“With investments starting at just $1,000 per newborn, the next generation of New Yorkers will be better prepared to thrive.”

CityViews are readers’ opinions, not those of City Limits. Add your voice today!

My wife and I are about to have our first baby. I’m over the moon.

I want to do everything I can to prepare for this new addition. We’ve bought books, moved into a new apartment, and have been getting advice (solicited and unsolicited) from just about everybody. Something else we’re doing is opening a 529 savings account for this future child, where we’ll make a deposit for their future—a small down payment on their education.

We’re lucky that we can put a few bucks away for this baby, but we know that many New Yorkers aren’t able to do the same. But what if everybody could? What if New York invested in the future of our city by investing in future New Yorkers?

Baby bonds, a seed account granted to every child and placed in a trust as they grow, is our opportunity to do just that. The concept is simple at its core: just give babies some money and let it grow into a fund that can be used for education, buying a home, starting a business, or otherwise enriching their lives. With investments starting at just $1,000 per newborn, the next generation of New Yorkers will be better prepared to thrive.

This idea sounds radical at first, but it is a proven policy. Connecticut introduced a similar program last year, and nearly 8,000 babies have already qualified. Washington DC implemented bonds in 2021. California has a pilot program, and over a dozen other states have considered this proposal in some form. On the federal level, Senator Cory Booker and Representative Ayanna Presley introduced legislation for federal baby bonds in 2021 and again in 2023.

In New York City, the de Blasio administration took some initial steps towards a baby bonds program, and non-profit NYC Kids RISE has supported modest scholarship accounts for kindergarteners. These are positive developments, but far from a comprehensive, needle-moving program.

Done right, baby bonds are the rare breed of policy that pays off both immediately and far into the future, for both those in diapers and not.

Today, the median net worth of a white family in the United States is eight times higher than that of a Black family. According to Morningstar research, baby bonds could potentially reduce this racial wealth gap by as much as two-thirds. In just one generation, this policy could dramatically change the trajectory of entire communities.

It’s no secret that the price of education has skyrocketed in the past several decades and only promises to continue its steady climb. Today’s average cost of a public university is 23 times higher than in 1963, and between 2010 and 2022 alone, average tuition increased by 12 percent annually. As debate continues to rage over student loan forgiveness, baby bonds could make sure that we’re the last generation to suffer this burden.

As with all policies that dial back the pressure of New York’s extreme cost of living, baby bonds can unlock the creative and entrepreneurial vibrancy of our city’s incredible people. Knowing you have some cushion (as a parent or as a grown beneficiary of the bonds) allows you to take risks, to open up that new bakery or shoot that movie that you’ve been dreaming of. And we’re all better off when this happens—whether we have jobs on set or we simply get to eat those delicious croissants.

Lastly, baby bonds can help extinguish the worry that I hear from so many of my peers: that New York isn’t a place where you can raise kids. I’ve witnessed so many friends leave town to seek more space, family support, good schools, and the other comforts that this city can be too stingy with when it comes to building a family. Each time one of our neighbors leaves this city, the lights shine a little dimmer, and the promise of New York is a little duller.

This policy is popular. In a recent YouGov survey, 61 percent of voters supported some form of baby bonds. And this policy is possible. Our neighbors in Connecticut have proven so, and years of research across disciplines shows the positive Return on investment (ROI) of increased economic security.

Investing directly in our next generation will make us a more equitable, smarter, and dynamic city. Most of all, it will show that we are committed to the next generation—that this city isn’t just a playground for recent college grads or a vertical office park for commuters but a place where families can live a full life.

That’s the city that I want my kid to grow up in.

Ben Guttmann is a marketing executive, adjunct professor at Baruch College, and non-profit board member. He is the author of Simply Put: Why Clear Messages Win – and How to Design Them (Berrett-Koehler Publishers).

In a few days, they’ll push off in their canoe – three women in their 70s – from Norway House, Manitoba, and head north into the great unknown wilderness on the homestretch of their three-year journey from the source of the Red River at Lake Traverse to York Factory on Hudson Bay.

