Recommendations to City Government re: Workforce Priorities

Announcements Featured Uncategorized
September 21, 2026

GCF’s Call for a NYC Climate Corps (NYCCC)

Green City Force recommends that the Mamdani administration establish a NYC Climate Corps (NYCCC) as an immediate, high-impact step toward a more just and sustainable future. Designed as a decade-long initiative, the Corps would link ambitious climate goals with practical implementation across neighborhoods, elevate leadership within frontline communities, and create clear pathways into the green workforce—especially for young adults ready to step up.

The nearly 1,000 young residents of the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) 18-24 who have served with Green City Force demonstrate that young people are ready to answer this call. Many others will join them. The NYC Climate Corps will build career paths for people of all ages with barriers to employment, support local projects and processes, and employ a systems change frame, aligning with citywide racial equity, 2050 Climate and Sustainable Development (SDG) Goals. The NYC Climate Corps will undertake priority, transformative projects like the greening of NYCHA, responding to food insecurity, building localized energy infrastructure, and emergency preparedness for communities at risk from extreme heat and flooding.

In the near term, the NYC Climate Corps should anchor its work in priority communities and institutions, including environmental justice neighborhoods, MOCEJ, NYCHA campuses, CUNY, public schools, City-owned buildings, Governors Island, and correctional facilities. To launch quickly, the Corps can build on proven models, such as the De Blasio-era Cleanup Corps and a range of nonprofit crew-based and individual service models, AmeriCorps and non-AmeriCorps alike, while establishing common principles and shared program elements that allow for innovation and new partnerships. This equity lens would map onto citywide infrastructure and civic engagement projects driven by EDC, DEP and NYC Service.

Core components of a NYC Climate Corps would include a clear focus on priority people and places; integrated education and training; career tracks that build transferable, in-demand skills; and strong linkages to unions, civil service pathways, and good jobs. Funding would draw from a blend of city, state, and private investment.

Taken together, this framework provides a clear path for launching a NYC Climate Corps that delivers measurable climate benefits, expands opportunity, and deepens partnership with the communities most affected.

Testimony of Green City Force

New York City Council Committee Hearing on Green Jobs, Workforce, and Climate Equity

Submitted by: Sindri Manzanares, COO, Green City Force

Date: June 26, 2026

Thank you, Chair Won and Chair Maloney, for convening this timely hearing. Climate change is not abstract for low-income New Yorkers and frontline communities. It shows up as overheated apartments, flooded streets, poor air quality, higher utility bills, lost wages, and neighborhoods asked to absorb risk without receiving enough of the investment. In NYCHA communities and other high-need neighborhoods, the same residents who are most exposed to extreme heat, flooding, pollution, and disinvestment are too often left outside the career pathways created to address those challenges.

Green City Force submits this testimony because climate policy will only be equitable if the people closest to the crisis are resourced to be part of the solution. The City cannot build a just green economy by funding training slots alone. Young adults from NYCHA, low-income, and frontline communities need paid, holistic, community-rooted pathways that combine trust, stability, mental health and wellness support, professional development, sector exposure, credentials, and employer connections to move from first exposure to long-term careers.

New York City’s Green Economy Action Plan projects that the city’s green economy will grow to nearly 400,000 jobs by 2040 and states that this growth must support a prosperous, equitable, and just future for New Yorkers. The plan also emphasizes training and positioning New Yorkers, particularly those from environmentally disadvantaged communities, to benefit from this growth. That is the right goal. To make it real, the City must fund the infrastructure that helps young adults move from exposure, to readiness, to credentials, to employment, and to long-term advancement.

The Mamdani administration has already signaled that green jobs can advance both climate infrastructure and economic opportunity. DEP’s 2026 GROW pilot with The Doe Fund is a useful example: a $4.5 million, three-year initiative combining classroom instruction, hands-on training, and career development to prepare New Yorkers for stormwater management and green infrastructure careers. We must ensure the jobs that are being created are good jobs that provide family sustaining wages and pathways to real careers.

Green City Force brings nearly two decades of experience demonstrating what this can look like in practice. Over 1,000 NYCHA residents ages 18 to 24 have served with GCF, showing that young public housing residents are ready to help build a more sustainable city when given a paid, structured, and supportive pathway. Our model combines paid service, professional development, mental health and wellness support, case management, hands-on sector exposure, technical training, and employer-connected pathways. This is not a wraparound add-on. It is the foundation that makes equitable access to the green economy possible.

For many young NYCHA residents and other young adults from frontline communities, the first barrier to green sector employment is not ability or interest. It is access, exposure, stability, and support. Many are navigating financial pressure, family responsibilities, mental health needs, trauma, transportation barriers, limited professional networks, and limited exposure to the range of careers that exist within the green economy. A young person cannot pursue a career they have never seen, cannot imagine, and have not been invited into.

That is why sector exposure and professional development are essential. Before a young adult can realistically commit to a solar training, HVAC credential, construction pathway, union apprenticeship, civil service exam, or full-time green sector job, they need to understand the field, see themselves in it, build trust with adults and institutions, stabilize immediate life barriers, and practice workplace expectations in a supportive environment. Credentials matter, but credentials alone do not create economic mobility.

A NYC Climate Corps can make the Green Economy Action Plan equitable in practice

GCF has proposed a NYC Climate Corps as a practical vehicle for linking ambitious climate goals with neighborhood-level implementation, frontline community leadership, and clear pathways into the green workforce. A Climate Corps could anchor work in priority communities and institutions, including NYCHA campuses, other environmental justice neighborhoods, MOCEJ, CUNY, public schools, City-owned buildings, Governors Island, correctional facilities, and projects driven by EDC, DEP, and NYC Service.

The City should use public climate investments as living learning sites. NYCHA campuses, schools, parks, public buildings, rain gardens, urban farms, compost systems, solar infrastructure, and resilience projects can become places where young people build real skills while delivering visible benefits to their communities. This approach also aligns with the Green Economy Action Plan’s focus on youth pathways, community hiring, apprenticeships, training facilities, and industry partnerships.

Just as important, the City should not define green jobs too narrowly. Union construction careers are critical, but so are entry points in maintenance, operations, stormwater management, urban agriculture, zero waste, composting, clean energy, building systems, energy efficiency, solar operations, and resilience. Many of these pathways can serve as bridges into more advanced training, apprenticeships, civil service, union pathways, and good jobs.