An Agenda to Lower Costs, Hold Corporations Accountable, and Make Government Work for New Yorkers
Foreword by Julie Margetta Morgan and Mike Pierce
The stakes for New Yorkers have never been higher. Across the city, the cost of living has skyrocketed—rent keeps rising, healthcare costs are soaring, and the price of everyday basics, from gas to groceries, continues to climb. Low- and middle-income New Yorkers are increasingly leaving the city over the high cost of living. Mayor Zohran Mamdani channeled these frustrations on the campaign trail, telling a story about how the city government could deliver a more affordable life for all New Yorkers.
Since taking office, Mayor Mamdani has taken swift action and shown the government’s ability to deliver simple yet powerful change. Expanded preschool for all New Yorkers—an idea once dismissed by critics as impossible—will soon become reality. A new pied-à-terre tax will bring in hundreds of millions of dollars. A snow shovel brigade composed of ordinary New Yorkers were paid a decent wage to clear the streets and get the city moving after a blizzard earlier this year. From cracking down on businesses exploiting their workers to stopping giant corporations from bombarding New Yorkers with junk fees, the Administration has pursued an aggressive enforcement agenda to block private actors from ripping off residents.
Given the scale of the city’s affordability crisis, we are going to need an aggressive, all-of-government effort to bring down costs and give average New Yorkers a bigger slice of the pie. New York City can ease the burden on families by directly lowering costs, like junk fees or surcharges, holding corporations accountable for predatory practices that drive up prices, and making city government work in ways that take expenses off residents’ shoulders. That’s why Protect Borrowers and The Century Foundation are launching Affordable NYC Now, a project to develop implementation-ready ideas to make life better for the families and small businesses that call the city home. Our first report, Lowering Costs, showcases the first wave of these proposals, developed by leading experts and advocates.
Together, these ideas advance a vision for how the Mamdani Administration can continue to help working families and advance economic justice. Critically, these items don’t require bigger budgets or new legal authority, so they can be implemented quickly. These are actions the Administration can take now, with existing tools, to deliver immediate relief. In our view, these policies not only bring much-needed relief, but they also help deliver on the Administration’s promise to families and build a foundation for changes that require a strong political coalition. They are part of a broader effort to recapture what makes New York an envy of the world, and build the type of government and economy that New Yorkers deserve.
The Data: New York’s Debt Crisis, Visualized
To understand how the high cost of living impacts New Yorkers and how different policies affect cost burdens, Affordable NYC Now is using zip-code level data to track household debt in the city. Today, we’re releasing data that shows the explosion of household debt across New York City in just the last few years.1 The maps below tell a story that is all too familiar for New York families—but often overlooked by policymakers.
Between 2018 and 2025, average monthly debt payments soared in working-class, outer-borough neighborhoods. While debt payments increased only moderately across Manhattan, individuals in Queens, Brooklyn, the Bronx, and Staten Island on average went from spending roughly $282 per month repaying debt to $344—and in some neighborhoods, surpassing $500 or more. That’s not because New Yorkers suddenly became financially irresponsible. It’s because the cost of basic necessities skyrocketed while wages barely budged—and credit cards became the only way to keep the lights on.
Figure 1
Auto loan payments doubled and credit card payments climbed more than 50 percent for New Yorkers in many working-class, outer-borough neighborhoods. Debt burdens rose throughout the city, mirroring trends we’ve documented in our research across the country. New Yorkers with student loans got a five-year pandemic reprieve, but that ended with President Trump’s inauguration, adding another monthly payment back into already-strained budgets.
What credit card debt really represents: When healthcare costs are too high, families turn to credit cards to cover the bill. When a cart full of groceries costs twice what it did five years ago, credit card debt keeps the family fed. When Con Ed cuts deals with Big Tech data centers that spike electricity prices, credit cards keep the household lights on.
Figure 2
Our research shows that more than 110 million Americans—including millions of New Yorkers—cannot pay off their credit card bill each month2 and are drowning in sky-high interest charges imposed by some of the biggest banks in the world, including banks like JP Morgan Chase and American Express that call New York City home. And while these banks reap record profits, working-class New Yorkers are falling further and further behind—maxing out their credit cards, facing past-due student loan bills, and missing car payments in outer boroughs where public transit often doesn’t reach.
Why This Matters Now
This data outlines the stakes for the governing moment facing policymakers in New York City. Too many New Yorkers are one unexpected expense away from financial catastrophe. They need relief now—not promises of future programs, not incrementalism that might help down the road.
Our research also brings into sharper focus the contrast between working-class New Yorkers struggling to stay afloat and New York’s biggest banks and businesses that profit from this distress, even as they fight the Mamdani Administration tooth and nail to block progress.
The proposals in Lowering Costs show how to deliver. From lowering the cost of health care through new “penny pharmacies,” to making housing more affordable by capping rent increases, to tackling high electricity prices through community energy programs, these ideas are concrete and would immediately make a difference in New Yorkers’ lives.
In the coming weeks, we’ll release more data showing New York’s affordability crisis through the lens of New Yorkers’ debts. We’re also inviting New York researchers to partner with us and work with this data directly. Together, we can measure the benefits to New Yorkers as the city’s economic landscape shifts—and make the public case that city government can make life more affordable for families in every corner of New York.
This project wouldn’t be possible without Lorelei Salas, former commissioner of the NYC Department of Consumer and Worker Protection, and Winston Berkman-Breen, Protect Borrowers’ legal director, who organized and edited the volume of papers that follows. Their invaluable expertise and leadership are building a roadmap for what progressive city governance can and should look like.
