Gotham Gazette

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poverty

poverty

  • White House Hunger Summit Must Get Real About Poverty to be Successful

    Emergency food (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


    The White House will soon convene a conference on hunger, nutrition and health – the first of its kind in over five decades. In that time we have made great strides in reducing food insecurity, but the changes are not all good. After an explosion of unhealthy, cheap foods, diet-related diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension have become some of the leading causes of death. The goal of this conference is therefore not only to end food insecurity but to increase healthy eating and physical activity

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  • Adams Makes Progress in Pledge to Expand Earned Income Tax Credit for Low-Income New Yorkers

    Mayor Eric Adams (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    The Earned Income Tax Credit is a boon for low-income New Yorkers, putting hundreds, even thousands of dollars back in their pockets each year. Though it is a federal credit, it is matched by New York City and State, and Mayor Eric Adams made expansion a top priority for his administration as part of his agenda to lift up struggling New Yorkers. This year, at the new mayor’s urging, the state enhanced its EITC and the mayor increased the city’s investment in the credit. 

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  • Mayor Adams Wants to End Agency Silos; Five City Initiatives Have Been Doing It

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    New Yorkers at work (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly cited inefficiencies of city government for failing New Yorkers and has vowed that he will end silos that prevent city agencies from working together for better governance. His predecessor, Mayor Bill de Blasio, attempted some of that with five pilot programs aimed at addressing poverty-related issues. Those pilot programs are nearing the end of their timeline and, according to the official coordinating the efforts, have made “significant progress” despite the challenges posed by the

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  • Giving Children Something to Live For

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    Kids at school (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    Positioning efforts to alleviate childhood poverty in any way against efforts to build future assets for children is a mistake. I am a professor at the University of Michigan. As a child I grew up poor, evicted often, living in hotels, homeless at other times, while eating seemed optional, not mandatory, for survival in our house. I ended up dropping

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  • Baby Bonds Are Great, But We Shouldn’t Make Kids Wait

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    Kids back at school (photo: Ed Reed/Mayoral Photography Office)


    Coinciding with the start of the school year, New York City parents got some good news last week when Mayor de Blasio launched the city’s first universal baby bonds program. Starting this year, every public-school kindergartener will receive access to a college savings account seeded with $100 from the city.

    This

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  • New Poverty Data Shows Effects of Federal Relief, Prompts Calls for Continued Aid

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    Federal relief arriving (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    Despite the coronavirus causing mass death, displacement, and unemployment last year, federal relief staved off the worst of its socio-economic effects and prevented a massive spike in poverty, new Census data revealed this past week.

    While incomes did decline and the national poverty rate increased marginally in 2020, a more expansive poverty measure that accounts for the effect of government programs showed a decrease as millions of people were kept from falling into poverty and

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  • Report Takes Closer Look at Low-Income New Yorkers' Concerns About Long-Term Covid Impacts

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    New Yorkers lined up for food (photo: Emil Cohen/City Council)


    Newly-released survey data confirms lower-income New Yorkers were far more worried about the long-term effects of the pandemic and its economic fallout than their moderate- and higher-income counterparts after the pandemic's first and most devastating peak last spring.

    According to a study conducted by Community Service Society -- a nonprofit advocating for

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  • Anti-Poverty Organizations Offer Equity Agenda for Next Mayor

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    Resources for New Yorkers (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    On Thursday, three organizations focused on equity published a report with a broad set of anti-poverty policy recommendations for New York City’s next mayor. Robin Hood, The Century Foundation, and Next100 teamed up for the project, putting forth “From Crisis to Opportunity: A Policy Agenda for an Equitable NYC,” with 150 pages of detailed plans to “get all New Yorkers back on their

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  • New York’s Chance to Take on the Crisis of Child Poverty

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    Time to focus on children (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office)


    Children live in poverty at higher rates than any other age group in the United States. Children make up 22% of the United States population and 31% of those living in poverty. Racial inequities are deep and persistent: 71% of America’s children in poverty ...

  • The Bronx to SoHo: Pull Your Weight in Addressing the City's Housing and Segregation Crises

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    Mayor de Blasio with New Yorkers (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)


    Dear Mayor de Blasio, Manhattan Borough President Brewer, Council Member Chin, and Members and Residents of Manhattan Community Board 2:

    My name is John Sanchez, I’m the District Manager of Bronx Community Board 6, a great neighborhood, but also among the poorest in our city. In Bronx CB6, which includes Belmont, East Tremont, and West Farms, there is a 31% poverty rate, a higher than ...

  • A Pandemic and A Primary in the Most Impoverished Congressional District in the Country

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    Ritchie Torres looks at Ruben Díaz Sr. (photo: John McCarten/City Council)


    This story, and the series it is a part of, has been supported by the Solutions Journalism Network, a nonprofit organization dedicated to rigorous and compelling reporting about responses to social problems.

