Crime fell dramatically when New York State started increasing the minimum wage and reducing income inequality. That wasn’t a coincidence.

We know what’s needed: Expanded school-based services. More clinics. Deeper parental involvement. And decent pay for frontline workers.

Community violence intervention programs work. But they’re hemmed in by a too-narrow focus.

CNYCA's six year statistical survey monitoring New York City's child welfare system

CNYCA's six year statistical survey monitoring New York City's child welfare system

An inner-city elementary school thrives as parents work for the common good.

This report recommends an active labor market policy for New York City. It documents the many ways in which the pandemic has unsettled the city’s labor market and compounded pre-pandemic inequities for low-income workers and workers of color who were disproportionately hit by Covid-related displacements.

Testimony Submitted to the New York City Taxi and Limousine Commission Hearing on The Proposed Amendments to the Minimum Driver Payment Rules for High-Volume For-Hire Services

Testimony Submitted to the Labor and Public Employees Committee Connecticut General Assembly Hearing on An Act Concerning Rideshare and Delivery Driver Minimum Standards

Many workers, heavily concentrated in low-income industries, can’t get unemployment insurance. Here’s how to solve that problem.

City and State leaders want to make it easier to build. But other pieces of the housing puzzle may be more important.

New York’s Unemployment Insurance trust fund debt burden can only be addressed by overhauling the financing system. By following the lead of other states that assess unemployment taxes on a higher portion of payroll and on gig companies, New York can make sure big corporations pay their share, expand the state’s inadequate benefits, and actually reduce taxes on small businesses.

Primarily low-wage workers often suffer from violations of wage standards and denial of benefits. Here’s what City government can do to protect them.

When something doesn’t work, stop doing it. That includes awarding pointless big-ticket tax breaks.

We need to do better meeting the needs of a shamefully underpaid profession.

New York State’s proposed tax and spending plan continues a decade of disinvestment in its people.

Testimony before the Joint Legislative Hearing Committee on 2023-24 Executive Budget Proposal: Human Services

It’s time to end policies that result in harsh and racially biased disruption and harassment of families living in poverty.

The report identifies the ways in which economic conditions and prosperity can have an impact on criminal activity and public safety. It also offers evidence from New York City’s recent past that economic policies can play a role in reducing crime.

Why is health care in New York City so expensive? The high and rapidly growing cost of private hospital care is the prime cause.

This report combines an analysis of the current state of New York City’s changing labor market with a survey and examination of the city’s workforce system – the array of agencies, training programs, and support services designed to help jobseekers find work and careers.

Despite Social Security, millions of Americans face economic hardship once their work lives end. We need to strengthen our retirement system.

By almost every measure, basic housing maintenance is spiraling downward. The City has the tools to turn that around.

This year’s titles include a multi-generational family saga intersecting with environmental apocalypse, a re-imagined Jazz Age crime story, and a YA novel of the Jersey Shore written in verse.

The street art that helped change the direction of Chilean politics, the folk music revolution that helped change American life, and more.

Testimony before the Assembly Standing Committee on Labor Subcommittee on Emerging Workforce Assembly Hearing to Address the Persistent Increase in People Leaving the Workforce, Focusing on the Factors Contributing to This Trend and Potential Solutions and Workers and Affected Industries

Strengthening New York City’s zoning requirements for last-mile warehouses will better protect the health and safety of workers and nearby residents.

An “emergency” remedy adopted by the State Board of Regents does no harm – but doesn’t do enough good, either.

Throughout the city, demand for housing outstrips supply. The Queens borough president’s answer is: We must build. Now.

City agencies could do a far better job matching the volunteers helping a flood of asylum seekers.

At the Supreme Court, the future of equal access to higher education hangs in the balance.

A comprehensive plan is needed to help migrants, and longstanding New Yorkers too, meet their housing needs.

Public benefits try, (and may fail) to meet survival needs. But what does a life with dignity require?

After the deadliest residential fire in decades, a borough president helps a community recover – and proposes policy changes to prevent future tragedies.

The process of applying for college financial aid regularly produces freakouts and meltdowns. But there may be help on the horizon.

A money-saving move to take City government retirees off Medicare appeared to have crashed and burned. But now a rescue plan has emerged from the wreckage.

A “terrifying” insight into maternal health risks leads to action.

A q&a with the co-founder of Bronx Móvil, a “project of radical love” involving unhoused people who use drugs.

An exodus from frontline service agencies is creating a crisis in local governments across the nation.

This report offers an extensive overview of the city’s existing workforce development landscape using results from a survey that details the size, scope, and budget of the organizations that make up New York City’s workforce ecosystem; outlines the areas of service, modes of program delivery, and range of certificates and trainings offered; and describes the current state of affairs for the sector in 2022, underscoring the top challenges, needs, and priorities of workforce providers.

