between the need for services and the providers of service.
 
Less understood is how this change actually occurs in “a case” or between a helper and the helped.  During any of a thousand opportunities in this relationship, something unique seems to change everything for the better.  The loss of housing, an abusive spouse or parent, chronic alcoholism, ill health, or mental illness might start this relationship, but the gateway to success begins at this single point of service that can last for days, months, even years.

A soft-spoken caseworker summed up the idea of objective measures best. Maybe it was the bright confident smile permanently tied up in her eyes, but as my talk about “the numbers” dulled she said, “Did you know that 86% of all statistics are made up on the spot?”.  Still smiling she said, “Working with distressed families is only difficult because there is so much to talk about and so little time.”  In the world of distressed families, there is always one unemployed or “messed-up” person.  They have thousands of stories that run together, so my job is about two types of goals.  The first set involve steps to learn and manage systems”, and the second set requires “staying effective” though action inside of a couple weeks.

Performance CBOs