Residency Break Questions

When the Bloomberg administration and District Council 37 agreed on a wage contract in July whose provisions included the easing of residency requirements, it was assumed that this significant change would sail into effect soon after the deal was ratified.

But while 97 percent of the union members who returned ballots voted in favor, that assumption has run aground at the City Council. Joseph Addabbo Jr., the chair of the Civil Service and Labor Committee, has objected because he believes that placing civilian employees on the same residency footing as their uniformed counterparts could place city-based job-seekers at a disadvantage.

The concern is based on the fact that a significant portion of the police and firefighting forces consists of those who lived in the surrounding suburbs at the time that they were hired. Under the Public Officers' Law, they are permitted to live in any of six state counties which either border the city or are adjacent to those that do: Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Orange and Putnam.

The more competition from outside the five boroughs, the tougher it is for city residents to snag jobs. This may be less of a concern for many civilian titles, since it is far less likely that someone who lives in Suffolk or Orange is going to covet a city clerical position or one as a hospital aide in the way that they might the uniformed positions that have a special aura.

Nonetheless, Mr. Addabbo would like to give those who live here some type of edge, perhaps in the form of the five-point residency credit that is granted for those taking the Police and Firefighter exams.

Several complex factors are at work in terms of the residency debate. Mayor Ed Koch imposed the current residency rule 20 years ago believing it would improve the chances of minority residents getting jobs in city government, benefiting the city by giving it a work force that better reflected its citizens and would be more involved than those who merely spent their working hours here.

DC 37 Executive Director Lillian Roberts, the black leader of a predominantly minority union, convinced Mayor Bloomberg that housing costs in the city are so high that it was unfair to restrict union members to living in the five boroughs. It's a valid point, but once additional commuting costs are figured in, living in the suburbs will not be appreciably cheaper for many in the union, whose members' average salary is just above $30,000 a year.

It seems much more likely that the program devised by the Bloomberg administration that will have the greatest impact on the typical DC 37 member is the one that gave a percentage of them preference for city-subsidized houses, including help with their mortgages. That program, by virtue of its income limits, is aimed primarily at those in the more-populous job titles that DC 37 represents.

There is no question that easing the residency requirements would increase the living options of employees in higher-paid titles represented by DC 37 such as Accountants, Engineers and officers within the Emergency Medical Service. For some other union members, being placed on the same residency footing as cops and firefighters may have value, or nurture dreams that someday they will be able to afford that suburban home.

Mr. Addabbo may be closer to the truth, however, in his assessment of what the bill would do. He told this newspaper's Reuven Blau, "This is just a band-aid for the real problem: affordable housing. We are not curing the problem; we are masking it by telling people they can live outside the city."