Cities Under Siege: Federal Abandonment Demands Local Tech Innovation

This is the second of a multi-part series about the critical role of tech in enabling a more affordable, equitable and better New York City, including responding to an adversarial Federal government. Read our previous post and subscribe to future posts.

Cities face a seemingly impossible task: deliver more services with fewer resources while under direct federal attack. And, simultaneously, cities need to fill gaps left by deliberate federal withdrawal from basic social safeguards. Success will rely on technology, more than ever before.

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act represents a $3 trillion restructuring of federal priorities designed to strangle local government.[1] It guts Medicaid and SNAP while handing massive tax cuts to billionaires, forcing impossible budget choices that squeeze every city service.[2]

But budget cuts are only part of the assault. Federal withdrawal means cities must now shoulder responsibilities once shared with Washington — while under direct federal attack.

Mamdani won because he centered his campaign on crises crushing working families across all five boroughs, conditions that recent federal actions will make catastrophic.

Affordability: New York City is unaffordable to all but the wealthy. The median New York City household earns just $76,577 annually.[7] Assuming a 27.5% combined tax rate, that’s a meager $4,626 a month after-tax. The average rent for a 2 bedroom apartment is $3,601 in Crown Heights, Brooklyn. For an average family, that leaves just $1,000 for all other expenses.[8] Is it any wonder that nearly 60% of New Yorkers are enrolled in Medicaid?[9] Or that 53% of New Yorkers took on new debt just to buy groceries — 73% of Hispanic families?[10] Adding to the burden, childcare costs soared 79% since 2019.[11] In the past five years, 3.5 million New Yorkers have fallen behind on utility payments, and 1.9 million have experienced utility shut-offs.[12]

Housing: The largest component of the affordability crisis is housing. The average New Yorker spends over 30% of their income on rent, and more than 20% of New Yorkers spend more than 50% of their income on rent.[13] New Yorkers suffer from a housing shortage that inflates prices.[14] Median rent rose over 20% from 2017–22.[15] Over 250,000 rent-stabilized apartments were lost to deregulation since 1994, with 154,000 lost specifically between 1994–2019.[15] Meanwhile, over 146,000 New Yorkers remain homeless, including 47,000 children.[16]

Health: Losing health insurance is by far the largest public health crisis facing the city. 71% of New Yorkers with a household income of less than $60,000 say they were unsure or would not be able to afford healthcare if they lost their insurance, including Medicaid, and 64% were unsure or did not think they would be able to maintain doctor visits.[17] The impacts disproportionately affect communities of color: Black women are 12 times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women.[18]

Climate: New York City is unprepared for the changing climate; kicking the can down the road means the city loses $19 billion annually to extreme weather.[19]. Rainstorms exceeding the subway design limit had never been recorded before 1991 but happened six times since then.[20] New York will face 40% more extreme heat days by 2050.[21] Sea levels are rising 1.5 times faster than global average, threatening 400,000 New Yorkers in flood zones.[22]

Education: Childcare is a broken market: parents are going broke paying for it, while childcare providers can’t cover the costs of quality care with tuition or subsidies alone.[23] In New York City, childcare remains prohibitively expensive for families while also failing to pay workers a fair living wage. Child care workers had a median income of just $25,000 in 2023, but families are paying $26,000 a year per child for center-based care.[24] Fourth and eighth grade reading and math proficiency dropped precipitously after the pandemic; only 18 percent of economically disadvantaged 4th graders are proficient in math.[25] NYC still hasn’t made most special education fixes required by court order two years ago.[26]

Digital Divide: In a world where critical services are delivered online and in a city that speaks as many as 800 languages, online access is increasingly essential.[27] Families who speak languages other than English face additional challenges accessing both devices and digital services.[28] One in four NYC households lacks broadband.[29] Over 114,000 students lack adequate internet for remote learning.[30]

