Community-Based Human Service Organization Coverage of Immigrants in New York City

Joseph Gibbons, University at Albany, State University of New York (SUNY)

In the aftermath of the 1996 Welfare Reform, provision for those in need has increasingly become the responsibility of not-for-profit community-based human service organizations (CBHSOs). While existing research has shown nonprofit agencies tend to avoid places with the greatest need, questions remain. Are the immigrant poor suffering from a lack of CBHSOs? Using New York City as our case study, we employ a combination of neighborhood data from the Census and nonprofit data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics. With these data, we conduct an ordered probit analysis to assess how neighborhood characteristics like socioeconomic status, racial background, and nativity status predict the concentration of CBHSOs in different localities. We found that CBHSOs are likely to concentrate around poor immigrant communities. Racial differences however matter as well, as the presence of impoverished foreign-born white, Asian, and Latinos positively predict organizational coverage while foreign-born blacks do not.