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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Wherever you go this summer, slip one or more of these intriguing books in your bag.

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.

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 seven-year statistical survey monitoring New York City's child welfare system

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.