Some of New York City’s largest nonprofits that help New Yorkers facing homelessness, food insecurity and mental illnesses are contending with alarming staffing shortages, as vacancy rates for some positions exceed 40%, according to a new report.
The Center for an Urban Future, a nonprofit think tank based in New York City, released a survey of more than two dozen local organizations on Thursday and found that 18 had vacancy rates of 15% or higher, while another seven had vacancy rates of at least 20%. Staffing shortages were worse among frontline workers, including social workers, nurses, counselors and case workers, whose vacancy rates were three times higher.
Turnover rates were also troubling, according to the survey. About half of the 19 groups that reported employee turnover had 35% turnover rates among their staff in the past year.
“There’s a real human cost to this,” said Jonathan Bowles, the Center for an Urban Future’s executive director. “As the city faces crises and they ask nonprofits to do more, expand their services to more homeless New Yorkers or to add new services for asylum-seekers, many nonprofits are saying ‘we can’t do that because we don’t have the staff to even serve the existing populations that we’ve been in charge of.’”
While city agencies are struggling with their own staffing shortages, Bowles said there has been less attention on nonprofits grappling with the same problem and tasked with aiding the most vulnerable residents. That comes as homeless rates are soaring, driven by new migrant arrivals, and as costs for child care, housing and food are squeezing many New Yorkers.
The report said the worker shortages were driven primarily by low wages. Nonprofit providers say they want to raise pay but they’re limited by the funding they receive in city and state contracts, which do not fully cover the costs of the services they provide.
“We need to be held accountable to how we’re spending our money, especially the government’s money,” said Ronald Richter, CEO of JCCA, which provides services for children and families. He added that nonprofits should not have to raise additional money to subsidize a service the city is paying them for, and instead, any additional funds should go toward additional programming for New Yorkers.
“The government pays us an administrative rate to do our work and that administrative rate does not cover the expenses of turning on the lights and paying rent and continuing to make improvements and provide health insurance,” Richter said. “There’s a gap every year.”
The report includes several recommendations, such as calling on the state to create a Human Services Wage Board to recommend salary levels, as it has done for farm workers and fast-food workers. The report also calls for city and state contracting reforms to better pay nonprofits for their services.
In March, Mayor Eric Adams boosted pay for 80,000 human services workers employed through city contracts, investing $741 million and offering a 9.27% cost-of-living adjustment over the next three years. The state also approved a 2.8% cost-of-living increase in the next fiscal year for many human services workers. Nonprofits say these moves are a step forward but not enough to fix the problem.
The Administration for Children Services, one of the agencies that contracts with human services providers, said it’s investing in scholarships and training opportunities for its providers and improving contract reforms such as reducing payment delays.
City Hall said it would review the report and pointed to a recently created nonprofit advisory council that meets to discuss challenges and solutions, such as wage increases. Gov. Kathy Hochul’s office also said it would review the report.
The Center for an Urban Future report said the average annual salary in 2022 for the social assistance sector was $38,458, slightly higher than the annual salary for a minimum-wage worker in New York City. Many workers also rely on the very services they help provide, including as public benefits, shelter and housing vouchers.
“The greatest dilemma is that these are the roles that have the greatest impact immediately on the lives of our clients,” said Eric Rosenbaum, CEO of Project Renewal, a homeless and housing organization. “And they’re the lowest paid jobs in structure.”
The report relied on data shared by nonprofits and found that the lack of adequate staff was impeding their ability to serve more people and expand their services.
Food provider Encore Community Services said they could only provide one meal a day to older people who are homebound. Covenant House, which works with homeless youth, reported a staff turnover rate of 50% in the last fiscal year. And due to staffing issues, Project Renewal did not open shelter space to help with newly arriving migrants.
The staffing issues also shortchange clients who are often in crisis, according to experts.
“Most of our clients have been affected by trauma, and that means that their ability to form relationships of trust with people is impaired,” Rosenbaum said. “In us working with those clients, if they’re experiencing constant turnover in our case managers, or if they’re seeing a new face every day in the dormitory or in the halls, it’s hard for our workforce to build and maintain those relationships of trust, which are necessary to implement some of the changes that would be most helpful in addressing the root causes of an individual’s challenges.”
This story was updated to include remarks from the Adams and Hochul administrations.