“The just announced, three-year, $1 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation will help New York City obtain first-of-its-kind data on how the affordable housing we are creating under our New Housing Marketplace Plan impacts families. Through the NYC Housing and Neighborhood Demonstration Project, a joint partnership between the City’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development and Columbia University, we’ll track how affordable housing affects the financial stability, health and living conditions and school performance of 3,000 New York City families. The research will allow the City and others to learn the extent to which affordable housing produces benefits and cost-savings in other areas, such as public health.

“The award, granted to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York City, is an acknowledgement of the innovative, data-driven research being done in the City aimed at changing the way we think about how government can and should work. It represents the largest award of the current round of MacArthur Foundation grants, and, combined with grants from the National Institute for Child Health and Human Development at the National Institutes of Health and a previous grant from the MacArthur Foundation, the total funding for the study now sits at $4.4 million.”