For too long, New York’s staggering inequality has made economic justice feel out of reach. As costs have soared, City Hall has seen its role as simply helping people scrape by, not get ahead. But that is changing. By taking concrete actions today to lower costs, hold corporations accountable, and improve how government works, Mayor Mamdani and city policymakers can reshape New York’s economy and make the city live up to its billing: as the greatest city in the world.
Let’s get to work.
Lowering Costs
Introduction by Lorelei Salas and Winston Berkman-Breen
For too many New Yorkers, the math simply doesn’t add up. Wages have stagnated while the cost of housing, healthcare, groceries, child care, and basic services has climbed steadily out of reach. Affordability is not an abstract policy goal—it is the difference between a family staying in the city they love and being forced to leave it. Lowering the cost of our daily expenses is a critical component of making New York City work for everyone, and the Mayor has real tools to advance this goal.
This section outlines concrete actions the Mayor can take with existing authority to directly reduce the financial burdens New Yorkers carry every day. From introducing competition to the utilities and insurance markets, to creating new small business incentives, to offering life-saving prescription drugs for pennies on the dollar, these proposals target the pressure points where the Mamdani Administration can make an immediate difference, without waiting for Albany or Washington.
Making the city affordable means making it affordable for all, so that living here is not a toll that prices out the people who make New York New York.
Proposals for Lowering Costs
Download the full set of proposals for lowering costs here.
Lowering Costs by Reducing the Price of Prescription Drugs
American Economic Liberties Project
Emma Freer, Senior Fellow for Health Care
New York City should work with NYC Health and Hospitals (H+H) to leverage the federal 340B Drug Pricing Program to provide affordable prescription drugs to un- and under-insured New Yorkers. This proposal would be free for the city to implement and would not require any legislative or regulatory reform. It would also reinforce the social safety net to withstand additional pressure in the wake of Republicans’ federal healthcare funding cuts.
Lowering Costs Through a Clean Energy Strategy
Solar One
Kate Selden, Director of Solar Policy
New York City’s energy affordability crisis stems from centralized, volatile, fossil fuel power that passes costs to consumers via higher bills, burdening low-income households most. Without action, the city faces escalating ratepayer burden and grid instability. This paper outlines three strategies: streamlining energy bill relief access, scaling affordable local clean energy, and expanding solar/storage savings access.
Lowering Costs for Homeowners
Mobilization for Justice
Mackenzie Lew, Supervising Attorney and Shivani Jacelon, Staff Attorney
Affordable homeownership is increasingly difficult to maintain for average New Yorkers. Homeowners and affordable cooperative associations face financial insecurity and increased homeownership-related expenses. New York City can preserve affordable homeownership by (1) expanding access to grants for homeownership arrears, (2) increasing the income limits for senior and disabled households to be eligible for property tax benefits, and (3) ensuring that vacant co-op apartments are resold.
Lowering Costs for Low- to Moderate-Income New Yorkers
Neighborhood Trust Financial Partners
Elise Nussbaum, Senior Financial Coach; Fitzgerald Restituyo, Product Owner; Tamika Howell, Financial Coach; Ivania Mora, Manager, Financial Coaching
Our proposal boosts housing stability for low-to-moderate-income New Yorkers via three pillars: (1) removing credit barriers for all tenants regardless of building funding; (2) stabilizing costs by capping rent hikes for NYCHA, Section 8, and lottery tenants at the lower of income growth or RGB rates; and (3) creating an emergency Loan Loss Reserve Fund. This fund offers low-cost credit to help residents weather financial shocks, avoid rent arrears, and bypass predatory lenders.
Lowering Costs for Small Businesses
Small Business Majority
Lindsey Vigoda, New York Director
While New York City subsidizes corporate spending and power, small business owners across the five boroughs are being squeezed to their breaking point. By auditing existing subsidies, tax breaks and incentives, the city can redirect funds to incentivize key commercial landlords as a lever to reverse declining small business growth and support entrepreneurship.
Lowering Costs by Offering an Alternative Energy Supplier
Institute for Local Self-Reliance
John Farrell, Co-Director
Community choice energy is a proven approach to giving New York City more control over its energy future, with an opportunity to address affordability, clean energy, and the multiplier benefits of seeking local resources to meet energy demands. With a concerted effort, the city could work with state regulators to address issues with past implementation and shape a local program that meets the city’s climate and affordability needs.
Lowering Costs of Homeowners Insurance
Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator
Brian Shearer, Director of Competition and Regulatory Policy
Homeowner insurers have much higher margins in New York than in most states. That means New York City can save New Yorkers a lot of money by expanding the public insurance program it is already planning for insuring landlords of affordable apartment buildings into the consumer homeowners and rental insurance markets.
Acknowledgment: The authors would like to thank Eduard Nilaj for his ongoing research and data analyses for the Affordable NYC Now project.
Notes
- This analysis uses data from the University of California Consumer Credit Panel (UC-CCP), a 2 percent nationally representative sample of U.S. adults with credit records. We thank the California Policy Lab for hosting and documenting the UC-CCP.
- See The Century Foundation and Protect Borrowers, Interest Nation: The State of America’s Credit Card Debt Crisis (2026), https://protectborrowers.org/resource/report-interest-nation-the-state-of-americas-credit-card-debt-crisis/.
