Both reports, released on April 6, were mandated by successful voter referendums in 2022.  Together, the two reports make clear that New York City’s affordability crisis is deeply tied to its history of racial inequity. Patterns of disinvestment, exclusion from homeownership, unequal access to health care and employment and concentrated environmental burdens have shaped who has resources, who faces the greatest costs and who remains most economically insecure today.

“The True Cost of Living Measure offers an honest account of what it actually costs to live in this city—and who is being left behind. It shows that this is not a crisis affecting a small minority of New Yorkers. It is a crisis touching the vast majority of our city, in every borough and every neighborhood,” said Mayor Mamdani. “But we know this crisis is not felt equally. Black and Latino New Yorkers—who have been pushed out of this city for decades—are bearing the brunt. The Preliminary Racial Equity Plan is where we begin to reverse that pattern. These reports make one thing clear: we cannot tackle systemic racial inequity without confronting the affordability crisis head-on, and we cannot solve the cost-of-living crisis without dismantling systemic racial inequity.”

Reports’ Key Findings:

• 62% of New Yorkers — 5.04 million people — do not meet their true cost of living, compared with roughly 18% to 20% identified as poor under traditional measures.
• The average annual resource gap is $39,603 per family.
• The median annual costs for a family with children are $159,197 to achieve economic security but median resources are $124,007 — a gap of more than $35,000.
• 73% of children in New York City — 1.2 million — live in families that don’t meet their cost of living; in the Bronx, that figure rises to 87%.
• New Yorkers with self-reported disabilities face the highest burden, with 92% unable to meet their cost of living and an average resource gap of $76,178.
• Hispanic New Yorkers face the highest TCOL rate at 77.6%, followed by Black New Yorkers at 65.6% and Asian and Pacific Islander New Yorkers at 63.3%, compared with 43.7% for white New Yorkers. 
• Intraborough racial disparities are starkest in Manhattan, where Hispanic residents face a TCOL rate of 85.3% and Black residents a rate of 80% compared to 32.9 percent for white residents.
• Approximately 3.58 million New Yorkers earn above the federal poverty line but still don’t meet their cost of living — a “missing middle” often largely invisible in traditional poverty measures.
• Government supports, including stabilized housing, Universal Pre-K/3-K, SNAP and tax credits, reduce the overall NYC TCOL rate by about five percentage points.

The release of the two reports followed new research that underscores the urgency of the crisis, city officials said. Columbia University’s Poverty Tracker, published this winter in partnership with Robin Hood, found that nearly 2.2 million people, including 450,000 children, lived in poverty in 2024 — the highest level in the study’s 10-year history, with widening racial disparities. Asian and Latino New Yorkers were more than twice as likely to live in poverty as white New Yorkers, and Black New Yorkers faced similarly elevated rates.

The NYC True Cost of Living Measure was developed in collaboration with the Urban Institute using their Analysis of Transfers, Taxes, and Income Security (ATTIS) microsimulation model based on American Community Survey data. The Preliminary Citywide Racial Equity Plan was developed by the Mayor’s Office of Equity & Racial Justice in collaboration with 45 city agencies.