Consumer Costs

Montefiore’s Project Bravo Food Pantry Marks 20 Years of Supporting The Bronx Community

By RACHAEL FEIGENBUTZ & SÍLE MOLONEY
Montefiore Health System is celebrating two decades of serving the Bronx community through its Project Bravo Food Pantry. Project Bravo is a grant-funded initiative designed to combat food insecurity for high-risk individuals and families in The Bronx. For more than 20 years, participants have received fresh produce and healthy food three days per week. In 2024 alone, 40,000 Bronxites were supported by the program.

Op-Ed: It’s Time for Albany to Stand Up to PBMs and Protect Patients 

By ADAM AGOVINO
Pharmacies are closing at a pace our communities cannot afford. In 2024, according to NYC Center for an Urban Future, 10% of all New York City pharmacies shut down. Behind these closures is a quiet but devastating force: Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs). These powerful middlemen dictate what pharmacies are paid for prescriptions, and too often, they set reimbursement rates so low that pharmacies lose money with every prescription they fill.

Automated Camera Enforcement (ACE) MTA Program Expands to Q6, Bx20, Bx3 and Bx7

By SÍLE MOLONEY
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) is reminding motorists that the Automated Camera Enforcement (ACE) program fines became effective on four more bus routes on Thursday, Nov. 13 i.e. on the Q6, Bx20, Bx3 and Bx7 bus routes and vehicles improperly using busways and bus lanes, blocking bus stops, or illegally double parked will receive summonses that start at $50 and escalate to $250 for repeat violators.

Op-Ed: Creative Arts Therapy, A Lifeline for New Yorkers in Crisis

By MARIA PATUHAS
As a social worker working on an acute psychiatric unit in The Bronx, I see every day how creative arts therapists make a profound difference in the lives of some of our city’s most vulnerable residents. It’s time for New York Gov. Kathy Hochul to make creative arts therapy accessible outside of the hospital, too, by signing S1001/A3391 into law [https://www.nysenate.gov/legislation/bills/2025/S1001].

UPDATE City Council Votes “Yes” on Latest Kingsbridge Armory Redevelopment “The Kingsbridge Center”

By SÍLE MOLONEY
In the most hopeful sign yet for residents of Kingsbridge Heights, who have long awaited real momentum behind the redevelopment of the long-vacant, City-owned Kingsbridge Armory, the New York City Council voted “yes” on the latest redevelopment project, “The Kingsbridge Center (El Centro Kingsbridge),” on Wednesday, Oct. 29. The happy news follows dozens of envisioning meetings, surveys, outreach, workshops,, various hearings, set-backs, drama and more drama along the way.