Recently Mathew Sapolin, Executive Director for the Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities in New York City sat down with me to talk about what his office is doing to increase employment opportunities for Latinos. Here's what he had to say.

Personal Background
LC: Tell me a little bit about yourself, I know you're half Hispanic. Were you born in the United States?

MS: Yes, I was born in the United States.

LC: Where are your parents from?

MS: My mom was born in Puerto Rico and raised here, and my father was born here and his parents were Russian immigrants.  I was educated here in New York and basically have always been employed in disability rights.

LC: Were you born with the disability?

MS: No. I lost my sight to a form of cancer when I was 5 years old.  I ran a non-profit in Jamaica, Queens were almost everybody is of a minority background.  I learned a lot there. For example, getting into the Chinese community was very challenging for us when I was out in Queens.   In some cultures disability is viewed differently.

I was raised in Long Island and I've been here in the city for about 12 years. I have an undergraduate degree in Philosophy and a Masters in Public Administration and sort of always been involved in community. I've always been an advocate and this is my first government position so it's interesting to be on this side of the table. It's fun, it provided a lot of wonderful opportunities, a lot of responsibility, and it's a great administration to work for.

LC: How did you get involved with disability work?

MS: I was in college, needed a job, and there was a job in an independent living center.

LC: And the Mayor's Office?

MS: That didn't come until much later. At the time I was running an Independent Living Center out in Queens.  I found out about this job through the center. I was publishing a newsletter and someone asked me to post a job announcement. I replied to the announcement and got the job, and I've been here for 3 years.

LC: What does the Mayor's Office do?

MS: The Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities was established in 1973 to serve as the key policy advisor to the Mayor and City agencies on the best way to address the needs of people with disabilities through the City's programs and services; the liaison between the disability community and the city government; and an in-house advocate.

Currently we serve constituents by providing them with information, referrals, technical assistance or advocacy.  We identify trends among customers and try to address the needs of the community as opposed to one person at a time.  We help people with issues related to education, housing, employment and job placement services. We don't provide these services but we'll refer people to such services. We are constantly developing our network of resources for referrals.

Transportation, Housing, Employment Focuses
Our office partnered with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to develop a disability advisory committee to help them better provide service. The committee made a number of recommendations to the MTA on how they can make their system better. The MTA has taken those recommendations and changed the system. One policy that evolved as a result of the committee is "The Power Transit Service and Shared Ride Policy." This states that if the city has a rapid transit system, and people with disabilities cannot use the buses and trains, then the city has to provide a power transit system. We've also been successful in getting designated stops around the city where the department of transportation has made bus stops for accessible power transit vehicles.   We've also worked with the taxi and limousine commission to bring accessibility to the taxi fleet, which has been slow but we're doing it.

In addition, our office works with the Department of Buildings to make sure that the building codes around accessibility are enforced. We make sure that the Housing Preservation and Development Agency provides us with current listings of available accessible apartments for rent or for sale, and that we help people with disabilities who need to transfer to the city housing projects.

As far as employment issues are concerned, we've initiated a large mentoring program. Last year, we had more than 250 job seekers with disabilities, including Latinos, partner with 105 employers and mentored them for a day. We had everyone from top executives in New York City to folks who wanted to be custodians. We had people at radio stations, the Social Security Administration, JP Morgan Chase, and Merrill Lynch. At the end of the day the Mayor held a reception over at the courthouse where about 300 to 400 people showed up including the employers, mentees, and a good portion of them were Latinos. 

We try to do things throughout the year like ask Social Security to do presentations on working centers. Recently we had Esteé Lauder Company come in to talk to 62 job seekers. They will learn about the appropriate way to dress and basically the appropriate way to show up at a job interview.

Latino Outreach
LC: How do Latinos find out about these programs?

MS: We have a communication committee that helps spread the word. Our committee includes the Harlem Independent Living Center that helps us reach out to Latino and African American communities in Harlem. We also look to the outer boroughs where a large number of minorities live: the Bronx, Harlem, Queens and Brooklyn. We partner with organizations in those communities and disseminate information through the public libraries and school systems. I've appeared on Bronx Net Television to get the word out. We did an interview with a man from Peru who lost his leg in a landmine accident. He walked from Boston to Miami on his prosthetic leg, but he stopped here in New York City and a representative from El Diario newspaper was with him. Last year we met Raymond Zayes from Telemundo and he said he was going to come here to mentor but we never got him to commit.   This year we're going to follow up on that commitment.

We also put out announcements in as many local papers as we could. Through the Community Assistance Unit we reached out to the smaller communities.  We also went to various merchant groups. For example, we spent a lot of time out on Washington Avenue in Brooklyn, which is a highly populated minority community, and would go to the merchant associations and work with the business owners. Whether it was just getting folks down in the summer to work on community murals or other projects - that's another thing we did pretty well.  Again I don't know the numbers of mentees that were Latino but we could look, again we didn't ask so we'll be making some assumptions.

Information in Spanish
LC: Are there any Latinos working at the Mayor's Office?

MS: We have two other staff that are Hispanic.

LC: How is your office working to involve the Hispanic community that does not speak English in each of these programs?

