While New York City recently passed legislation securing paid sick leave, Mayor Bill de Blasio acknowledged much work is still needed to fight income disparity as many working families are forced to live in homeless shelters.
"Some of our lowest paid city workers are living in shelters because they can't afford the life expenses, rent, etc. for their family," de Blasio said. "That's unacceptable."
The mayor's comments were made Monday morning during an appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show, his first since taking office. De Blasio made tackling income inequality the central theme to his successful mayoral campaign and often used a "tale of two cities" narrative to illustrate the problems surfaced by the city's widening income gap.
According to statistics collected by the Coalition for the Homeless, the number of working New Yorkers living in shelters rose a staggering 57 percent from November 2010 to July 2013.
In September, the New York Times reported 28 percent of families living in shelters were employed. Most of the adults recorded were female.
On Monday, de Blasio vowed to continue working on the agenda he laid out during his campaign, specifically expanding universal pre-K and strengthening a living wage ordinance, to help brings those statistics down.
"Fighting inequality happens on many, many fronts," de Blasio told Lehrer. "I think the great news is the City Council wants to be shoulder to shoulder with us in this. I think you're going to see a lot of emphasis on the issue of how to get more New Yorkers back to work and at levels of wages and benefits that are actually sufficient for a family."