The City of New York hit another milestone last week in its underlying ongoing crisis: poverty. This marker came in the form of the latest report from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. It found the agency lost $918 million dollars to fare evasion last year, a quarter million more dollars than two years ago.
Not only are a lot of our neighbors — because that’s who they are, our Black, Latino and elderly neighbors — unable to pay their bus or subway fares, their utilities are getting cut-off, and many are going to bed hungry.
The children have it the worst of all, especially Hispanic children.
Nearly one in five New York State children live in poverty, according to the state comptroller. And Hispanics have the highest rate of any group, 30%, which is particularly problematic as a third of our population under 18 is Latino. Meanwhile, another 26% live in low-income conditions.
All of these children are at high risk of suffering from developmental delays, illness, substance abuse, hunger, homelessness and violence.
The crisis is nothing less than a ticking social and economic time bomb.
If nothing is done for them, statistically, these children who are poor are likely to grow up to be poor adults who suffer from chronic illness, overburden the hospital and social service systems, and be justice-involved, while not contributing significantly to the economy or the vibrancy of their city.
The nearly billion dollars we’ve lost in transit fares is just the tip of the iceberg of the economic loss the city has experienced due to poverty already. The state comptroller puts the cost of not ending childhood poverty at $60 billion a year.
What’s most frustrating about this situation is that this public health crisis is curable.
We know because the United States cut childhood poverty by half during the COVID-19 pandemic. The lowest level on record.
How did we do it? The United States made a huge investment. The federal government passed relief bills in 2020 during the COVID pandemic that provided a $5.2 trillion investment in children and families.
Unfortunately, once the pandemic was over and these enhancements were eliminated, New York State’s rate of children living in poverty was even higher than it was before COVID-19.
This is unacceptable. For one of the richest cities in the world to have the tools at hand to end childhood poverty and not to use them, is immoral, not to mention economically stupid.
City Hall can, and must, bring together the city’s disparate anti-poverty initiatives under the umbrella of one super agency that will be responsible for policy, programs, and monitoring legislation in the City Council, Albany and Washington.
This new war on poverty must be a years-long campaign to make our neighbors and this city whole.
Beginning with making work pay. The poorest children in the city are Hispanic and even with both parents working it’s not enough to support their families. It’s no wonder many hop the turnstiles to save the $2.90 tap or swipe. So we have to convince the Democratic-majority state Legislature to raise the minimum wage to $30 an hour.
We also have to convince Albany to raise the existing state child tax credit to $3,000. That alone would reduce child poverty by an astounding 44%, according to the state comptroller (Gov. Hochul this year raised it to $1,000).
Sadly, there will be no traction in D.C. to increase the federal child tax credit and earned income tax credit back to COVID-era levels.
Meanwhile, we must review whether we’re strategically targeting the city’s poorest neighborhoods with evidenced-based programs that work.
To his credit, Zohran Mamdani installed the person who could potentially lead this initiative on his transition advisory committee: Marco Carrión. As commissioner for community affairs in the de Blasio administration he served the city’s poor communities.
Since then Carrión has served as executive director of El Puente, a community youth center in one the city’s poorest Latino neighborhoods. He would be the ideal commissioner of the city’s chief anti-poverty agency: the Department of Youth and Community Development.
From this perch, Carrión could manage the permanent campaign we need to end this long-running crisis. The cost to humanity, and America’s most populated city, of doing anything less is far too high.
Borges writes about race and poverty in the city.