Two years ago about this time, these “Ladies from the River” – as they came to be known – paddled through Grand Forks on the first leg of their journey. They paddled as far as the Manitoba border that summer and resumed their journey in June 2023, paddling down the Manitoba portion of the Red River, north up massive Lake Winnipeg and arriving in Norway House on Sunday, July 2.

They left their 18-foot Alumacraft canoe in Norway House, where it will be waiting for them when they arrive Friday, June 21, said Deb White of Rosemount, Minnesota, who messaged earlier this week to say the final leg of the trip is fast approaching.

As in previous adventures, White will join Anne Sherve-Ose, a Jamestown, North Dakota, native who now lives in Williams, Iowa; and Deb Knutson of Owatonna, Minnesota. The women, who became friends while attending St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota, will rendezvous in Winnipeg, where they’ll catch a flight to Norway House, White says.

From there, if all goes according to plan, they’ll arrive at York Factory on Hudson Bay “on or about July 19th or 18th or something like that,” White said in her message.

Getting there won’t be easy. Along the way, they’ll have to navigate or portage around dozens of treacherous whitewater rapids on rugged, wilderness rivers with names such as Nelson, Echimamish – Cree for “river that flows both ways” – and Hayes.

There’s also the threat of bears – especially polar bears, as they get closer to Hudson Bay.

“This is going to be the toughest one,” White said of the Norway House-to-York Factory stretch of the trip. “I’m sure (we’ll be) going through areas with bears and portages and isolation, but I made a commitment to finish and I’m going to give it my best.

“There will be a lot of challenges this year – way more than last year.”

Despite its reputation for wind and rough water, Lake Winnipeg – often referred to as “Big Windy” – treated them quite well last summer, Sherve-Ose wrote in a blog post at the end of the trip.

“The fabled violence of Lake Winnipeg never materialized,” she wrote. “I do not hesitate to claim that it is the most beautiful lake I have ever paddled on in 50 years of paddling. Located elsewhere in the world, Lake Winnipeg would be a prime tourist attraction. As it was, we saw a few fishermen but no other recreational boaters and no canoes or kayaks.”

Paddling veterans

The three women are no strangers to long-distance paddling. As part of a quest to paddle from the Gulf of Mexico to Hudson Bay, they canoed the Mississippi River over a period of 13 years beginning in 2004. Once they reach Hudson Bay, White says, they will complete the connection by paddling from Lake Traverse to the Mississippi River via the Minnesota River.

“We are officially done when we reach Fort Snelling in the Twin Cities – probably the summer of 2025,” White said.

As the trip from Norway House to Hudson Bay draws closer, no doubt tension and nervous anticipation are mounting for the three women.

Because visitors to Canada can’t bring bear spray – or pepper spray – across the border, the women will carry a milder wildlife deterrent, Sherve-Ose says. They’ll carry “Bear Bangers,” which make a loud noise, flash and smoke, and a portable electric fence they will set up each time they make camp.

As in previous years, Sherve-Ose also will carry a Garmin satellite communicator that will allow people to check on their progress and whereabouts. Anyone interested in following their journey can do so at Share.garmin.com/OurHudsonBayTrip or check out Sherve-Ose’s blog at annesherveose.com.

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“There were a lot of systems that weren’t working perfectly before COVID, and then during COVID really broke down and haven’t necessarily come back all the way,” Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Wasow Park told City Limits in an interview Thursday.

The city’s annual estimate for its unsheltered homeless population—conducted each winter in an effort to track the number of New Yorkers sleeping on the streets and other public spaces—inched up to a near-record high this year, according to data released Thursday.

The 2024 Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE) Survey, carried out by volunteers and city outreach teams during a cold night in January, projected that there were 4,140 people experiencing unsheltered homelessness across the city, up slightly from 4,042 last year and the second highest number since the count began in 2005.

Advocates for the homeless stress that the survey is an imperfect tool, and say it’s almost certainly an undercount. This year’s uptick comes as New York City’s overall homeless population reached record highs, and more than doubled over the last two years. Around 147,000 people slept in the city’s sprawling shelter system in April—including nearly 66,000 migrants and asylums seekers, who began arriving in New York in larger numbers beginning in the spring of 2022.

