Offers a history of public policies and private initiatives aimed at alleviating poverty, along with personal stories of those who witnessed and lived the experience of destitution
With nearly 49,000 people living in city shelters, including almost 21,000 children—a modern-day record that may well be broken—there has never been more of a need to step back and understand how New Yorkers have confronted poverty and homelessness over time.  The Poor Among Us: A History of Family Poverty and Homelessness in New York City, published today by White Tiger Press, puts current policies in perspective through the lens of nearly 300 years of public and philanthropic efforts to alleviate poverty in New York City.

Authored by Ralph da Costa Nunez, president and CEO of the Institute for Children, Poverty, and Homelessness and professor at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, and Ethan G. Sribnick, senior research associate at the Institute for Children, Poverty,...