For Immediate Release: October 30, 2025
Contact: media@hispanicfederation.org
Hispanic Federation Unveils La Gran Manzana Policy Blueprint to Highlight Needs of New York City’s Latino Communities
The quadrennial report outlines policy priorities to uplift Latino communities, including improving education, expanding support for immigrants, promoting healthy living, prioritizing a Latino/a speaker in City Council, and increasing economic opportunity.
NEW YORK, NY – Today, Hispanic Federation (HF) released La Gran Manzana: The Road Ahead for Latino New Yorkers, a policy blueprint with recommendations on how the next Mayor and City Council can improve the lives of the nearly 2.5 million Latinos living in New York City. The report was created in partnership with Hispanic Federation’s member and partner organizations throughout New York City, of which 50 nonprofit professionals participated.
With record-setting early municipal voting underway, La Gran Manzana seeks to help elected officials and the upcoming administration better understand the priorities of the Latino community by offering a wide range of policy prescriptions. These policies will be an important tool for local leaders to understand the needs of a key block of the city’s diverse population.
Recommendations include supporting Latino nonprofit organizations, expanding early childhood education programs (Pre-K and 3-K) with extended hours, providing sustained funding to safety-net community health centers, expanding support for immigrant communities in New York City, significantly increasing the city’s minimum wage, and reinstituting Youth Domestic Violence Courts with trauma-informed interventions across all boroughs, among a host of others.
“The COVID-19 pandemic revealed gaps in the social safety net that had a disproportionate impact on Latino New Yorkers, and the next administration has a responsibility to create a comprehensive strategy that addresses those gaps while also meeting the Latino community’s particular needs,” said Frankie Miranda, President and CEO of Hispanic Federation. “One-size-fits-all approaches won’t suffice to help Latino families thrive in New York City. Without a clear strategy, the risk of Latino families falling through the city’s proverbial cracks increase. The next mayor and city council must act to ensure that the same individuals who have worked to keep this city running through one crisis after another have the support necessary to continue to live, work, and raise our families in our Nueva York.”
Hispanic Federation partnered with Latino nonprofit organizations in all five boroughs to develop the policy blueprint and has highlighted policy recommendations across 10 focus areas that must be central to the planning priorities of New York City’s next generation of government leaders.
Those areas are:
- Supporting Latino Nonprofits
- Improving Education
- Promoting Healthy Lifestyles
- Protecting and Supporting Immigrants
- Economic Power and Financial Security
- Environmental Justice
- Criminal Justice
- Arts and Culture
- Civil Rights
- Latino Representation
Below are a few examples of recommendations:
Supporting Latino Nonprofits: Increasing financial support for the nonprofit sector through public and private sources, contracting reforms so the nonprofit salaries can keep up with inflation, streamlining procurement so funds can be distributed in a timely manner, transparency in the RFP process to ensure a diverse review committee is involved, and much more.
Improving Education: Expanding early childhood programs (Pre-K and 3-K) with extended hours and equitable access, investing heavily in bilingual teacher recruitment, enhancing funding for English Language Learners (ELLs) programs, strengthening community-based schools that provide wraparound services which can help address chronic absenteeism, recognizing how nonprofits can help to replace punitive discipline with restorative practices, and much more.
Protecting and Supporting Immigrants: Ongoing public education campaigns designed to inform immigrant communities about services that are available in New York City, expanding funding for programs that assist adults in being able to fully participate in the labor market, ensuring that more people have access to legal representation, making sure that wraparound services are included in all of the programs, and much more.
Latino Representation in City Government: Prioritizing a Latino/a speaker in New York City Council, establishing a permanent Hispanic Appointment Advisory Committee to boost Latino staffing in the City Council, diversifying city boards and commissions by increasing Latino résumé submissions, creating a demographic transparency database, launching educational campaigns about these bodies’ roles, partnering with community-based organizations, allowing temporary membership expansions to enhance diversity, and much more.
You can read more details about the sections above and see the rest of the policy recommendations here: https://hispfed.info/granmanzana
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ABOUT HISPANIC FEDERATION:
Hispanic Federation (HF) is a nonprofit membership and advocacy organization, founded in 1990, committed to empowering and advancing the Hispanic community, with a focus on low-income, marginalized, and immigrant Latinos. With programs in 40 states, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the District of Columbia, HF’s focus areas include immigration, economic empowerment, civic engagement, disaster relief, philanthropy, education, health, and the environment. HF also maintains ongoing public education campaigns and meets the organizational development needs of its member agencies through grant-making and capacity-building assistance.
