As the Build It Back Sandy recovery effort gears up for
its last few months of work, New York City is upping the number of spots in
local pre-apprenticeship programs.
The Mayor's Office of Housing Recovery is set to announce
the addition of 50 to 75 program placements, paid for by funding drawn from a
$3 million HUD grant allocated last year.
"We were able to provide the first 100 slots in
pre-apprenticeship programs and we were able to fill that 100 in the first
year," Samuel Breidbart, press secretary for the Office of Housing Recovery,
told the Daily News. "Now we're going to be able to provide 50 to 75
more."
Danielle Harvey, 29, is one of the Sandy survivors who
completed the pre-apprenticeship program.
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The Far Rockaway resident was already looking for a job
when a friend told her about the Sandy Recovery Workforce1 job training, which
is jointly offered by Build It Back and the Department of Small Business
Services. She completed a five-week Construction Skills class in February and
is currently a union apprentice carpenter working at a site in Manhattan.
Now, she said, she's actually doing "way
better" than she was before the hurricane. "I have a career now
instead of a job. It's an opportunity I was always looking for, I just didn't
know it was available to me."
The program Harvey completed took five weeks, but similar
programs can last as long as 12 weeks and lead to apprenticeships that last
three to four years.
Harvey's sister, 28-year-old Jinja, is now in the middle
of the same pre-apprenticeship program Danielle completed. Though they live
together, Jinja's had a hard time getting back on her feet since the storm.
"I'm just trying to get back on track now to be
better than before," she said. The Build It Back voucher for the
pre-apprenticeship program has given her a good shot at that.
Though the apprenticeships are paid, the
pre-apprenticeship programs would cost training providers between $1,500 and
$7,500 without the city's vouchers.
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“Since the beginning, we have been committed not just to
our recovery, but to providing opportunities to New Yorkers in our hardest-hit
neighborhoods. Build it Back has thus far connected 680 Sandy-impacted New
Yorkers to high-quality employment, including many to the construction trades
through union pre-apprenticeship vouchers. We are now increasing our capacity
so that more Sandy-impacted New Yorkers can access these life changing opportunities,”
said Mayor Bill de Blasio in a press release.
The city is also making it easier for people like the
Harveys to finish pre-apprenticeship programs by starting to offer the classes
in outer boroughs instead of making would-be union workers commute into Manhattan.
"A lot of people who were in Sandy-impacted
neighborhoods are in Staten Island or Brooklyn or Queens and the classes are in
Manhattan, so for the very first time the construction unions are having these
classes in impacted neighborhoods," Breidbart said.
In addition to helping Sandy survivors get jobs, Build It
Back doles out reimbursement checks and construction help to rebuild the
storm-ravaged outer boroughs.
So far, the Build It Back program has finished
construction on 1,906 homes — though City Controller Scott Stringer called the
program a "case study in dysfunction" last spring.
In the fall, the mayor said he planned to have all Build
It Back construction completed by the end of 2016.
"It's an ambitious goal, but as of today we're on
track," Breidbart said.
Source: New
York Daily News
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