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Time of India
07-07-2025
- Time of India
No degree, no barrier: NYC's unseen hiring surge is a lifeline for the working class
1 2 In the city that never sleeps, opportunity doesn't knock; it gets posted on JobsNYC. And right now, the City of New York is opening doors that have long been shut to those without a college degree. From housing dispatch offices to justice corridors and underground transit systems, hundreds of entry-level jobs are being offered to everyday New Yorkers, no ivory tower credentials required. These are not gig scraps or part-time fillers. They're full-time, benefit-laden civil service roles with stability, purpose, and the rarest of urban commodities: Upward mobility. In a moment when inflation stretches paychecks and college debt derails futures, the city's bold hiring strategy is not just practical, it's political. Grit over graduation: The jobs redefining entry-level In a city built on hustle, not every opportunity comes with a diploma attached. As New York opens hundreds of entry-level government roles, the hiring criteria are shifting, valuing commitment over credentials and lived experience over lectures. For thousands of New Yorkers without a college degree, these jobs offer more than employment; they offer legitimacy, stability, and a long-overdue seat at the table. Justice on record: The camera doesn't lie The Richmond County District Attorney's Office is hiring a Body-Worn Camera Analyst, and the work is as real as it gets. You won't be pushing paper; you'll be reviewing law enforcement footage, flagging key evidence, and managing digital case files that may determine someone's future. Salary : $55,000–$57,000 Education required : High school diploma Location : Staten Island For those interested in law, tech, or justice, this role offers more than a desk; it offers a front-row seat to the legal system, without the need for a law degree. The eyes on the streets: Urban outreach in action The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is looking for Field Associates who aren't afraid to walk the city's sharp edges, canvassing subway platforms, sidewalks, and public spaces to log real-time observations of the unhoused. You'll be the first responder in the city's ongoing effort to humanize homelessness, using handheld tech and compassion to make contact where few dare to look. Salary : $44,545–$51,227 Education required : High school diploma Locations : Citywide It's demandi=ng work. But for the right candidate, it's deeply rewarding, the kind of job that turns empathy into measurable impact. Vertical duty: Dispatching dignity at NYCHA In the unseen mechanical veins of public housing towers, NYCHA's Elevator Services and Repair Department is hiring Dispatchers. The job? Coordinating maintenance crews, recording elevator performance data, and being the communications lifeline between residents and tech teams. What's remarkable: this job has no formal education or experience requirements. Salary : $36,006–$50,569 Requirements : None, just reliability, clarity, and a sense of responsibility. Location : Borough-wide It's an opportunity designed for those who've been locked out of formal workforces but have everything it takes to show up, stay sharp, and serve others. The hidden goldmine: NYC civil service benefits Unlike precarious freelance or app-based jobs, these public sector positions come with powerful advantages: Union protection and job security Comprehensive healthcare Paid parental and sick leave Defined pension and retirement plans Intra-agency promotion ladders For many applicants, these benefits aren't just perks; they're life-altering. The real education? Life itself These jobs aren't handouts, they're a hand up for New Yorkers with street smarts, persistence, and purpose. Whether you're: A single parent returning to work A recent high school graduate avoiding debt A midlife worker forced to pivot An immigrant without U.S. credentials This is your moment. The City of New York isn't just offering employment. It's reimagining what employability means, measuring readiness not in GPAs, but in grit. A city's character is in who it hires For decades, public service was an aspiration, a chance to contribute to the civic fabric of New York. Then came credentialism, outsourcing, and economic precarity. Today, that tide may finally be turning. By recognizing the value of lived experience over academic pedigree, NYC is sending a message: Every borough deserves to be served by its own, and every resident deserves a shot at steady, dignified work. This is not just a job posting, it's a civic rebirth A city is strongest when its workforce reflects its people, not just the degree-holding, but the determined. Not just the privileged, but the persevering. So if you've ever been told you weren't qualified, look again. The qualifications have changed. Ready to navigate global policies? Secure your overseas future. Get expert guidance now!