But city officials said this year’s increase wasn’t driven by the new migrant population directly. While the HOPE Survey doesn’t seek or record information on people’s immigration status, the city paid close attention to counts around its migrant intake sites and emergency shelters, according to Department of Social Services (DSS) Commissioner Molly Wasow Park.

“We really haven’t gotten any sign of a systemic increase in asylum seekers experiencing unsheltered homelessness,” Wasow Park told City Limits in an interview Thursday.

This year’s numbers, she said, while up slightly, are fairly consistent what the city has seen in prior years (low counts during 2021 and 2022 should be considered anomalies, officials said, because of myriad factors associated with the COVID-19 crisis, including the state’s pandemic moratorium on evictions and federal funding at the time to place homeless New Yorkers in hotel rooms).

The population estimated by the HOPE Survey—which is required by federal law to take place at least every other year, though New York City does it annually—”have been failed by every level of government that there is, every form of the social safety net,” Wasow Park said.

“They’re not experiencing unsheltered homelessness in a vacuum. They’re there as a result of all of these systemic failures. And there were a lot of systems that weren’t working perfectly before COVID, and then during COVID really broke down and haven’t necessarily come back all the way,” she said, including New York’s networks of inpatient psychiatric beds.

The city noted that its street homeless population is low compared to other major cities across the country, accounting for roughly 5 percent of the homeless population overall (in Los Angeles, by comparison, more than 70 percent of residents experiencing homelessness are unsheltered, according to DSS).

Wasow Park attributed this to the city’s efforts to expand resources for street homeless New Yorkers, including increased outreach work conducted under Mayor Eric Adams’ “Subway Safety Plan,” and the opening of more than 1,100 Safe Haven and stabilization beds—which have fewer rules and barriers to entry than traditional shelters—since Adams took office. Another 500 such beds are expected to open by the end of the year.

She also pointed to the administration’s focus on placing street homeless residents in permanent housing, saying they’ve done so for about 2,000 people so far, most of whom were connected with subsidized apartments.

“We used to essentially declare victory for an individual when we got them off the street and into some form of shelter,” Wasow Park said. “Shelter is an important resource, but it’s not the goal, right? The goal is permanent housing.”

Advocates for homeless New Yorkers have long taken issue with the accuracy of the HOPE Survey. In a statement posted on social media Thursday, Coalition for the Homeless said the annual estimate “does not come close to representing the number of unsheltered people in our city, or the true scope of the homelessness crisis.”

“The number of people who are sleeping unsheltered in New York City can vary very much from night to night, because people do whatever they can to get by,” the group’s executive director Dave Giffen told City Limits. “They might be in a shelter for some nights. They might find the shelters not meeting their needs and end up on the streets; they might be couch surfing; they might have made enough money to stay in a room for a few days.”

He pointed to other numbers: the 9,231 people approached by city outreach teams at end-of-line subway stations from May 5, 2020 to Jan. 31, 2022, who accepted offers of transportation to shelters. Even that, he said, likely represents “a fraction of a fraction of a fraction,” of the actual need.

“That was only the people who agreed to talk to outreach workers, and of those, it was only those that accepted referrals,” he said.

Giffen attributed New York’s relatively low unsheltered population compared to other major cities to its longstanding right to shelter protections, which requires the city to grant a bed, at least temporarily, to anyone who needs it.

The city temporarily amended those protections this spring, citing the strain on the shelter system as tens of thousands newly arrived immigrants sought beds. Under the new rules—struck as part of a legal settlement that Coalition for the Homeless helped negotiate—adult migrants without children are now subject to stricter 30- and 60-day shelter limits, and can only earn an extension if they meet specific criteria.

This means more people are now being “effectively denied shelter by the practices that [the city has] been undertaking,” Giffen said.

Wasow Park countered that the administration is “absolutely not retreating from the right to shelter,” arguing that the settlement made “a relatively small number of very time limited, focused adjustments to to how the right to shelter is implemented for this particular population.”

“I’m not anticipating that we’re going to see a big uptick in in unsheltered homelessness as a result of the recent changes,” she said, noting that migrants in shelter had already been subject to shelter limits when this year’s HOPE Survey took place (though they faced fewer restrictions to extending their time then).

“But we will certainly monitor that closely,” she added.

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org.