Monday, Jan. 4, 2021 | 2 a.m.
View more of the Sun's opinion section
As part of a series of proposals on how to fuel America’s recovery from the pandemic, the Brookings Institution has offered a new idea that leaders of both parties can and should embrace.
The think tank’s researchers have put forth a plan to increase national service opportunities for young people by raising the number of positions available in AmeriCorps, YouthBuild and conservation corps, and increasing the incentives for participants.
As proposed by senior fellow Martha Ross and research analyst Nicole Bateman, the plan would boost the number of positions to 600,000 by 2024 and increase the living allowance for participants to at least 175% of the poverty level. Another element would provide an education award covering two years of public university tuition in participants’ home states.
Currently, a little over 100,000 positions are available in the programs targeted by Ross and Bateman.
Expanding them would have benefits for both the participants and the communities they’d be serving.
YouthBuild, with a capacity of about 10,000 enrollees per year, constructs low-income housing through its 273 programs across the United States. Those programs are open to unemployed young adults ages 16 to 24, providing them with a chance to learn the construction trade and receive marketable job skills.
AmeriCorps, which has been described as a domestic Peace Corps, employs about 75,000 people a year who provide service through an array of partner organizations, including Teach For America, Boys and Girls Clubs, the American Red Cross and Habitat for Humanity.
Conservation corps are locally based organizations whose participants protect, repair and improve parks and wilderness areas. About 23,000 young adults and veterans serve in the corps per year.
As Ross and Bateman point out, expanding the programs would provide badly needed work for a generation of young Americans who have been hit especially hard by the economic downturn. Unemployment is at 14% among 16- to 19-year-olds and 10.5% among 20- to 24-year-olds. Meanwhile, college enrollment has fallen off sharply as students and their families face financial hardships.
The estimated cost for the plan would be a bit north of $22 billion over three years, which includes raising the pay to a more livable wage and increasing the tuition incentive. For AmeriCorps, for example, the pay would be boosted from the current level of about $15,000 to $22,000, and the incentive would go from $6,300 to the two-semester cost. At UNLV, that would be $8,600.
The price of the plan isn’t cheap, but neither is it a budget-breaker. And considering the benefits, it would be a wise investment. To members of both parties, we’d point out that the additional funding isn’t a handout but a reward for work that will pay off with improvements for communities and more Americans on payrolls.
“As we recover, we must aim higher and think bigger, rather than returning to the economic and social status quo,” Ross and Bateman state in the proposal. “An equitable recovery will require innovative policy solutions that stimulate job growth, increase wages and prevent young people from long-term labor market disconnection.”
The Brookings version is a pragmatic and promising approach to aiding the nation’s recovery. It serves communities’ needs for housing, infrastructure, education and more while providing a career and economic lifeline for young Americans who, through no fault of their own, face an uphill battle to find footing in the labor force. President-elect Joe Biden offered a similar proposal in this year’s campaign, where he called for tuition forgiveness for Americans working in schools, government or nonprofit community service organizations.
In some form, an expansion of national service should be a part of the pandemic recovery.
We urge Nevada’s congressional delegates to take a look at the full Brookings plan at tinyurl.com/brookings-service-plan.