Yahoo
13-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Andrew Cuomo, Zohran Mamdani face and fling personal attacks in fiery NYC Democratic mayoral debate
Top Big Apple mayoral contenders Andrew Cuomo and Zohran Mamdani continued flinging jibes at each other Thursday during a bruising debate — with third-place candidate Brad Lander also taking a big bite with a pointed stunt. Attacks on the frontrunner Cuomo — who took the stage with six other Dem primary candidates at John Jay College — landed more forcefully than in the first debate last week. Mamdani, a socialist state Assemblyman from Queens, quickly lobbed several pointed body blows against Cuomo as the messy two-hour food fight kicked off. But it was the city comptroller, Lander, who arguably rattled the ex-governor the most — as he refused to let up on the sexual harassment scandal that led Cuomo to resign in disgrace in 2021. 'Everybody here knows that you sexually harassed women, that you created a toxic work environment,' Lander said to thundering applause. The comptroller noted many in the audience were young women attending CUNY, including a valedictorian soon going to work at the Department of Homeless Services. 'I don't want to have to tell her, 'Don't go work at City Hall because the mayor is a sexual harasser,'' Lander said. 'Those are just bold-faced lies,' Cuomo shot back, arguing the accusations were disproven and politically motivated. The unrepentant Cuomo also came under fire from Mamdani over the sex harass accusations and his record as governor. 'I have never had to resign in disgrace,' Mamdani, 33, snapped when Cuomo tried to him him over his lack of experience. The 67-year-old Cuomo tried to deflect a pointed question about his age by seemingly turning the tables on Mamdani. 'Experience matters, and I think inexperience is dangerous,' Cuomo said. During a back-and-forth on Mamdani's proposal to freeze rents across the city, Cuomo said the lefty pol 'should read' the law in regards to whether doing so was in the mayor's power. 'The law didn't control you,' Mamdani quipped. The mudslinging at times got personal — like when the DSA-backed lawmaker corrected Cuomo's repeated mispronunciation of 'Mamdani,' which the ex-gov rhymed with 'mom.' 'The name is Mamdani, M, A, M, D, A, N, I. You should learn how to say it, because we've got to get it right,' he said. Given the chance to counterattack, Cuomo quickly repeated his pronunciation mistake. 'Mr. Mamdani is right,' Cuomo said, but again butchered his rival's name's first syllable. Lander, meanwhile, also personalized the attacks — when he hammered Cuomo's record on nursing home deaths during the coronavirus pandemic in dramatic fashion. He invited Peter Arbeeny, whose father died from COVID-19 after a rehab stint at a local nursing home, as a guest, and dared Cuomo to apologize to him. Cuomo — who earlier Thursday stunningly admitted to a long-denied claim that he saw a controversial report on nursing home COVID deaths while he was governor — tried to dodge by attacking Brooklynite Lander's New York bona fides. 'Maybe where you come from in St. Louis facts don't matter, but here they do,' Cuomo snapped. He then apologized to Arbeeny — albeit without offering a mea culpa for anything else. 'Mr. Arbeeny lost a father,' he said. 'I am very, very sorry for that.' In another fiery moment, Lander contended that Cuomo 'screwed' hundreds of immigrants who were contracted during the COVID pandemic to clean the subways. Cuomo denied knowing what Lander was talking about — before referencing the MTA hiring 'illegal immigrants.' 'What did you call them?' Lander asked, prompting Cuomo to pivot to the term 'undocumented.' The moderators at one point prompted the candidates to ask each other questions — and Cuomo used the opportunity to outsource an attack on Mamdani's arguably pie-in-the-sky campaign promises via longshot mayoral hopeful Whitney Tilson. 'You're a financial expert: Is it feasible and financially possible that he is telling the truth?' he asked the Wall Street investor. Tilson argued Mamdani's plan would result in crushingly high taxes that would cause an exodus of jobs from New York City. The tag team pointed to a new alliance in the race with Tilson later saying he'd rank Cuomo second on his ballot. Another union also emerged when former city Comptroller Scott Stringer and state Sen. Zellnor Myrie both heaped loads of praise on City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams and teed her up to make her pitch to voters. After the debate, Myrie admitted a cross-endorsement was in the works. But both Lander and Mamdani appeared on their own political islands as the factions started to form with just 12 days until the June 24 primary left for the top horses to make a run at the long-standing frontrunner. Mamdani did receive a veiled dig from Stringer when the former comptroller answered a question about Israel's war against Hamas. 