Gov. Kathy Hochul on March 2, 2025.
Picture by Lloyd Mitchell
Pricey Governor Hochul:
We write as a coalition of social service suppliers, anti-poverty consultants and group advocates from throughout New York State strongly encouraging you to incorporate the complete Working Households Tax Credit score (S.2082/A.3474) proposal on this 12 months’s state funds.
Our state’s affordability disaster has reached a fever pitch, and New Yorkers—particularly households with youngsters—are desperately looking for actual aid. The price of elevating a household right here has develop into so punishingly excessive that many New Yorkers don’t have any selection however to depart: households with youngsters aged six or youthful are twice as prone to transfer out of New York Metropolis as others. Those that stay are struggling: statewide, almost one in 5 New York youngsters now dwell in poverty, and Buffalo, Syracuse, and Rochester all rank amongst the highest ten cities nationally for little one poverty.
We’re grateful that you just’ve made affordability a high precedence this 12 months, and in your efforts to extend the prevailing Empire State Youngster Tax Credit score to place extra money in households’ pockets. However to make an actual distinction within the lives of working-class and middle-class New Yorkers, we have to do extra.
The Working Households Tax Credit score combines and expands current credit to present households as much as $1,600 per little one, remove the cap on the variety of eligible youngsters and pay out the profit quarterly as a substitute of as soon as per 12 months. It could shut loopholes just like the exclusion of 17-year-olds, and it will be pinned to inflation, so help for households will develop even when prices rise.
What does that imply for working dad and mom? Extra money to pay for necessities like groceries, lease and childcare. Think about, for instance, a household of 4 with a toddler and school-age little one that earns $65,000 yearly. They obtain simply $660 below present tax coverage. Underneath your present proposal, they’d get $1,500. However below the Working Households Tax Credit score, they’d obtain at the least $3,200.
The Working Households Tax Credit score would slash little one poverty by almost 17% and reduce deep little one poverty by 22%, in accordance with Coverage Engine, which additionally discovered it will improve the online revenue of greater than a 3rd of the state’s residents. And the coverage is an identical to the highest advice of your personal knowledgeable Youngster Poverty Discount Advisory Council.
The Working Households Tax Credit score is sound coverage and an unquestionable political winner: New Yorkers wish to see their leaders meet the second and take concrete steps to make their lives simpler. However they received’t be glad with half-measures or piecemeal steps that kick the can down the highway, which is why we should go the complete proposal this 12 months.
Households throughout the state are crying out for assist. We urge you to hearken to them—and to coverage consultants from throughout the state—and embrace the complete Working Households Tax Credit score within the state funds.
Sincerely,
Alliance for High quality Training
Arab American Household Help Heart
Heart for Household Life in Sundown Park
Chilis on Wheels
Church Ladies United in New York State
Church buildings United for Truthful Housing
Metropolis Harvest
COFCCA
Committee of Interns and Residents (CIR-SEIU)
Fairness Advocates
Feeding New York State
Meals Financial institution For New York Metropolis
For the Many
Forestdale, Inc.
FPWA
Goddard Riverside Group Heart
Grand Road Settlement
Hudson Guild
Kingsbridge Heights Group Heart
Liftoff Western New York
Mixteca Group, Inc.
New York Immigration Coalition
New York State American Academy of Pediatrics
New York Working Households Get together
Northeast NY Coalition for Occupational Security and Well being
Partnership for the Public Good
RMAPI (Rochester Monroe Anti Poverty Initiative)
Schuyler Heart for Evaluation & Advocacy
The Kids’s Agenda
United Group Heart of Westchester, Inc.
United Neighborhood Homes
United Approach of Buffalo & Erie County
United Approach of Better Rochester and the Finger Lakes
United Approach of New York State
Westchester Kids’s Affiliation
Ladies’s Housing and Financial Growth Company
CC:
Blake Washington, New York State Finances Director
Senator Andrea Stewart-Cousins, New York State Senate Majority Chief
Meeting Member Carl Heastie, NewYork State Meeting Speaker
