Applause, skepticism greet de Blasio’s anti-poverty plan
New York City aims to lift 800,000 people out of poverty’s clutches within a decade — nearly as many people who live in San Francisco — by launching a program that has drawn both applause for its ambition and skepticism about its feasibility.
Mayor Bill de Blasio put the nation’s largest municipal anti-poverty plan at the center of his revamped OneNYC program, a blueprint for making New York more resilient and equitable by fighting income inequality, the same message he used recently as a platform to stride onto the national stage.
Administration officials on Thursday outlined the goal of pulling nearly 10 percent of New York’s 8.5 million residents out of poverty or near poverty, a sweeping plan that will utilize a potpourri of proposals, not all of them yet well-defined, and a significant reliance on a steep minimum wage increase that is far from guaranteed.
More than 45 percent of New Yorkers live at or near the poverty line, which is defined by the Center for Economic Opportunity as $31,156 for a family of four in 2013, the most recent year available.