Community Voices Heard

Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs unveiled a new poverty measure created by New York City's Center for Economic Opportunity in an effort to evaluate poverty more accurately than the measure created 40 years ago that is currently used. The new measure which better incorporates rising housing costs as well as the impact of government supports, moved the City's official poverty rate from 18.9 percent of the city's population to 23 percent. Even more startling, the share of the population living below 150 percent of poverty leaps from 27.8 percent to 44.3 percent. CVH Board Member and Welfare/ Workforce Campaign Leader Ketny Jean-Francois is quoted in the following City Limits article on the topic, "It's great that the CEO invested in creating a new poverty measure; now let's see them invest in some REAL programs to combat the poverty!" Click on the attachments to learn more about the measure and hear more about what Ketny and others have to say about the new measure.