New Issue Brief: 50 Practical Ways to Improve Quality of Life in New York City

NEW YORK, NY – New York City's promise that people of ordinary means can build a life here has long anchored the city's character and its economy, yet that promise is lately under strain. From 2019 to 2023, employment in the city's middle-wage industries fell by more than 76,000 jobs, most New Yorkers' income growth has not kept pace with rents that have spiked to all-time highs, and middle-income households have made up a disproportionate share of the young families leaving the city.

Mayor Zohran Mamdani has argued that problems like these are the basic test of city government, and he recently observed that "if politics cannot deliver on the block where you live, why would you trust it to deliver anywhere in your city?" He has also warned that quality of life "has come to be seen as somehow a right-wing concern," and that progressives should not neglect the fundamentals of governing on that account. 

In a new Manhattan Institute issue brief written by MI director of cities John Ketcham and technical writer Sean Speer, the authors take seriously the mayor's concern for quality-of-life pressures facing New Yorkers and offer his administration 50 practical ways to improve life for residents across the city in areas ranging from housing and policing to education and economic opportunity. 

Some of the 50 recommendations include:  

• Intervene early when children miss school by making principals responsible for reaching out to families at the first sign of a pattern of absences, and release citywide attendance and chronic absenteeism data monthly instead of yearly.
• Hire more police officers and expand quality-of-life policing against public drug use, street homelessness, and excessive noise on streets, in parks, and on transit. 
• Work with Albany to let rents rise enough in the city's estimated 57,000 vacant rent-regulated apartments to make renovating them financially viable. 
• Roll back or recalibrate the city's Mandatory Inclusionary Housing requirement to spur more housing development on rezoned parcels, given the state's 485-x tax abatement. 

The authors argue that while New York remains a place of extraordinary opportunity, too many residents struggle to translate the city's prosperity into improvements in their own lives. The mayor has invited his fellow progressives to take seriously these concerns. The authors are keen to contribute, too. 

Click here to read the full issue brief.