Municipal employees have resigned by the thousands since 2020, resulting in 24,000 vacancies across City agencies. This has had wide-reaching impacts, impeding the delivery and quality of services to New Yorkers. This includes stalling affordable housing development, delaying the delivery of rental vouchers to families living in shelters, and slowing the pace of critical building safety inspections. At the same time, other challenges have been threatening our city’s government, including low voter turnout, bureaucratic red tape, and a lack of flexibility to spark innovation and greater public sector efficiency.

5BORO believes that an effective government is critical to the health of our city — and it is what New Yorkers deserve. To help address the government staffing crisis, 5BORO has been engaging with leaders across the City to pinpoint the drivers of the crisis and lay out a roadmap so that City government can retain, recruit, and modernize its workforce effectively and efficiently.