For hundreds of thousands of working-poor New Yorkers like Shani Rahman, the price of a monthly MetroCard can exceed 10% of their household budget -- keeping them from getting medical care, buying new clothes for their kids, even forcing them to beg for a swipe just to get to work. Poverty is so often a vicious cycle, and the high cost of our public transportation has been one painful example … until now.
The 2018-2019 budget that the City Council and the Mayor have agreed upon will provide groundbreaking relief to low-income straphangers. Thanks to the #FairFares program that we’ve worked on together, New Yorkers below the poverty line (about $25,000 for a family of four) will be able to get half-priced MetroCards. It’s a strong new strand of NYC’s social safety net.
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