Weeks after senior advocacy groups rallied at Queens Borough Hall to protest Mayor Adams administration’s proposed $102 budget cut to the New York City Department for the Aging (DFTA), the threat of austerity still looms over the city’s senior services. The proposed cuts would reduce the agency’s total budget by about 20%, slashing critical services like home-delivered meals, social adult day services, tenancy and eviction support, elder abuse prevention and case management for 153,220 older New Yorkers.
Advocates warn that further cuts could lead to closures of more than 90 centers across the city, exacerbating the already dire lack of funding for senior services. This funding crisis comes at a time when 423,000 New Yorkers aged 65 and over live below the poverty line according to 2022 figures, a more-than 50% increase over the last decade. As the city’s aging population grows, these cuts will leave more New Yorkers vulnerable during the city’s escalating affordability crisis.
These austerity measures are part of a larger attack on older Americans, from the erosion of retirement benefits to the Trump administration’s ongoing war against Medicare and the Social Security Administration. While the city’s aging population faces the possibility of losing access to what may be their only nutritious meal in a day provided by the DFTA, Trump and his billionaire cabinet continue to enrich themselves through insider trading, showing blatant disregard for the dignity and survival of working-class seniors.
LiveOn NY, the group that organized last week’s protests, called for 2.3 billion dollars in funding to fully support nutrition, housing, and community services for the city’s senior population. The current proposal for the 2026 budget allocates only 426 million dollars.
These cuts reflect the Adams administration’s failure to prepare for the expiration of COVID-era federal funding, leaving vital services in jeopardy as the city’s policing budget continues to ballon. According to the Vera Institute, this year’s budget includes a 9% increase in spending for the Department of Corrections (DOC) and a 4% increase for the NYPD, with 15 billion dollars allocated to these two departments. Unbudgeted overtime spending alone cost the city 724 million dollars — nearly double the entire DFTA budget.
As New York City’s aging population faces a cost-of-living crisis, the Adams administration’s budget strips essential services while bolstering policing and incarceration. With this budget proposal, the Adams administration is sending a clear message: after a lifetime of contributing to their communities, seniors must fend for themselves while the city funnels billions into law enforcement and incarceration. These cuts not only strip away meals, housing support and protection from elder abuse from one of the most vulnerable sectors of our population, they also push the people who built this city into crisis.
Socialists believe in the right to dignified work for all who are able. Through struggle, working class people have won protections for those who cannot and should not work: children, the elderly and the sick. Cuts to the DFTA are indicative of the Trump administration’s larger attempt to roll back these hard-earned rights that guarantee care for these forces in our community.
Seniors, who paid taxes for the 50 or 60 years of their work life, have worked for and paid for for the benefits now being denied them. In marked contrast, billionaires do not work themselves but instead profit from the work of others. Yet they are the ones setting the terms for public budgets, quietly dismantling services for the most vulnerable segments of the population. A just city prioritizes care for all its residents, not the endless and criminal expansion of profits.
Photo: Sunnyside Community Services.
