Beverly Davis has a full-time job, a family she supports and a college course to complete. She has plans to become a police officer. Public benefits are essential to her move from low-wage work to economic independence.
Walter Greene worked for a living. Then the work disappeared. Now, like thousands of other low-income New Yorkers, he navigates homeless shelter rules and the welfare bureaucracy.
Tanya Fields is a college graduate starting her own business. She’s also a welfare recipient trying to keep benefits in place until she can support herself. Can she do it all?
The number of low-income New Yorkers is a matter of statistics. Answering deeper questions about poverty demands drilling down deep into the lives of individual people, a few of whose stories are presented in this month’s issue of City Limits.
Through the transitional jobs program, hundreds of former welfare recipients have performed actual city jobs—not workfare. But state budget reductions will force the program to scale back.
The recent indictment of two ACS workers in a little girl’s death has focused new attention on the city’s child protection regime. In this interview, City Limits’ Helen Zelon explains how legal process and human nature interact in the child welfare system.
As tabloids celebrate an on-time state budget, a look at what one budget cut at the city level will mean: fewer childcare slots, less school prep for kids and a tough choice for their working parents.
Legislators want to restore many human services that Gov. Cuomo proposed cutting. But the Senate and Assembly still differ by tens of millions of dollars on social funding, and some programs still face elimination.
Advocates for the homeless have long criticized the Bloomberg administration’s approach to getting people out of shelters. But with the state threatening to end funding for the program, most advocates have joined the city to oppose the cuts.
In 2007, the NYPD released a report about “the homegrown threat” that troubled local Muslim leaders by labeling innocuous behavior, like displaying concern for “the greater good,” as possible hallmarks of “jihadization.”
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
Founded in 1976 in the midst of New York’s fiscal crisis, City Limits exists to inform democracy and equip citizens to create a more just city. The organization is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit funded by foundation support, ad sponsorship and donations from readers.
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Support local, investigative journalism that has informed and empowered New Yorkers for 45 years.
