My monster 10,000-word investigation of New York Mayor Bloomberg’s poverty initiatives is finally out today in the Spring issue of City Limits Investigates. To read it, you need to go to the City Limits website and either cough up $7.95 for the issue or $25 for a year’s subscription. I’ll give you a taste of my conclusions here, though:

Today, the city’s anti-poverty programs include some interesting and bold ideas, as well as long-standing efforts that have been rejuvenated by the CEO initiative. The mayor, as even many of his critics admit, deserves a great deal of credit for deciding to take on poverty after cruising to a commanding re-election victory.

There’s no question, though, that poverty was an obvious and pressing problem; for the mayor to ignore the city’s poor would be equivalent to turning his back on a population the size of Philadelphia. And whatever the good intentions of the CEO, New York City’s response to poverty remains replete with puzzling gaps and missed opportunities. For every aspect of poverty that Bloomberg is attempting to address with a new program, there’s another where the city is running in place—or moving backward… [order a copy to read more]