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Getting
It’s Harder to Be Poor in
New York
City services for the poor are lagging under Mayor Eric Adams.
Also, Central Park’s Great Lawn, damaged in a concert, is closing
six weeks early for maintenance.

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By James Barron

Oct. 4, 2023

You’re reading the New York Today newsletter. Local reporting on the
stories that define the city. Plus weather, upcoming events, Metropolitan
Diary and more. Get it sent to your inbox.

Good morning. It’s Wednesday. We’ll look at how it’s taking longer
for the city to provide some critical services for vulnerable New
Yorkers. We’ll also find out why the Great Lawn in Central Park has
been closed for the winter — six weeks earlier than usual.

Laylah Amatullah Barrayn for The New York Times

In a city that is increasingly unaffordable, more New Yorkers are

struggling to access basic services.
China Joseph, a medical assistant in Brooklyn, above, felt that
frustration last year when she tried to arrange an individualized
education plan for her 3-year-old son Roman, who has autism. She
waited for months for the Education Department to approve a plan,
only to be told no therapists were available.
Her experience reflected a troubling reality: Some city services are
taking longer under Mayor Eric Adams, from the time it takes the
city to process applications for food stamps to the time it takes to
make emergency heating and hot water repairs in public housing.
Even police response times rose across the board.
Last week our colleagues Dana Rubinstein and Emma G.
Fitzsimmons did a deep dive into the Mayor’s Management Report ,

a statistics-filled account of the city’s performance during Adams’s

first year in City Hall. These were among their findings:
The city is taking significantly longer to prepare vacant public
housing apartments for new residents, even as homelessness
soars.
The city took more than twice as long to process rent-freeze
requests from low-income seniors and disabled people last year, a
problem that officials blame partly on budget-related staffing
shortages.
The city processed only 40 percent of applications for food
stamps within a month, the legally mandated time frame,
compared with 60 percent the year before and 93 percent before
the pandemic.
The city processed only 29 percent of applications for cash
Editors’ Picks
assistance on time, compared with 95 percent in 2019. The delays
violate state and federal law, a federal judge in Manhattan ruled Mario Can’t Be
in July, and the city must figure out a path to compliance by early Super Without
Psychedelic Power-
next year.
Of 65 “critical indicators” used to gauge progress in social Saving Yellowstone
services, slightly more than half had slipped. Roughly a third for the Grizzlies

showed improvement. Seven were stable.

Can I Wear Cowboy
Jonah Allon, a spokesman for the mayor, told Dana and Emma that Boots Without
Looking Like I’m in
Adams remains focused on helping low-income New Yorkers, and Costume?
pointed to areas where the administration had made gains.
Allon said in a statement that the administration had “built the
most supportive housing units in a single year in the city’s history,
paired more foster youth with life coaches through the Fair Futures
program, increased the number of families accessing child care
through vouchers by roughly 73 percent and so much more.”
He also said that “weaving a robust social safety net is a core
component of Mayor Adams’s ‘Working People’s Agenda’ for a
more equitable city” — and the city moved more homeless
households into new housing last year. It also increased the
number of summer jobs and internships available to young New
Yorkers and the number of seats available in Summer Rising , a
summer school and recreational program created during the
pandemic.
Yet gaps in city services remain, leaving many vulnerable New
Yorkers to struggle and worry.
Diana Ramos was uncertain about where she would find her next
meal when the city took weeks to process her request for food
stamps. When Ramos, 46, called the city’s Human Resources
Administration, she waited on hold for hours. She ended up relying
on food pantries and her father, who recently sent her $40 over
PayPal to buy some basics.
Ramos, who was assisted by the Safety Net Project at the Urban
Justice Center, said she was relieved when her food stamps arrived
in late September, the day after The New York Times asked city
officials to comment on her case.
“You know that I qualify for food stamps — I have no income,” she
said. “Why is this so hard?”
Education advocates say that thousands of preschoolers with
disabilities are, like Roman, missing out on therapy to which they
are legally entitled. It is a longstanding problem made worse by the
pandemic, and advocates have called on the mayor to provide $50
million in additional funding , to hire therapists and evaluators
directly instead of relying on contractors, and to pay therapists
more competitive rates.
Roman is now enrolled in a school that offers services like speech
therapy and is communicating with her more easily. But his mother
remains disappointed that he lost months of critical help.
“It felt like I was basically left to be on my own,” she said. “It was a
very trying and very exhausting process.”

