NYC Comptroller Report: Protecting NYC’s Most Vulnerable Populations During COVID-19

New York City has emerged as the epicenter of the global COVID-19 pandemic, making the fight to halt its spread within the five boroughs one of the great public health challenges of our time. Many questions remain about how the virus can be fully eradicated and how cities in general can best protect themselves, but one thing is clear already: deep, existing inequities based on class and race have been brought into stark relief by the current outbreak.

Already, we know that Black and Latinx New Yorkers are twice as likely to die of the virus than Whites, a fact presaged by decades of public health disparities pertaining to asthma, diabetes, obesity, and other conditions that can complicate COVID-19, as well as a historic lack of access to quality preventative care in lower income communities of color. Correcting these inequities must be a singular priority of the City moving forward.

More immediately, the current shutdown and quarantine have placed unique stresses and strains on communities of color, immigrants, seniors, and low-income New Yorkers that must be addressed urgently. Consider the single parents, living in poverty, trying to teach their children remotely while struggling to keep them fed. Or the many non-citizens and undocumented New Yorkers living in overcrowded, poorly maintained apartments across the city who are barred from accessing federal benefits, and yet today are increasingly unemployed and struggling to pay the rent or put food on the table.

Or the seniors, many of them living alone, disconnected from family and social supports. Or the disabled, cut off from their nurses and home health aides, whose limited mobility makes navigating the city in this time of long lines and social distancing that much more challenging.

In these trying times, it is essential that vulnerable communities—whether suffering amidst quarantine or with an increased likelihood of COVID-19 infection—are rapidly identified and cared for. This report, by New York City Comptroller Scott M. Stringer, takes a data-driven approach to examining and mapping some of these populations by Community District in the hopes that they may serve to guide the City’s ongoing efforts to help New Yorkers in need, contain the virus, and to arm communities with information that could help to stem the tide.

City government must marshal all the resources of the Department of Social Services, the Department of Health, the Department for the Aging, the Department of Homeless Services, the New York City Housing Authority, Housing Preservation & Development, and other frontline agencies and take a coordinated approach to protecting all vulnerable populations. That should include working with the Mayor’s Office of Data Analytics and the Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications to tap into DataBridge, the Citywide data sharing platform.

There are 8.6 million stories in New York, and every single person has their own individual needs in this time of crisis. But we can start by identifying where our most vulnerable populations are concentrated so that we can proactively reach out, get them the resources they need, and hopefully prevent the next person—the next mother, father, or grandparent—from getting sick, going without food, or suffering amidst this pandemic.

To read the report, click here.

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