NEW YORK CITY — Latoya Brown was thrilled to be graduating from her construction apprenticeship with NYCHA because she believed she'd soon have a union job that could provide her 6-year-old daughter Amber with a better life.

But the single mom is one of about 20 graduates who were told last week that budget cuts were bringing the NYCHA program to an abrupt end and that– after four years of hard work – there would be no jobs. "Housing is pretty much just throwing us away," Brown, 28, told Patch.

"They were promising long term job stability," added her fellow graduate, Cory Davis. "They were selling us a dream." Brown and Davis, 34, enrolled in the city-funded Civil Service Apprenticeship Program — which promised participants the chance to earn membership in District Nine of the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades — when it launched in 2013, they said.

The $26 million program, funded by City Council, was designed to train NYCHA residents in basic construction jobs — including drywalling, painting, lead abatement and glasswork — and qualify them for higher paying union jobs with the city. "It's just an example of how we can get middle class jobs to people who aren't in the middle class," IUPAT Political Director Davon Lomax told DNAinfo in 2016. "They're going to work in their communities and support their families."

But in September, union officials were notified that budget cuts would force the program to shut down at the end of 2017, a NYCHA spokeswoman said.

"We are disappointed to see the end of the Painter's Apprenticeship Program, which provided people with well-paid, union jobs," said NYCHA in a statement. "To run this program, NYCHA received outside funds, but the money has not been continued for next year."



So on Dec. 29, Brown and her fellow fourth-year journeymen will lose a steady paycheck — Brown was earning $34 per hour and working 35 hours per week — and gain no leads on a future job in their field, she said. That's because graduating apprentices earned only half the working time they need to qualify for painting jobs with the city and will not be granted union membership, Brown said.