New York City agencies that want new money from Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s administration now have to say, on a form, how the spending would advance racial equity. The city that Black families built is one they have been leaving: more than 170,000 Black residents have gone since 2010, according to figures cited by Capital B.
Bedford-Stuyvesant shows how it happened. Between 2010 and 2020 the neighborhood lost 22,000 Black residents and gained 30,000 white ones, Capital B reported. The same outlet put the average Black New Yorker’s wealth at $2,800, against $320,000 for the average white resident.
The form, as Capital B first reported, is called the Equity and Climate New Need Screening Form. It applies to “new needs,” the requests agencies make for money beyond their current budgets. Mamdani said the tool “will help ensure that equity is not an afterthought, but a standard that guides how government makes decisions.” Chief Equity Officer Afua Atta-Mensah said it means “investment decisions consider the potential equitable impact of City dollars.”
It is the first piece of machinery attached to the city’s first citywide racial equity plan, released Sept. 1. That plan covers 45 agencies, with more than 200 agency goals, more than 800 implementation strategies and more than 600 indicators to track progress. It also promises an “equity budget review” of the fiscal year 2028 preliminary budget, to examine where the city invests and who benefits.
A form is not a budget. Atta-Mensah has described the plan’s eight citywide goals, which include cutting racial gaps in unemployment, rent burden and homelessness and improving pregnancy-related health outcomes for Black New Yorkers, as “directional commitments for now.” They have no numerical targets yet; those are to follow as the plan lines up with budget cycles. Capital B noted that the policy will matter only if the assessments change what gets funded, and that Joe Biden’s Justice40 program showed how often agencies adjust paperwork without changing outcomes.
The plan also has an enemy in Washington. When Mamdani released the preliminary version in April, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who ran the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said on social media that it sounded “fishy” and might be “illegal.” Dhillon has since announced she is leaving the Justice Department. The Trump administration’s executive orders against diversity programs and its threats to withhold federal money remain.
Black New Yorkers have reason to want the test applied. Capital B reported that about 71% of Black New Yorkers view Mamdani favorably, compared with 41% of white residents. That is credit extended on a promise, and a screening form is the easy part of keeping it.
The test comes with the FY2028 preliminary budget. By then the city should be able to show which requests the form changed, and the goals should have numbers. Without both, the plan is a record of intentions in a city that has been losing the people it says it is serving.
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