City Limits Expands Housing Coverage with New Beat Focused on NYCHA

City Limits News announced Friday the launch of a new reporting beat focused exclusively on the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the country’s largest public housing community.  

City Limits News announced Friday the launch of a new reporting beat focused exclusively on the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA), the country’s largest public housing community.

With nearly 400,000 residents across five boroughs, NYCHA accounts for approximately 7 percent of the city’s rental units and 6 percent of the population, a community larger than some entire cities. NYCHA provides affordable housing for low- and moderate-income New Yorkers, and is a competitive housing destination for families in our homeless shelters and for our housing insecure. These are the same populations City Limits has covered, through a lens of equity and empathy, for more than 45 years. With an initial project grant from The New York Community Trust (NYCT), City Limits will close the news and information gap by providing NYCHA tenants, stakeholders and advocates with focused, sustained investigative reporting.

“We’re grateful to NYCT for helping us further expand our housing coverage at this pivotal moment for New York, as the city emerges from the pandemic amidst a housing affordability crisis and a rising homeless shelter population,” City Limits Executive Editor Jeanmarie Evelly said. “This is a crucial period for NYCHA and its residents, who have endured decades of disinvestment. As the city readies in the new year to launch its latest rescue plan, the NYCHA Preservation Trust, City Limits is committed to covering those and other policies impacting tenants with depth, care and nuance.”

Housing has always been core to City Limits’ mission. Launched in 1976 to cover the city’s housing crisis, the publication has a strong legacy of award-winning, comprehensive coverage of housing and land use issues, with reporting that equips local communities to take action and sets the tone of public discourse around street homelessness, housing insecurity and bureaucratic inefficiencies.

We are eager to hear from NYCHA residents, advocates and stakeholders. Send us story tips, questions or comments by emailing nycha@citylimits.org.

City Limits’ launch of the NYCHA beat advances the nonprofit newsroom’s mission of producing in-depth, high-quality journalism on New York City housing and land use issues and how they intersect with other policy areas including climate change, health, environment and immigration. In addition to its award-winning and bilingual news coverage, City Limits has since 2014 offered a paid youth journalism training program for NYC high schools students called CLARIFY. 

As part of City Limits’ continued growth, the newsroom is excited to announce the hiring of Mariana Simoes, who will start in January reporting for the climate and environment beat, City on the Edge. Simoes is a Brazilian investigative journalist covering climate, politics and urban issues in Brazil and the United States. Her work has appeared in global outlets like The New York Times, The Economist, Vice, Aljazeera, USA Today and others. She coordinated award-winning multimedia projects for Brazilian investigative news agency, Agencia Publica, and ran Brazil’s first cultural center for journalism. Simoes is a Columbia University J-school alum.

Interested in working with us? City Limits is currently hiring for the following newsroom positions: