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Philadelphia’s high poverty rate stems from a legacy of racist policies

As these clashing narratives suggest, the last 20 years have brought the best of times and the worst of times to Philadelphia. With a poverty rate of 25% — up two points from 2000 — Philadelphia is saddled with the ignoble distinction of being the poorest big city in America. The economic disruptions of the pandemic, which have hurt people of color in disproportionate numbers, are sure to leave even more people struggling to make ends meet.

To get at the answers to these difficult questions, The Inquirer is embarking on a yearlong series of stories that will examine the future of work. Planned before we were forced to convert our dining rooms and dens into satellite offices, the project will look at the ways that global forces are reconfiguring the relationship between work and income, and what Philadelphia must do to navigate the changing economy.

Philadelphia’s high poverty rate didn’t happen by chance; it is the logical outcome of policies that turbocharged suburbanization, underfunded the school district, and allowed racist structures to go unchecked. For decades, people of color were shut out of the city’s best-paying jobs and routinely denied business loans and home mortgages. The effects of that racial discrimination can be seen in today’s poverty statistics: Two-thirds of Philadelphia’s poor are either Black or Latino.

Just as the nature of work is changing, so is poverty. A significant portion of the adults classified as poor go off to a job every day, but their wages aren’t sufficient to cover the cost of food and shelter. Philadelphia’s biggest failure over the last two decades, says Anne Nevins, president of the Philadelphia Industrial Development Corp., is that “we haven’t grown the same proportion of middle-wage jobs as our peer cities.” You can find high-paying tech jobs at Comcast and low-paying janitorial jobs, but not enough in between.

Some of the blame for this situation rests with Harrisburg. Although Philadelphia voters approved a referendum that would have raised the minimum wage within the city limits to $15 an hour — just enough to cover the necessities of life — the state legislature has blocked the measure’s implementation. That means Philadelphia is stuck for the foreseeable future with the minimum wage set by the federal government, $7.25 an hour.

Because of inequities in the state’s education funding, Philadelphia receives less school aid than it needs and spends less on each student than suburban districts do. The lack of state funding limits its ability to bring class sizes down to ideal levels, explains Donna Cooper, who runs the education advocacy group Public Citizens for Children and Youth. The district has failed to update its career programs — what used to be called vocational education — for an economy where computer skills are essential. “We still have former shop teachers running career tech education,” she says. “We never really completed the transformation from manufacturing to a knowledge economy.”

Travis Coffey experienced this firsthand while growing up in North Philadelphia. Although he loved to help his friends install car stereos when he was attending William Penn High School, no one ever suggested he study to become an electrician. He dropped out after 11th grade and spent years working as a custodian. It wasn’t until he was 46 that he found his passion, and a career, by enrolling in an electricians course at Orleans Technical College, the city’s biggest job-training program. Now employed as an apprentice with a Bucks County firm that pays $15 an hour, plus benefits, Coffey says: “I finally feel like I have a future.”

Back when Philadelphia was a manufacturing center and people made things with their hands, a good education didn’t matter as much. But as the economy has changed, it has become harder for people without a high school degree to earn family-sustaining wages. One of the few fields left is construction.

In 2008, the last time the city was able to gather demographic information about union membership, just 10% of the members were Black. “The story told today could have been told 50 years ago,” says Tony Wigglesworth, who negotiates labor contracts for large Philadelphia building projects. Coffey says he would love to join the electricians union, but “it’s hard to get in.”

Today, those two sectors provide the majority of the jobs that exist in Philadelphia. They are codependents that are necessary for each to function successfully. Philadelphia still makes things the world craves, but the products are more intangible: health care and higher ed, media content and technology, restaurant meals and business meetings. The real problem is that too many Philadelphians lack the skills to participate in the knowledge economy. And the service economy doesn’t pay enough.

The solution, Philadelphia policymakers agree, is to provide the education and targeted job training necessary to move the lowest-paid workers into middle-wage jobs. Upskilling, it’s called. And the good news is that, after decades of false starts and magical thinking, Philadelphia is beginning to coalesce around an upskilling strategy.

For instance, at the request of PGW and Peco, CCP started a curriculum to train gas pipeline mechanics. The program costs students $5,000 but requires just 12 weeks of training. At the end, graduates are immediately hired at jobs that start at $18 an hour. CCP has also established a feeder program to supply Nissan and Toyota with elite auto mechanics, another good-paying job. The college is about to begin construction on a building at 48th and Market devoted exclusively to career tech training. Generals emphasizes that today’s auto mechanics are really a variant of IT workers: “Modern cars are computers on wheels.”

In the past, many city job-training programs did little more than teach people interviewing skills. And they certainly weren’t results-oriented. The Commerce Department and Philadelphia Works, the agency that oversees workforce development, are trying to ensure that the training programs are direct pipelines to existing jobs.

The city’s biggest job trainer, JEVS, which runs Orleans Technical College, also offers customized training in a variety of in-demand fields, including many construction trades. Since many people are hampered without a high school diploma or driver’s license, they often start with those basics. They’ve found there is a huge demand for IT specialists, health-career workers, and lab technicians.

What keeps more poor Philadelphians from taking advantage of these programs? Time and money. If you’re working full-time to feed a family, you might not be able to immerse yourself in a training program. The certificate and career tech programs at CCP cost as much as $8,000 a year, a big chunk of a poor family’s income.

There is actually bipartisan support in Congress to extend Pell grants to certificate programs, but like so much else, the measure has been stuck in the political logjam. This year, the Kenney administration stepped in to remedy the problem by creating a $4 million scholarship program. Now that initiative has been put on hold because of the COVID-induced revenue shortfall. At the exact moment when Philadelphians are desperate to find jobs, we are shortchanging training programs.

There’s a more efficient way to solve the problem, argues Donna Cooper, of Public Citizens for Children and Youth. The school district should offer more opportunities to get associate degrees in high school in career tech fields like engineering, computer-assisted design, and IT. That would require developing new curricula, hiring faculty, and maybe even setting up a specialized high school. It would be expensive but would pay off in the long term. “We need this educational infrastructure as much as we need infrastructure for our rail system,” she argues.

Some take solace in Hilco Redevelopment Partners’ plan to create a logistics center at the South Philadelphia refinery. Now that the school district has approved a significant tax break for the project, the company is promising to create jobs for 10,000 people in its new warehouses.

This content was originally published here.

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