This summer marked the first batch of group internships
facilitated by the Center for Policy Practice. In a total
of seven projects, teams of students worked on a wide
variety of problems, from housing to freedom of information
in both the United States and Mexico. Two of these teams
have reflected on their experiences. If your organization
is interested in hosting a group internship, please contact
Eileen McCarthy, Director of the Center for Policy Practice,
at
eileenm@uchicago.edu.
CHICAGO HOUSING AUTHORITY
Kelly Smith (MPP’05), Joanna Tse
(MPP’05), and Reiko Yoshihara (MPP’05)
During
our eight-week internship, we analyzed the Chicago Housing
Authority’s (CHA) current Section 3 policy
for recommendations on how to increase the employment
rates of CHA residents. The internship was fascinating
because it plunged us into the heart of CHA’s landmark “Plan
for Transformation,” a ten-year plan to rebuild
or rehab many of its existing public housing units and
replace them with mixed-income developments. The plan
coincides with a CHA goal to create three thousand resident
jobs in the next five years.
The hope that the plan will
increase resident employment comes in part from Section
3. This regulation states that whenever a public housing
authority receives money from the Department of Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) to rehabilitate or build
housing units, contractors must make every attempt
to employ or subcontract to residents. As a last resort,
the contractors may donate monies to a job training
or similar fund.
We saw firsthand the complications that
such a mandate creates. With millions of government dollars
flowing toward CHA, the housing authority has turned
into a de facto real estate developer that must balance
its residents’ needs
with contracting deadlines. It was a real-world example
of competing incentives within government organizations,
something we had discussed in class but never directly
experienced.
The feasibility of the mandate was another
problem. CHA residents generally do not have the requisite
specialized contracting and electrical skills. Contractors
can then wiggle out of the regulation by claiming that
they are unable to hire qualified staff from CHA. When
they do hire residents, the jobs are low paying and
rarely lead to long-term employment.
We wanted to design
the policy in a way that benefited residents while
remaining cost effective. The training expenses involved
with hiring a CHA resident increase labor costs. Therefore,
if the hiring goals were too stringent, bid prices could
go up and CHA would essentially be paying contractors
to hire its residents. Working with procurement officers,
we settled on a compromise that set hiring goals based
on a percentage of the overall contract.
To offer residents
more benefits, we needed to increase residents’ marketability through job training.
We recommended merging human resources with resident
services to create a more streamlined system that could
effectively deal with residents’ expectations and
needs.
In order for Section 3 to live up to
its promise of job creation, CHA must create a more feasible
policy that offers its residents the job training skills
they need.
MEXICAN MINISTRY OF SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT
Megan Dawson (MPP’05) and Adriana Ferrer-Bermudez
(MPP’05)
We interned for the Ministry of Social
Development’s
poverty alleviation program Oportunidades (translated:
Opportunities). Started in 1997 under a different name,
Oportunidades has been given worldwide attention for
some of its forward-thinking approaches to social development.
Through a unique agreement with the government, beneficiary
families commit to attend health clinics and local program
meetings, and to send all children of age to school in
exchange for direct cash transfers. As of 2003, the program
results show increases in middle school and high school
attendance of 4% and 10% respectively. Corresponding
increases in rural areas have been 24% and 85%.1 One
of Oportunidades most important challenges is its targeting
effectiveness. Making recommendations to refine the targeting
process and capture a larger portion of the target audience
was the focus of the internship. We each came away with
very different experiences:
Megan:
I went to Mexico very open to what my summer would become,
having been told by former interns that flexibility was
the primary component of a successful internship with
the Mexican government. Personal goals included language
advancement, a cultural experience, and, more specifically,
the experience of having worked for a foreign government—one I considered very
unique and hard to obtain. In addition to fulfilling
these goals, my summer provided me with a deeper understanding
of the application of my policy degree and what a unique
position we “policy people” are in to make
an impact on the lives of others. Furthermore, my experience
gave me motivation to thoroughly challenge myself in
my second and final year.
Adriana: I am Mexican, so my experience
was about working in my own country, for my government,
and in an environment known by me. I found many of the
tools learned in my first year at the Harris School,
like the econometrics class, very useful. I am now motivated
to take advantage of my second year and focus it in a
more quantitative way. Taking a more advanced econometric
class would be very useful for my training in the social
and economic development field, my main interest area.
Also, it was a great experience to see the challenges
of implementing public policy in a real environment.
Now I know we don’t
have a lack of ideas, because they are there, but the
problem is how to make them happen, and working at Oportunidades
was a great way to learn how to overcome some of these
difficulties.
For both of us, the field trips were
the most satisfying components of the internship because
we were really able to experience the program in action.
Not only were we able to speak with some of the program
candidates, but we also attended an orientation event
and shared in the optimism of the recently admitted families.
This experience was amazing and impactful for both professional
and personal reasons.
1Gomez-Hermosillo, R. 2002. El Programa
de Desarrollo Humano del Gobierno de Mexico, “Modelo
de Evaluación, Seguimiento y Monitoreo.” Presentation
given at the Regional Policy Dialogue, Inter-American
Development Bank, Mexico, D.F.
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