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    New York City has had very limited success in the voter turnout department for congressional elections in recent years. For the 2018

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  • The Coronavirus Crisis Must Open Our Eyes to the Flaws of the New New York

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    Mayor de Blasio at a supportive housing site (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayor's Office)


    As our great city faces its most challenging crisis in the past 100 years, it has revealed to all of us how the city has radically changed in the past few decades.

    The virus has now put a spotlight on the critical shortage of hospital beds and medical equipment like ventilators. In fact New York City ICU bed capacity ranks in the bottom quarter nationally. If you have lived in the city for over 40 years, as I have, you likely recall how many hospitals have

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  • Report Shows Poverty in New York Far Worse Than Official Measures Say

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    Wes Moore of Robin Hood Foundation (photo: Robin Hood)


    Not nearly every New Yorker has benefited from the unprecedented economic expansion that the city has experienced in the last decade since the Great Recession. While official city and federal measures show that employment is high and the poverty rate has continued to decline over the years, a new report from the Robin Hood Foundation and its partners shows that the reality is far more insidious than other numbers may indicate.

    According to the report, half of city residents observed

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  • Trump Tells the Truth, Sort of - Poverty & Unemployment Rates Down for People of Color, But Full Story is Complicated

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    (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    President Trump’s nonstop record of false claims (12,000-plus labeled false or misleading as of an August count in the Washington Post) received a brief respite recently when he tweeted that poverty and unemployment rates for black and Hispanic residents of the United States had reached record lows, which PolitiFact and other media outlets acknowledged as accurate.

    While it’s true

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  • As Cuomo and Heastie Trade Comments on Anti-Poverty Efforts, a Closer Look at What They've Done

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    Speaker Heastie & Governor Cuomo (photo: the governor's office)


    Despite previously lauding the 2019 state legislative session as the “most productive session in modern political history,” Governor Andrew Cuomo went on to call the session “not progressive enough,” citing a need “to do more on poverty.”

    At his celebratory, mostly upbeat end-of-session press conference on June 21, Cuomo was asked about what did not get done, and cited three issues he said he would work on next year: legalizing adult-use marijuana and paid

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  • City to Launch 5 Cross-Agency Projects to Fight Poverty-Related Challenges

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    (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office)


    The de Blasio administration is hoping to address challenges faced by struggling New Yorkers and fight poverty by improving access to city services through five new initiatives that will launch July 1, the start of the next city fiscal year.

    The five projects, overseen and funded by the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity, cut across city agencies and involve a diverse set of goals: increasing school attendance for students in temporary housing; expanding education

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  • As HRA Announces Closure of Another Food Stamp Center, Research Finds Excessive Wait-Times

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    (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayoral Photography Office)


    During a recent budget hearing at the City Council, Council Member Stephen Levin asked Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks about wait-times at Human Resources Administration centers. "Have we seen an increase in wait times?” asked Levin; “How are we monitoring wait-times in light of the Jazmine Headley incident and as we're talking about staffing levels at HRA Centers?”

    Confident in tone and content, Commissioner Banks answered: "[I]n SNAP and food stamp centers the wait-time is about 20 minutes

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  • What's The [Data] Point? 18.6%, New York's Inequality & Social Safety Net

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    What's The [Data] Point? Episode 60 -- 18.6%, Inequality and the Social Safety Net, with Greg David and Cara Eisenpress [You can download What's The [Data] Point? wherever you get your podcasts, including on iTunes]

    gregdavid caraepress amazon18.6% is the poverty rate in New York City. Greg David and Cara Eisenpress, both from Crain's New York Business and the Craig Newmark

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  • Dissecting Mayor De Blasio's Record As He Seeks Reelection

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    Mayor Bill de Blasio & First Lady Chirlane McCray (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    As Mayor Bill de Blasio, a first-term Democrat, seeks reelection this fall, a close examination of his record is essential. De Blasio came into power promising to address inequlality in a variety of forms, including income, educational, policing, racial, and opportunity inequities he identified during his 2013 campaign. In this year's election de Blasio is running in part on his record, which is headlined by the

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  • De Blasio's Record on Poverty and Inequality

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    Mayor de Blasio at an announcement (photo: Ed Reed/Mayor's Office)


    This article is part of a series on Mayor de Blasio's first term record as he seeks reelection this fall, in partnership with WNYC radio and City Limits. Find all pieces of the series here.

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  • Touted Bloomberg Anti-Poverty Incubator Sees New Life in De Blasio Era

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    Above: Mayor Bloomberg speaks (Ed Reed). Below: Gibbs & Doar on panel


    Data-driven Center for Economic Opportunity paves way for workforce development vision in Career Pathways

    On July 14, former Bloomberg Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs and Robert Doar, former commissioner of anti-poverty efforts, participated in a panel discussion in Washington, D.C., fielding questions

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  • The Week That Was in New York Politics, September 14-18

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    photo: Stanley Kubrick via Museum of the City of New York


    Gotham Gazette's Week in Review, Friday 

    PHOTOS OF THE WEEK: Mayor de Blasio delivers an education speech, via The Mayor's Office on flickr; NYPD Commissioner Bratton is briefed as the city prepares for the

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