Bureaucratic Dysfunction: Everyone seeking city help faces unnecessary complexity and contradictions. 30% of small businesses wait six months for basic city approvals.[31] 90.59% of nonprofit contracts registered late in Fiscal Year 2024, delaying payment for vital services and imperiling non-profits.[32] One affordable housing project took a full year for city approval, while North Carolina officials completed a similar process in 25 minutes.[33]

Technology Infrastructure: Technology starts with electricity, yet many of NYC’s public buildings depend on unreliable electrical systems from prior generations.[34] Recent cybersecurity failures by contractors managing New York’s emergency rental assistance program exposed sensitive personal information.[35] PASSPort, the city’s digital procurement platform, suffers from technical limitations and frequent breakdowns.[36]

The Federal government has eliminated or kneecapped essential functions all cities rely on. To divert scarce resources to replace these services — or leave their residents vulnerable–is the choice foisted upon cities.

Critical Safety-net Services: The OBBBA intentionally deploys “malicious bureaucracy” to keep people from accessing survival-level services like SNAP and Medicaid.[37][38] USDA already cut more than $1 billion in food assistance programs, including $500 million in food deliveries to food banks, as demand grows in New York City.[39][40]

Public Health Abandonment: “According to the [New York] Governor’s office, [OBBBA] would cause 1.5 million New Yorkers to become uninsured and cause an overall $13 billion impact on the state’s healthcare system, including an $8 billion hit to New York hospitals.”[41] Trump signed an executive order halting federal funds for schools that require students to be vaccinated against coronavirus.[42] Trump administration proposed 17% budget cut to FDA, shifting routine food inspections entirely to states.[43] The Trump administration is engaging in a war on women and families by eliminating the majority of CDC employees in the Division of Reproductive Health, and cutting more than $65 million in federal Title X funding for family planning services, leaving seven states without any Title X funding.[44][45][46]

Housing. The Kafkaesque “Housing Vouchers Fairness Act” currently in front of Congress could eliminate rent support for over 40,000 New Yorkers.[47]

Emergency Response Collapse: The Administration officials promised to “get rid of FEMA the way it exists today.” [48] Cities must coordinate rescue operations and recovery without federal support while climate disasters intensify.[49]

Education Abandonment: The Education Department fired almost 1,400 employees, raising questions about how the federal government will uphold its obligations under the Individuals With Disabilities Act (“IDEA”). Cities must develop evaluation systems and coordinate therapeutic services without federal funding or expertise.[50]

Federal Hostility, Not Just Neglect: Previous disengagement was passive; current assault is active and coordinated. Cities face deliberate sabotage, not just reduced cooperation.

Scale and Speed of Crisis: Multiple simultaneous emergencies — housing, climate, health, economic — each accelerated by federal policy designed to maximize urban suffering. Traditional incremental responses inadequate to exponential problems.

Technology as Weapon and Shield: Federal actors understand technology as governance infrastructure. Cities that don’t build independent technological capacity remain vulnerable to federal manipulation.

Transform: Build independent municipal capacity. Invest in technological infrastructure working regardless of federal posture. Create systems designed for rapid scaling and adaptation. Develop in-house expertise instead of vendor dependence.

Collapse: Continue dependency on broken systems. Watch promises fail due to implementation gaps. Remain vulnerable to federal technological manipulation. Prove critics right that bold policies “can’t work in practice.”

The window for traditional responses — lawsuits, procedural appeals, waiting for electoral salvation — has closed. Cities must choose between building independent capacity or watching governance collapse under inadequate infrastructure.

The OBBBA intentionally creates bureaucratic problems to keep people from accessing services. Technology excels at solving exactly these bureaucratic barriers. Building technical solutions helping New York residents overcome frequent and difficult eligibility proofs ensures as many New Yorkers as possible continue receiving services.

Simultaneously, we must build systems responding to adversarial federal actors by creating barriers to sharing or exporting data out of city databases.

The choice is simple: Build the technological foundation making governance work, or watch it fail for lack of basic infrastructure.

We are a group of experienced technologists creating a blueprint that we believe New York City must have. We are not affiliated with a political campaign. Interested in following our work? Join our mailing list to stay up to date.

Join us.