Building in Good Jobs: Linking Workforce Development with Real Estate-Led Economic Development

Laura Wolf-Powers, University of Pennsylvania
Jeremy Reiss, New York City Employment and Training Coalition
Margaret Stix, New York City Employment and Training Coalition

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Reprinted with Permission of Pratt Institute, Pratt Center for Community Development, November 2006, 47 pages.
Publisher URL: http://www.prattcenter.net/

Abstract

Municipal governments in the U.S. are increasingly devoting public resources to the redevelopment of abandoned, contaminated or underutilized land. Private sector appetite for new development opportunities and public sector creativity have combined to create "building booms" in a number of central cities that only a few decades ago were in seemingly irreversible decline. In the midst of this government-supported revitalization, however, both working poverty and chronic unemployment in central cities remain disturbingly high. Without explicit efforts to link property redevelopment with efforts to put un- or underemployed people to work at family-supporting wages, the negative impacts of growth (displacement, housing cost appreciation) often affect the historically disadvantaged far more profoundly than its positive impacts do.