"This book examines efforts to respond to the challenging problem of inner-city poverty by examining the shifting policies of New York City's Human Resources Administration (HRA) over the course of six decades. The efforts to redirect an entrenched bureaucracy onto an innovative path have had mixed results, even as the overall history of the HRA has shown what works and what does not work in urban management."--
Reforming Social Services in New York City examines efforts across six decades to respond to poverty, joblessness, and homelessness through the establishment and periodic restructuring of the city's Human Resources Administration (HRA) and related social welfare agencies.
As Thomas J. Main shows through archival research and interviews with key figures, the HRA has been the focus of several mayoralties. The John Lindsay administration's creation of the HRA in 1966 was a classic liberal effort to fight poverty; Rudy Giuliani brought dramatic change by implementing work-oriented welfare reform; and the Bill de Blasio administration attempted to install a progressive social welfare agenda within the city's social service agencies to reduce inequality. Reforming Social Services in New York City tells the story of these efforts, assessing the strategies employed and the success of their outcomes, concluding that major nonincremental change in urban welfare policy is not only possible but has been effective.
