Youth Opportunity Area, commonly known as "YOA", was a City of Boston youth program from 1997 to 2000, serving 16 to 24 year-olds in Roxbury's Orchard Park housing development and Dudley Street corridor; and South Boston's 3 public housing developments. Funded by the US Department of Labor (DOL) for 3 years at $2 million/year, Boston's mandate was to significantly reduce the unemployment rate for out-of-school youth in the target area. As such, the majority of the program's 950+ participants were high school dropouts; including youth offenders, gang-involved, substance abusers, teen parents, and other high-risk factors.
Boston had previously applied - unsuccessfully - for these DOL funds with a "school-to-career" model, based on a partnership between the Boston Public Schools and the Boston Private Industry Council. The School-to-Career system, of which Boston was a national pioneer, had been very successful since the 1980's in bringing public school students into the workforce, but had little impact on the youth violence that led to Boston's murder rate peak of 151 in 1991. This was no surprise, given that most youthful offenders and victims had low school attendance rates and little connection to traditional youth providers.
However, in late 1996, an ad-hoc working group of law enforcement officials and high-risk youth providers emerged, known as the "Boston Jobs Project" and led by US Attorney (for Massachusetts) Donald Stern. City, church-based and community-based Streetworkers had been working closely with law enforcement in "Operation Cease-Fire", in which known gangs had a direct dialogue with these leaders and were given a choice of prosecution or reform.
While recognizing the great success of "Cease-Fire" in plummeting gun violence, the civilian and clergy leaders felt that the coalition was too much "guns" and not enough "butter" - the alternatives to gangs, guns and jail had to be real. Many gang members, like the "Vamp Hill Kings" mentored by Streetworker Chops Porter, were saying, "I hear the message loud and clear. I'm ready to change. Tell me what to do next." To their credit, law enforcement leaders like Stern, Police Commissioner Paul Evans, state Attorney General Scott Harshbarger, and others, soon began concerted advocacy for "jobs" as a critical tool in sustaining Boston's "Miracle" in reducing youth violence, and the Jobs Project was born.
The Jobs Project proposed, "what if the same coalition that targeted
the worst offenders could use the same collaboration to steer reformed
gang members into jobs?" Jobs Project members knew that youth with
often-serious criminal records would have little chance of success
without strong mentoring and advocacy on their behalf. The
concepts of strong relationships, ownership and "vouching" were key:
the adults on the front lines (gang unit detectives, probation
officers, street workers and street-clergy) would refer the youth into the proposed program, follow the youth with regular "check-ins", guidance and mentoring, and vouch for the youth to employers and others, once the youth had proven themselves.
The Jobs Project saw the role of Streetworkers (city, community and faith-based) as vital: these were the adults who had won the trust of youth on the street and could most effectively report on what the youth honestly thought. On a practical level, there were obvious limits to the depth of relationships these youth were going to have with law enforcement personnel.
While the Jobs Project was never successful in gaining funding for a citywide program that would target youth based solely on their involvement in gun violence (as compared to geography, poverty levels, etc), many of the Jobs Project's ideas were incorporated into Boston's Youth Opportunity Area. The Jobs Project saw YOA as their direct descendant, and many Project leaders were directly involved in YOA. Senior Streetworker Jed Hresko became Project Director of YOA; representatives from the US Attorney and Suffolk County District Attorney sat on YOA's leadership committee and alternative education funding panels; and a several dozen front-line law enforcement personnel became referral sources and mentors to the program.
In one example of this partnership on the ground level, youth under supervision of the state Department of Youth Services had their weekly "check-ins" moved from DYS headquarters to the YOA office in South Boston. Adjudicated youth performed their urine test for drug use, met with their DYS caseworker, and then met with YOA case managers and job developers.
Of its 981 clients, Boston's YOA made 591 placements into unsubsidized employment and 326 placements into alternative education, mainstream public schools and college/post-secondary ed. A core of 350 clients regularly took part in other services, including: subsidized employment; arts projects; a weekly Alcoholics Anonymous meeting held at the South Boston office; visits to incarcerated youth; court advocacy; physical placement into substance abuse treatment and mental health facilities. Programming highlights included ski trips; the appearance of YOA clients as extras in "Good Will Hunting"; a running club led by the YOA Athletic Director; community cookouts; and "graduation" ceremonies with Mayor Menino and US Attorney Stern.
Boston's YOA was one of 6 cities participating in a Department of Labor demonstration project. Based on the cities' initial success, DOL was successful in persuading Congress to fund a 5-year, $250 million initiative to bring these programs to scale, to be known as "Youth Opportunity Grants". Like the other demonstration sites, Boston had to compete to receive the bigger grant. YOA staff made a concerted effort in 1999 to raise a key number: its placement rate into unsubsidized employment - without this increase, DOL officials were clear that Boston would be noncompetitive.
Then, in 2000, once Boston had passed the "first round" in the proposal process, a site visit by DOL's selection committee was planned. Boston officials planned a tour that was heavy on institutional partners and adult leaders, but short on youth. YOA staff, however, politely ignored the limits on youth participation, and instead appeared with a couple dozen YOA clients who were clamoring to show their support. One client after another spoke: black, white, Latina, Cape Verdean, former gang members, teen mothers, recovering Oxycontin and Heroin addicts, reflecting YOA's great success in attracting the highest risk youth and bridging the historic racial divide between South Boston and Roxbury youth. Several youth spoke convincingly about how YOA saved their lives, bringing tears to the eyes of many adults in the room, particularly members of the DOL proposal review committee.
Indeed, Boston was rewarded with a second grant of $24 million to extend the program from 2000 to 2005 and broaden the target area to the entirety of Boston's Empowerment Zone. This phase was known as "YO Boston" and survives today in a smaller fashion since the end of DOL funds in 2005.
Unfortunately, the management change that occurred in the transition from YOA to YO-Boston gutted much of what made YOA unique. A long running battle between the philosophies of the law enforcement-Streetworker coalition and the School-to-Career stakeholders was decided in favor of the latter. To wit, the Boston Private Industry Council, which had been an under-performing contractor under YOA, was allowed to assume much of the management of YO Boston. Meanwhile, nearly all of the original Streetworkers who were part of YOA were forced out within a year, including Project Director Hresko, and talented staff like Case Manager Leo Rull, who had literally saved several clients' lives in South Boston in rescues from suicide attempts and drug overdoses.
In YO-Boston's early years, this change in philosophy was reflected by a move away from the highest-risk and court involved youth to the "at-risk" youth traditionally served by established youth agencies. While some of this shift reflected a fear of the Department of Labor's heightened accountability and outcomes requirements, much of it was deliberate and intentional. For example, YO-Boston staffers conducted outreach to graduating high school seniors during their final school days, and post-dated their applications to the summer. Thus, these applicants would appear as technically "out of school youth", but were clearly a far cry from the serial dropouts that the Jobs Project and YOA had targeted.
By 2004, DOL eventually cracked-down on YO-Boston and other YO sites for their large numbers of in-school participants, mainly in response to the Bush administration's proposed elimination of the second phase (2005-2010) of the YO Grants program. The administration argued that there was little evidence that YO Grants were actually serving the highest-risk youth or serving youth not served by other funding streams. Regardless of the truth of their claim, by that time, DOL and Boston officials no longer had programs like YOA they could hold up as examples to the contrary.
<< Click to view a chart comparing the cost effectiveness of the YOA program with YO Boston.
Notes: Comparison performed in 2003, using the last publicly-released statistics from YO Boston. YOA's $4 million reflects amount actually spent. Assumptions are conservative, for example, YO Boston had more than 30 staff, but in the absence of public data, used a lower number.
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