'BDS is antisemitic,' Stringer said — moments after Mamdani had again doubled down on his support of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement against Israel. Mamdani said his support of BDS was rooted in his belief in 'nonviolence.' The wounded Cuomo took nearly the whole debate to swing back at Mamdani for repeatedly hitting the ex-governor on his massive war chest from his campaign and state PAC stuffed with contributions from Trump donors and big business, such as Doordash. 'I'm not for rent and I'm not for sale,' Cuomo finally spat out. 'So, we wonder who's funding DSA and who's funding his BDS movement,' he added, barely landing the hit. Cuomo again stumbled when pressed by the moderators on how he had seemingly not once visited a mosque anywhere in the state over the past 14 years while in office and on the campaign trial. 'Not off the top of my head. I can't tell you where I went, but I'll check the record,' Cuomo was able to eventually muster. — Additional reporting by Hannah Fierick and Carl Campanile
New York Times
05-05-2025
- Business
- New York Times
How New York City Routinely Fails to Pay the Nonprofits It Relies On
As protest slogans go, 'Payment on time, every time!' may sound like a modest demand. But for many of the nonprofit organizations that New York City hires to provide billions of dollars in social services, prompt payment is a distant dream. Workers from organizations representing hundreds of nonprofits rallied outside City Hall last week to beg the city to simply pay them what they are owed. According to a new report by the city comptroller, Brad Lander, the city is sitting on at least 7,000 unpaid invoices from nonprofits, some dating back years, totaling over $1 billion. This is money for groups that shelter the homeless, provide child and elder care, feed hungry New Yorkers, counsel the mentally ill, protect domestic violence victims and provide legal services to immigrants and defendants who can't afford lawyers. 'The city says to these organizations, 'Look, we don't have the capacity to do this lifesaving work — we need you to do it,'' Justin Brannan, chairman of the City Council's Finance Committee, said at the rally on Wednesday. 'But then when it's time to get paid, they treat you like a deadbeat parent and they don't answer the phone.' Mr. Lander says the $1 billion is most likely an undercount. His review found that as of April, nonprofits with active contracts might have performed up to $4.9 billion in work that the city had not yet paid them for. Here's what to know about the city's chronic late payments. Why is the city so bad at paying its bills? It's not a cash flow issue — the city has the money. Rather, delays are built into the contracting and payment process at every step. The city was late in registering more than 90 percent of human services contracts last fiscal year, a crucial step that legalizes contracts and lets contractors submit invoices. When a nonprofit requests even a small contract modification — say, a few hundred dollars to fix a boiler — that can stall payments for months. Staffing is also a big problem. New paperwork requirements instituted after abuses have increased workloads at city agencies that are already dealing with lots of vacancies. And a new payment portal rolled out last year has been plagued with glitches, the comptroller says. How late are the payments? Across nine of the slowest city agencies, accounting for more than 4,000 overdue payments, the unpaid invoices were an average of 49 days late, the comptroller found. The Department of Homeless Services, the slowest to pay, holds more than 1,300 unpaid invoices, averaging 82 days old. It has 72 unpaid invoices that date back more than a year. Volunteers of America-Greater New York, which runs shelters for domestic violence victims, veterans and people with disabilities and is owed $32 million, said that it remained unpaid for some expenses incurred in 2017. How do the nonprofits keep the lights on when they are owed millions? Mostly by borrowing money, which creates its own problems. Some organizations pay as much as a million dollars in annual interest on their debt. The city doesn't have to reimburse them for the interest, so that money needs to come from somewhere — sometimes at the expense of serving people in need. At a City Council hearing in March, the Rev. Terry Troia, the president of the shelter operator Project Hospitality on Staten Island, said her organization was owed 'only $4.5 million,' down from $16 million last year. Nevertheless, it was facing a $100,000 interest bill and had to cover that cost itself. 