Reforming Social Services in New York City examines efforts across six decades to respond to poverty, joblessness, and homelessness through the establishment and periodic restructuring of the city's Human Resources Administration (HRA) and related social welfare agencies.

As Thomas J. Main shows through archival research and interviews with key figures, the HRA has been the focus of several mayoralties. The John Lindsay administration's creation of the HRA in 1966 was a classic liberal effort to fight poverty; Rudy Giuliani brought dramatic change by implementing work-oriented welfare reform; and the Bill de Blasio administration attempted to install a progressive social welfare agenda within the city's social service agencies to reduce inequality. Reforming Social Services in New York City tells the story of these efforts, assessing the strategies employed and the success of their outcomes, concluding that major nonincremental change in urban welfare policy is not only possible but has been effective.

Thomas J. Main is Professor at the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College, City University of New York. He is the author of The Rise of Illiberalism, The Rise of the Alt-Right, and Homelessness in New York City.

Written in uncommonly clear and direct prose, Reforming Social Services in New York City is an important book that addresses a central issue in public administration—whether fundamental change is possible in complicated bureaucratic and political settings—and convincingly shows when and why it was or was not achieved at NYC's Human Resources Administration.

Joseph P. Viteritti, author of The Pragmatist: Bill de Blasio's Quest to Save the Soul of New York:

There is nobody better equipped to write about social services in New York City than Thomas J. Main. Anyone interested in learning about how the city addresses gnawing social problems like homelessness should start here. This is the best book on the topic.