Weather
Enjoy a sunny day with temps in the 80s. At night, it will be mostly
clear. The low will be 63.

ALTERNATE-SIDE PARKING
In effect until Saturday (Shemini Atzeret).

The latest New York news

Dave Sanders for The New York Times

Local news
A gag order: Donald Trump was chastised on Tuesday by the
judge presiding over his civil fraud trial after the former
president posted a message targeting the judge’s law clerk.
A baby’s death : A judge in Brooklyn overruled city concerns that
a baby was being abused and allowed her to return to her
parents’ care the day before she was fatally injured, according to
court papers obtained by The New York Times.
A police robot : New York City will deploy a “fully autonomous”
security robot in a subway station. Would you welcome one
where you live?

Arts & Culture

Surveillance films : Thousands of black-and-white reels from the
1960s and ’70s that collected dust in a storage room in Police
Headquarters became the focus of a video installation titled
“Down the Barrel (of a Lens)” by the Brooklyn artist Kameron
Neal.
Playing the sax : When your rehearsal space is the bank of the
Hudson River, the audience is a bit unconventional .

The Great Lawn will be closed until April

Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Don’t plan to loll on a blanket on the Great Lawn in Central Park

for several months, even if the weather is warm enough. The Great
Lawn has been closed to the public until at least April .

Itwas damaged last month during the Global Citizen Festival,

which drew around 30,000 concertgoers despite a rainstorm. The
Central Park Conservancy, which manages the park, said the
equipment used to stage the concert and the foot traffic “fully
destroyed” a third of the lawn.
The closing comes six weeks earlier than usual. The Great Lawn —
12 acres of green space in the heart of the park that has
accommodated crowds for everyone from Garth Brooks to the New
York Philharmonic to Pope John Paul II — normally closes in mid-
ovember for maintenance. Councilwoman Gale Brewer, whose
district takes in Central Park, estimated the repairs would cost as
much as $1 million, but the New York City Parks Department and
the conservancy said that the damage had not been fully assessed.
Brewer asked Mayor Eric Adams in a letter on Monday to move
the festival from Central Park in future years. Her letter, first
reported by the local news website West Side Rag criticized Global ,

Citizen for going “full speed ahead despite torrential rain.”

A spokesperson for Global Citizen said in a statement that the
group had worked closely with city agencies to decide whether to
proceed despite the weather. It also said the group would work
with the Central Park Conservancy to assess the damage and
cover the costs of repairs.
Meghan Lalor, a spokeswoman for the Parks Department, said in a
statement that the department was “confident any damages will be
remedied expeditiously,” adding that it had a “positive relationship”
with Global Citizen.
The festival in Central Park coincides with the United Nations
General Assembly, which is held in New York in September, in
hopes of pressuring world leaders “to defeat poverty, demand
equity, and defend the planet,” according to Global Citizen’s
website . This year’s event featured performances from Lauryn
Hill, the Red Hot Chili Peppers and the K-pop star Jung Kook.

METROPOLITAN diary

Crossing Central Park

Dear Diary:
I was walking west across Central Park on a gorgeous Saturday
morning in July. When I approached the drive on the park’s east
side, I paused and watched the cyclists race north.
Waiting to cross, I met the eye of a man on a bike. He was wearing
a bright blue jersey and no helmet. He flashed me a smile as he
passed.
Icontinued on and paused again when I got to the drive on the
west side, this time watching the cyclists speed south in a blur.
I was lost in thought and waiting for a calm moment to cross when
a bicycle bell’s piercing ring snapped me out of my daze.

I looked up and saw the man in the blue jersey. He was smiling
again. In the time it had taken me to stroll west, he had completed
the top half of the Central Park loop on two wheels.
His smile soon became a giggle.
“It’s you!” he shouted.
“It’s you!” I replied.
— Nina Moske
Illustrated by Agnes Lee. Send submissions here and read more
Metropolitan Diary here .

Glad we could get together here. See you tomorrow. — J.B.

P.S. Here’s today’s Mini Crossword and Spelling Bee . You can find all
our puzzles here .

Bernard Mokam and Ed Shanahan contributed to New York Today. You can reach the
team at nytoday@nytimes.com.
Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox.

James Barron is a Metro reporter and columnist who writes the New York Today
newsletter. In 2020 and 2021, he wrote the Coronavirus Update column, part of
coverage that won a Pulitzer Prize for public service. He is the author of two books and
was the editor of “The New York Times Book of New York.” More about James Barron

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