'You do that by raising money in the community,' she said, 'but people would prefer to give money to our food pantry.' Do late payments ever drive nonprofits out of business? It has happened. In 2023, Sheltering Arms, a 200-year-old youth services organization that provided child care and foster care, shut down partly because of delayed payments. Other nonprofits have scaled back services. And thousands of their employees who were promised cost-of-living raises have yet to receive them. More often, said Kristin Miller, the executive director of Homeless Services United, providers stop bidding on city contracts 'because the risk of doing further business with the city is too high.' But for many of them, the city is the only game in town — the only source of the work that the organization performs. What is City Hall doing to fix the problem? Last Tuesday, Mayor Eric Adams, who is up for re-election, announced that next fiscal year the city expected to make over $5 billion in advance payments to contractors, up from $2.8 billion this fiscal year. Nonprofit contractors can receive up to 25 percent of their contract value as an advance. The new fiscal year starts July 1. City Hall is also a launching a new tracking system 'to bring data-driven accountability to nonprofit contracting across city agencies.' Mr. Lander, who is running for mayor, said that increasing advance payments was 'a helpful Band-Aid to help solve the immediate crisis,' but emphasized the need for deeper reforms. What have other officials proposed? Mr. Lander has proposed making partial invoice payments a standard practice so that a dispute about one line item does not hold up payment on the whole bill; expanding grants and bridge loans to ensure nonprofits make payroll; and fixing 'pain points' in the new payment system, PASSPort. The City Council has introduced several bills in an effort spearheaded by the speaker, Adrienne Adams, and Mr. Brannan. One would require the city to pay 80 percent of each year's contract upfront. Another would establish a new city agency, the Department of Contract Services. A third would require agencies to submit 'corrective action plans' if they were late registering contracts. (Ms. Adams is also running for mayor.) Mr. Brannan has also proposed requiring the city to cover interest costs incurred because of late payments.
Yahoo
08-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Code Blue in NYC: Will next week be warmer?
NEW YORK (PIX11) — Saturday night will once again feel frigid, as temperatures are expected to dip below freezing. In response, the Department of Homeless Services has issued a Code Blue Weather Emergency until 8 a.m. Sunday. More Local News Shelters and drop-in centers will be available city-wide for the homeless and those seeking shelter. No one will be denied shelter during a Code Blue. The NYCDHS will deploy outreach teams to assist homeless individuals. If you encounter a homeless person in the cold, please call 311, and an outreach team will be sent to that location. Fortunately, Saturday night appears to be the last time temperatures are expected to dip below freezing in the coming days. More: Latest News from Around the Tri-State The PIX11 forecast for next week has the highs reaching the mid-50s and even 60s by Monday. Daily lows are projected to linger around 40 degrees. More information on homeless assistance can be found online or on the 311 app. Ben Mitchell is a digital content producer from Vermont who has covered both local and international news since 2021. He joined PIX11 in 2024. See more of his work here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
02-03-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Code Blue in NYC: A brief pause from the mild weather
NEW YORK (PIX11) — For the first time in a while, it felt like spring around New York City. Mild temperatures returned to the tri-state area, with Saturday reaching the mid-50s. New Yorkers were able to briefly leave their heavy winter jackets behind, but unfortunately, the cold air has returned for a short stint. More: Latest News from Around the Tri-State Temperatures are steadily decreasing Sunday night and will reach the lower 20s early Monday morning, prompting the Department of Homeless Services to issue a Code Blue Weather Emergency. Code Blue is in effect until 8 a.m. Wednesday. Shelters and drop-in centers will be available city-wide for the homeless and those seeking shelter. No one will be denied shelter during a Code Blue. The NYCDHS will deploy outreach teams to assist homeless individuals. If you encounter a homeless person in the cold, please call 311, and an outreach team will be sent to that location. NYC forecast and PIX11's Weather Center More information on homeless assistance can be found online or on the 311 app. Ben Mitchell is a digital content producer from Vermont who has covered both local and international news since 2021. He joined PIX11 in 2024. See more of his work here. Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
