NEW YORK, Jan. 29 (UPI) -- New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's reputation for getting things done has some optimistic about his war on poverty, the New York Daily News reported.
"If it took Nixon to go to China, perhaps it will take a billionaire Republican to solve poverty in New York," said Joel Berg, executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger.
However, beyond Bloomberg's announcement in his State of the City address of a broad new push to combat poverty in the city, there have been few specifics or details, the newspaper said.
Bloomberg named a task force chaired by Time Warner chief Richard Parsons and Harlem Children's Zone Chief Executive Officer Geoffrey Canada, to seek solutions to poverty -- especially in three chronically depressed neighborhoods of Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn and Melrose in the Bronx.
More than one out of five New Yorkers live in poverty, defined as a family of four earning less than $19,800 a year.
