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Mamdani releases a plan for addressing racial inequality across NYC
By
Willow Higgins
Published Sep 1, 2026
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By
Willow Higgins
Published Sep 1, 2026
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Mayor Zohran Mamdani's office on Tuesday released the first citywide plan to reduce long-standing racial inequities across a broad spectrum of areas, including housing, healthcare, employment and education, in a detailed policy prescription the administration bills as the “largest coordinated equity planning effort” in New York City history.
The long-awaited plan calls for addressing some of the most vexing disparities across the five boroughs, including reducing high maternal mortality rates for Black and Latino residents; reducing the disproportionately high representation of people of color in the criminal justice system; and narrowing the achievement gap for Black and Latino students in schools.
Eight broad goals are specified in the plan, but they entail mobilizing resources across 45 city agencies and seven areas of city government. The initiatives are set forth in a policy blueprint laid out over more than 400 pages, including over 200 agency goals and outcomes, 800 strategies and 600 indicators for measuring progress.
“This plan gives city government a framework to examine how decisions about housing, health, economic opportunity, community safety, infrastructure and public services shape outcomes across communities,” Mamdani said in a statement published with the plan.
The New York City Racial Equity Plan was authorized by a city ballot initiative overwhelmingly backed by voters in 2022, in the wake of George Floyd's murder by police in Minneapolis in 2020.
The plan’s long-delayed release — it was first due in April 2024 — also follows a backlash in public opinion nudged along by President Donald Trump, who returned to the White House in January 2025. His administration has sought to eliminate DEI — diversity, equity and inclusion — and race-conscious initiatives of any sort in both public and private affairs.
The city released a preliminary plan in April. The final version took into account feedback secured during a 30-day comment period. Hundreds of survey responses and conversations with New Yorkers were then considered in fine-tuning the goals outlined in the plan. The expansive document details initiatives that address the following goals:
Connectivity: By 2034, increasing home broadband adoption in the most under-connected neighborhoods, with data disaggregated by neighborhood.
Unemployment: By 2034, reducing unemployment rates for Black, Latino and Asian American populations relative to current year rates.
Housing: By 2034, addressing racial disparities in rent burden and homelessness by “dramatically” increasing the production of new affordable housing.
Early childhood education: Reducing achievement gaps and racial disparities in literacy, numeracy and social-emotional development for students by expanding and improving early childhood education and promoting job quality for childcare workers.
K-12 education: By 2034, increasing the number of integrated NYC public schools with sufficient and stable enrollment, equitable access to academic programs and services, and culturally responsive and adaptive leadership.
Transportation: By 2034, reducing racial disparities in transportation access, reliability and service in communities experiencing the greatest transportation burdens.
Justice system contact: By 2034, reducing the jail population, which is disproportionately comprised of New Yorkers of color, and operating smaller, borough-based jail facilities.
Health: By 2034, improving pregnancy-related health outcomes for Black New Yorkers, including but not limited to reducing Black maternal mortality.
Afua Atta-Mensah, the city’s chief equity officer and commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Equity and Racial Justice, framed the plan as a starting point for the city.
“The work is not done. In many ways, this is where the hard work begins,” Atta-Mensah said in a statement included in the report. “The inequities we face are rooted in decades of policies and systems that have shaped different opportunities and outcomes across the city. A plan alone cannot undo them, and progress will not always be easy or fast.”
In November 2022, a vast majority of local voters approved three ballot measures aimed at prioritizing racial justice and equity in city government.
They included creating a new preamble to the city charter centering racial equity as a goal, creating a new Office of Racial Equity and establishing a true-cost-of-living metric that would be used to determine eligibility for a variety of programs. Each of the three ballot questions garnered at least 70% support from voters.
When Mamdani’s predecessor Eric Adams failed to produce the equity plan, the Commission on Racial Equity sued to compel its release. Last week, a state Supreme Court judge ruled that both Adams and Mamdani were violating the law by failing to release a plan on time. The now-final plan — Mamdani earlier released a draft — satisfies the legal requirement.
“New York is one of the wealthiest cities in the world. But too many working people still cannot afford rent, child care, food, transportation or even the time to spend with their families,” Mamdani said in a statement. “Those pressures do not fall evenly. They reflect decades of disinvestment, exclusion and policy choices that have left some neighborhoods — especially Black, brown and immigrant communities — with far less than others.”
Tagged
Race And Justice Unit
Zohran Mamdani
new york city
Willow Higgins
Willow Higgins covers changes in New York City neighborhoods for WNYC and Gothamist. She has previously reported on wrongful convictions, corruption in district attorney offices and Texas' child welfare system.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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