Housing, Welfare, and Economic Justice

Examples of poor housing conditions in New York's Chinatown, which faces similar issues as the Southeast Asian community in Fordham, Bronx, undated.

Housing Conditions

During the YLP's 1996 Summer Institute, youth organizers identified poor housing conditions as one of the most urgent issues facing the Southeast Asian community in the Fordham area of the Bronx. From collapsed floorboards and broken locks to rats and lack of heat in the winter, the majority of families in the area were suffering from neglect and abuse from landlords who did not inform them of their rights -- often taking advantage of language barriers to exploit non-English speaking tenants. 

A description of such conditions appeared in the Fall 1995 issue of the Voice: 

"Opening the front door of the dilapidated building, M and the YLP group walked down a narrow, poorly lit hallway to a single elevator. After a long wait, the children began to yell for the elevator. When it finally arrived, the super emerged and contemptuously told the children to shut up or he would make them walk. One of the children reported that the landlords rarely made repairs and often called her family 'animals.'"

Southeast Asian residents of the Bronx protest welfare reforms, May 1997. 

Southeast Asians protest New York Governor George Pataki's attendance of an Asian American Heritage Month celebration in the wake of welfare reforms, May 1997. 

The YLP's survey project also revealed that over 90% of Southeast Asians in the Bronx were receiving public assistance. Thus, the community was strongly impacted by the dramatic changes to public welfare in the 1990s. 

In 1996, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton passed the the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996, which barred most documented and undocumented immigrants from public assistance programs such as Food Stamps and Social Security Income. Because Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees were reclassifed as documented immigrants after five years of living in the U.S., they were included in those who were rendered illegible for such programs.

With 42.4% of Asians in the Fordham, Bronx area living below the poverty line in 1990, the cuts imposed by the 1996 Welfare Reform Act meant a devastating loss of Food Stamps for many in the community. 

Even before these welfare reforms -- which the CAAAV Voice often referred to as welfare "deforms" -- the YLP discovered that most Southeast Asians on welfare had already been experiencing unfair benefit cuts due to clerical mistakes and oversights by caseworkers, such as misspellings of names. 

In response to these challenges, YLP developed “Know Your Rights” trainings and advocacy programs for Khmer- and Vietnamese-speaking welfare recipients in order to better inform them of their rights and the tools at their disposal to protest unlawful reductions in benefits.

YLP members also personally assisted families with filing for fair hearings in court to resolve such mistakes. YLP members also accompanied the families to court to provide translation services and general support. As of spring 1998, the Voice reported that the YLP had won all of the cases they helped bring to court. By 2000, they reported that YLP helped win over 90% of over 30 fair hearings. 

Southeast Asian women sell clothing with the Womens' Craft/Sewing Cooperative, circa 2004. 

Out of the population of Southeast Asians receiving public assistance, the YLP survey also found that women represented nearly 90% of those listed as "heads of household," a label which designates the person with primary responsibility for financially providing for a household. Most of these women were also assigned to low-wage job assignments in exchange for cash assistance through the Work Experience Program (WEP), also known as "workfare." These job assignments often did not provide benefits, violated minimum wage and workplace safety laws, required long hours of hard labor, and did not allow for child care. 

Starting in the fall of 1998, YLP started organizing with Southeast Asian women and mothers assigned to workfare jobs. YLP members helped them file complaints against jobs that violated the city’s occupational health and safety regulations. They also advocated for Vietnamese and Khmer-speaking supervisors in the WEP system to ensure that non- and limited-English speaking participants had equal access to information. Because the vast majority of Asians in workfare were never offered a paid job placement through the WEP system, YLP also advocated for vocational skills training that would help participants find equitable employment outside workfare.  

Seeking to economically empower Southeast Asian women and place value on unpaid household labor like caregiving, cooking, and garment working, the YLP launched the Southeast Asian Women's Food Cooperative and Craft/Sewing Cooperative in the early 2000s. The goal of these cooperatives were to create sustainable workplaces in which women had control over their labor, directly received profits, and also sold quality food and clothing directly back to their community.