MS: We offer most of our materials in Spanish.  We don't have translations on our website but we do have translations for publications. For example we will get most of our small publications done in multiple languages, particularly when it's things we do with other agencies.

LC: Is there any plan to make the website in Spanish?

MS: You know, I didn't think about it but I don't see why not...it wouldn't be too hard, I don't think.

LC: It would really help a lot of the Hispanic people to have the information in a language they can understand.

MS: I think my concern with that is whether or not the Law Department would want me to do that because they will wonder how come I don't do it in the other four languages that are predominant here in our city. I don't have a good answer for you but I will check with the Department of Information Technology and see if there has been a movement to do this on any other website.  We have some of our material in Spanish but not all of it. We did do a couple of books on universal design but not in Spanish. We're just doing a Ready New York Guide on Emergency Preparedness and that will be in four or five different languages.

LC: Do you know if there are any bilingual staffers in those departments?

MS: We have two Spanish speaking staff. The agencies serving the communities such as the Department of Health, Human Resources Administration, Department of City Wide Administrative Services, Office on Immigrant Affairs, Police Department and 311, all have bilingual staff. To the extent that it's systematic, that I don't know.

Obstacles for Latinos with Disabilities
LC: Are there any issues or barriers that Latinos with disabilities face that others do not?

MS: Aside from any language barriers, every cultural group in the city faces its own challenges on how it integrates into the city, and the sociological beliefs and values each has is different.  Sure the obstacles that any person with disabilities faces are compounded by the language barriers and lack of access to printed material in other languages. I'm not going to say that Telemundo is any better or any worse than Cablevision at hiring people with disabilities. I don't know that, but my guess is that it's the same.  My guess is that 70% of Latinos with disabilities who want to work are not employed, just like 70% of people with disabilities generally are unemployed.

Short of the language barriers, the obstacles that people with disabilities face to the physical environment and to the attitudinal environment are basically the same. If you look at the social economic condition, certain communities don't have as many resources. I get calls from the Russian community in Brooklyn and they want a health clinic for people with disabilities but the state won't fund another health clinic. Things of that nature might happen to them where maybe one community doesn't have something just because of its geographic or socio economic status.

The long answer is that, the short answer is, I don't think the obstacles for Latinos are any different when it comes to employment than they are for the Russian community or other communities short of the inherent obstacles in the cultural differences and language barriers.

Trends?
LC: Do you think the living and working situation of the Latino population is getting better or worse?

MS: I think it's getting better. I think over time there has been more role models and leaders. The city as you can see, not only for Latinos with disabilities, but also Latinos in general, has taken a number of initiatives.  The Mayor started the Latin Media Commission headed up by the great Willy Colon, who works to help people who are underserved whether for socioeconomic reasons or disability reasons. The elected officials taking the initiatives and delivering what they can is one little success at a time. I also think that having more Latino representation in the city council has helped. Latino leadership in the corporate world, which is increasing, and having innovators on the political scene is helpful to the community.

Whether you like or dislike what they do, I think it helps and gives back to the community but I don't think we've looked closely enough at this in terms of gathering data. Like you asked me about my mentoring data, I didn't separate it that way.  I'm interested now to see it, but for this purpose only. I don't feel we didn't reach that target in our program and I'll tell you right now that my Spanish-speaking staff is busy all the time.  So we're definitely reaching the community, they're definitely having successes in achieving academic goals, in learning the language, which is important I think to break some of those barriers down.

People with disabilities share so many similarities in terms of the obstacles they face. Little things like language barriers are not going to make a significant difference in the progress or lack of progress that we make.

Different Problems for New Immigrants?
LC: Do you feel that recent immigrants face the same problems as those who immigrated years ago?

MS: They probably face some of the same problems. There are some new problems and some old problems that have been eliminated.  They certainly have more protection now in terms of being turned over to the authorities.  As you know the Mayor basically said we are not going to deny people services, and so that's very important to the Latin communities as well as the other communities coming into our city.

There are probably more job opportunities now, and more information but I think people with disabilities are not traditionally positioned to take some of those jobs that are typically thought of as going to the immigrant community. We often think of day labor and things like that, so someone coming from another country that uses a wheelchair isn't going to be able to do day labor. Someone with a hearing impediment might or with a psychiatric disability. I do think the chances for employment have increased. The sharing of information is a little better, and the protection afforded the immigrant community is better.

Here in New York City having something like the Mayor's Office on Immigrant Affairs is important and one of the Latino staff members is terrifically connected with the Latin community. This has really helped the Mayor work more closely with the Latino community.

How to Bring Services to Latinos
LC: How can we motivate Latinos with disabilities to seek access to the services and opportunities available to them, especially employment services?

MS: I think we need to work with the community to figure out how and when they want to be communicated with and try to meet those needs.  Where appropriate, people must discuss the benefits of availing themselves to vocation and education, and the benefits of going to work versus remaining on entitlement.  Sharing more information about work incentives and how you shouldn't let the fear of losing your benefits be the reason to not progress because in fact as we know, you may keep your Medicaid, and your Personal Care Assistance for some time. You may be able to buy into it again, and there are things out there now, if we educate people properly they'll be able to avail themselves to it.

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