A new way to measure the economic well-being of New Yorkers shows millions fall short. The metric is referred to as the “True Cost-of-Living,” detailed in a new report that City Hall released.<\/p>\n
What You Need To Know<\/p>\n
City Hall has a new metric to measure the called the “True Cost-of-Living” in New York\u00a0\u00a0
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Under the metric, nearly 62% of New Yorkers are unable to afford the actual cost-of-living
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The city also released a racial equity plan that offers 200 proposals across 45 agencies to address racial disparities<\/p>\n
The report was drafted as part of a citywide ballot measure voters approved more than three years ago, along with a report to address racial inequities.<\/p>\n
“Too many people cannot afford the city that they live in,” Mayor Zohran Mamdani said at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n
More than five million people, nearly 62% of New Yorkers, have costs that outnumber their wages and the value of government benefits.<\/p>\n
The “True Cost-of-Living” report and a report on racial equity were released Monday, more than three years after voters in 2022 approved ballot measures requiring them.<\/p>\n
“Our city was asked to reckon with the deep systemic inequities [that] have long shaped life here and to do better,” Afua Atta-Mensah, the commissioner for the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice, said.<\/p>\n
For the True Cost-of-Living report, city officials turned to the research nonprofit, the Urban Institute, to craft the metric.<\/p>\n
Greg Acs, the vice president at the Urban Institute, told NY1 that the group worked with the mayor’s office “to develop a measure that reflects all the costs people need to meet in order to live with dignity and be poised to thrive.”<\/p>\n
The metric considers the cost of housing, health care and insurance, taxes, food, transportation, child care, savings and typical household expenses, then compares that to wages and the value of government services.<\/p>\n
For a family with children, the median average total cost-of-living across eight categories is $159,197 \u2014 which is about $35,000 more than the median average of $124,007 the family takes in.<\/p>\n
“What we’re showing is, they are making trade-offs to get by and if we really want people to be poised to thrive, to be fully secure we either have to work at bringing costs down, taking costs of some people’s books or empower them to have more resources,” Acs said.<\/p>\n