New FY2023 commitments at the State and City levels seek to open up access for families and support providers

In this report, we focus on workers in New York’s low-paid industries that have the largest number of potentially misclassified workers: those who should be considered employees but are misclassified as independent contractors, including gig workers.

Some 873,000 workers in major New York State low-paid industries are misclassified as independent contractors.

Our suggestions of new works from New School faculty and graduates to take with you this summer.

Nearly 4.5 people in the U.S. are still exposed to pollution from municipal waste incinerators.

A call to counter speculation and displacement with community-controlled housing and neighborhood development.

Honoring young people’s diverse cultures and lived experiences will help them learn – and also prepare them to be adults who civilly debate, advocate, and vote.

Transit costs often overwhelm the budgets of low-income New Yorkers. Many don’t even know that they’re eligible for half-price fares.

There’s a way to make “billionaires’ row” absentee condo owners pay a fairer tax share – and provide relief to lower-income homeowners, too.

A campaign for fair pay and safe working conditions reveals how being classified “independent contractors” denies workers fundamental protections.

The City should dramatically decrease pollution and increase safety and environmental justice in overhauling its massive commercial waste system.

A new policy breaks up cellblock “gang houses” and injects credible messengers to deescalate violence.

I’ve worked at Rikers Island. I’ve been detained there, too – twice. And a “let them loose on each other” attitude prevailed.

CNYCA's six year statistical survey monitoring New York City's child welfare system

There has been a flood of what look like involuntary retirements of workers age 55 and up since March 2020.

As non-profits stumble and for-profits soar, what does that mean for patients and home health aides?

In a privatized system, public officials have regularly ducked tough choices. Will that now include fair pay for home care workers?

New York City’s recovery from an economy wracked by Covid-19 will hinge on how policy makers face two critical challenges: 1) returning to the full employment that prevailed in the two years before the onset of the pandemic; and 2) ensuring that wages steadily rise for workers in the bottom half of the wage distribution. Meeting these twin imperatives will help ensure that economic growth and progress will be broadly shared and that New York City can make headway to reduce our pronounced income and wealth inequality.

Locking up more kids on longer sentences didn’t make us safer in the past, and it won’t now. It just intensifies our problems.

The City’s stop-and-start pattern of curbside organic waste is self-defeating. Instead, it’s time to rethink the way we collect our waste.

This report argues that to address the glaring pay and benefit disparities between nonprofit core human services workers and similar workers employed by the City, New York City should adopt a prevailing wage approach, and establish a wage and benefit schedule for all contracted human services workers to put them on an equal footing with comparable City employees.

What housing policies can New Yorkers expect from Mayor Eric Adams and Governor Kathy Hochul?

It’s the biggest housing development in the nation – and it played a surprising role in New York City’s near-death fiscal crisis in the 1970s.

What special burdens do people of color take on when they assume leadership of nonprofit organizations?

Is this the bold new project New York needs now? Or could it leave us with a nasty financial hangover?

Investing in workforce training and placement is the next, crucial phase of recovery from Covid-19’s job disruptions.

With supplies for detainees running low, community donors stepped in.

In the best, and worst, of times, State officials face some decisions.

New York City should beef up mental health resources instead of building up systems of enforcement and punishment

This report details how the City of New York is utilizing $20 billion in Federal Covid-19 relief funding.

Environmental justice. High-tech cities. The meaning of baldness. All just some of what The New School community’s non-fiction writers had on their minds this year.

This report documents several trends that have shaped the distinctive, and profoundly worrisome, Covid-19 economic and employment impact in New York. It concludes with suggestions on recommended State policy actions to support recovery and building back better.

This report traces the impact of the unprecedented health and economic crisis on front line workers in the in the workforce development field. We present new findings that showcase unique challenges, including the difficulties of placing job seekers when many entry level positions evaporated during early pandemic lockdowns while remaining opportunities sometimes carried greater health risks, and challenges meeting required recruitment, placement, and retention goals and outcomes in a more challenging labor market.

This year’s titles run from near-future dystopias to twisty psychological thrillers to a delightfully silly younger-set graphic novel.

This report traces the impact of the unprecedented health and economic crisis on front line workers in the in the workforce development field. We present new findings that showcase unique challenges, including the difficulties of placing job seekers when many entry level positions evaporated during early pandemic lockdowns while remaining opportunities sometimes carried greater health risks, and challenges meeting required recruitment, placement, and retention goals and outcomes in a more challenging labor market.

Socially based trauma can be internalized, with devastating effects. It can also be healed.

Let’s recognize how a legacy of colonial oppression, and the everyday realities of structural racism, can warp and weaken family bonds.