Nonprofit groups were crucial in the Democratic socialist-led coalition that fueled the rise of Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — and this week his City Council allies will start to repay the favor.
The council is poised to vote on the Community Opportunity to Purchase Act, a bill that would favor city-approved (read: politically connected) nonprofits over private buyers when certain residential buildings go up for sale.
Nonprofit service providers, or NGOs, employ an estimated 662,000 workers in New York City, including some 80,000 in social services jobs.
The city spent $15.6 billion on human services contracts, most paid to NGOs, in the last fiscal year. Many of these groups depend almost entirely on city contracts.
As my colleague Stephen Eide recently pointed out, the NGO sector on average offers lower pay than its private or public counterparts, but it attracts young, true-believer types motivated by leftist ideology — in other words, Mamdani’s core voters.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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John Ketcham is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
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