This report outlines an array of fiscal policy challenges in January 2025 and suggests ways to meet them.

Overwhelmed by news accounts of social division and distrust? A new book highlights individual disrupters creating an alternative narrative.

A year-end message from the executive director of the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.

A Decameron of New York's Covid lockdown, and other tales of our time.

Titles that capture the moral, philosophical, and political challenges we face.

Welcome to the latest battle in New York's long, losing Medicaid wars.

It's long past time for a fuller public dialogue about the fair allocation of hospital resources across the city and state.

The long pandemic economic slump is behind us but income inequality is growing, too.

Five years after a landmark local law passed, private waste haulers still put up troubling safety numbers.

Voters face choices about how power is exercised that were framed via a rushed and shambolic process.

If a bustling working-class neighborhood is described as empty, is that a prelude to gentrification and displacement?

Bureaucratic hurdles notwithstanding, thousands of older newcomer students are determined to continue their disrupted educations.

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of inflation-adjusted wage (real wage) growth in New York City from 2019 to 2023, and how these trends compare to national wage dynamics. Our findings show a significant divergence in the city’s real wage growth, marked by rapid gains for high-wage workers and slower growth for low-wage earners.

A Supreme Court decision permitting penalties for sleeping and camping outdoors leads to legal confusion, hostility, and the potential for heightened human misery.

How Williamsburg's shopping district transformed as the neighborhood went upscale.

A veteran policymaker argues that reproductive freedom is only one of the key issues for women, nationally and locally.

The personal is political: Looking at decisions about reproductive choice, 50-plus years ago, and today.

Can New Yorkers' resilience and diversity counter a post-pandemic rise in poverty and inequality?

A new look at the roots of Brooklyn's Black communities shows why the past is never dead.

This report focuses on occupational and industrial segregation. With a deep dive into how the uneven distribution of men and women across job types and economic sectors contributes to wage disparities, this report examines the structural labor-market factors that funnel women into lower-paying employment and perpetuate economic inequity.

How did the college aid process run amok this year? Let us count the ways.

This report follows up on the first Astoria Project report, which offered an in-depth account of the economic, social, and mental health impacts of Covid-19 on workers in Astoria. It synthesizes survey data from 415 gig workers, freelancers, and independent contractors from Western Queens.

The nation's largest public school system is undertaking a massive makeover in literacy instruction.

This report is a case study of how city government policy and budget choices relating to public transit subsidies have differential effects on New York City communities by race, ethnicity, and income. It compares public subsidies for various public transportation services as well as the demographic characteristics of those likely to benefit from each.

More than 18 percent of Newark older teens and young adults aren't in school or working. That's roughly double the rate for New Jersey as a whole.

A picnic basketful of hot new titles from The New School community.

Asylum-seeking families still face a thicket of obstacles trying to get their kids into New York City schools. It doesn't have to be that hard.

Living in a homeless shelter was depressing and isolating; finding secure housing and caring relationships turned her life around.

This report proposes New York City collecting payments from wealthy hospitals and universities that are exempt from the local property tax as an alternative or interim step towards generating revenue.

In the Ironbound community, the homes of some 50,000 people border, and are interspersed with, industrial sites.

New York – reclassified a “humid sub-tropical” city – slogged through five “five-year storms” in 2023.

Working a minimum-wage job shouldn’t disqualify you from receiving discounted transit fares.

The state’s rate of on-the-job injuries is far higher than the nation’s – and it’s climbing fast.

It’s called “the city game.” And starting in the mid-1970s, it was a hard knocks life for the Knicks and for New York City.

Adding new housing stabilizes rents and reduces homelessness.

An exploration of the nation’s “billion-dollar problem” with standardized testing.

Emergency Covid relief funds eased pressure on families and child care providers. That’s not an option anymore. Now what?

The maximum benefit to workers hasn’t been changed since 1989. It’s $170 a week.

Necessary change also necessarily requires some painful realizations.

If rents covered only basic maintenance costs – and generated zero profits – they’d still be unaffordable for impoverished New Yorkers.

New York City’s housing market is getting tighter – and new construction alone won’t solve the affordability crunch.

Cut health insurance spending by 10 percent without imposing premiums or reducing benefits? Good luck with that.

Researchers stress the value of heeding the example and accepting the knowledge of a powerful collective voice.

This report is based on an extensive survey of drivers regarding current expenses, current data on the vehicle fleet, research on the cost of charging electric vehicles (EVs), additional investigation into the costs of renting a TLC-registered vehicle, and research on vehicle-related costs.

America’s retirement policy rests on dangerous myths about working through old age. It’s time for sweeping change.

How a reform of the college aid application process that started with good intentions has, so far, fallen short.

A tale of two budgets, as State and City leaders reveal spending plans for the year ahead.

This report summarizes the dual economic status of the state and city at the end of 2023. It reviews data showing how New York’s lagging employment recovery from the pandemic affects those in the bottom half of the income distribution, while also discussing how the State’s economic strength in high-paying industries has lifted State revenue growth.

Older workers make up a growing share of the discouraged long-term unemployed who have given up actively hunting for work.

A year-end message from the executive director of the Center for New York City Affairs at The New School.

Tales of intimate heartbreak, sustaining love, sharing Covid lockdown with a lively parrot, and more.

Early childhood education and summer enrichment programs could be the biggest losers.

The meaning of fake hair, the long, strange trip of the Sun Ra Arkestra, a kids’ guide to knowing and cooking pasta, and more.

Successive rounds of budget cuts will hit the schools, even as the clock counts down on a costly requirement to reduce classroom sizes.

A new book of stunning photos captures the extraordinary everyday life of Queens.

Here’s a case for making communal living an answer to the city’s housing crunch and an antidote to a vacant commercial property doom loop.

This report examines the drivers of gender pay inequity and the economic, social, and policy reasons women have not made more progress in New York.

Progress toward pay equity in the city has stalled in recent years. Here’s a strategy for moving things forward again.

Ending mandated reporting is an essential step toward creating trust with service providers and an alternative system to assist families, the author argues.

Lately, it’s been smooth sailing for New York City public schools – but the outlook is for some rough seas ahead.

The New School’s Urban Systems Lab launches an ambitious three-year project to democratize climate risk planning information on a global scale.

Citywide curbside collection is moving forward. Now let’s focus on participation, composting, and waste reduction.

The September 14, 2023 release of the Census Bureau American Community Survey (ACS) data on household income and poverty levels for 2022 provides fairly definitive confirmation of New York City’s lagging recovery from the disruptive economic impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Will a city of immigrants respond with anger or openness to a flood of newly arrived migrants?

We ask an eminent expert in the field of community mental health about handling the psychic challenges of being strangers in a strange land.

This report provides a foundational understanding of the unique experiences of New York City’s home-based providers. It seeks to illuminate underlying issues related to the closure of regulated home-based ECE programs and identify policy and other recommendations that can strengthen and stabilize these programs.

A new book, excerpted here, argues that reforming our existing child welfare system is futile, and that it must instead be eliminated completely.

Navigating the NYC school system isn’t easy for anyone – and the InsideSchools team has been working hands-on with the city’s newly arrived migrants. Here’s what they’ve learned.

The Center for New York City Affairs conducted an analysis to measure the projected economic impact of a local public bank, based on the business model put forth by local advocates. The analysis focuses on job creation, affordable housing development and preservation, and community development lending during the bank's five-year start-up phase, the time it is projected to take to achieve a full lending portfolio.

Housing neglect is a serious problem. Gutting tenant protections isn’t the solution.

The first minimum pay standard in the nation for app-based deliveristas goes into effect July 12th.

City agencies are making a mistake by giving volunteers who've been welcoming arriving asylum seekers a cold shoulder.

Reading the uncertain economic tea leaves as City officials make spending decisions for the year ahead.

Pandemic conditions created a perfect rat storm. But New Yorkers can turn things around.

There’s a widening wage disparity with New York’s private hospitals – and an exodus of RNs from public hospitals.

Enrollment in charter schools is up; in other schools, it’s down. What’s the takeaway for education leaders?

How a strategy for economic growth and development can also make for a more equitable city.

A “teacher’s kid” talks about helping families find pathways to education equity for their children in the nation’s largest public school system.

The Fourth Amendment right to be secure in one’s home should apply in child welfare cases.