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It Will Be a Scandal If Mamdani Can’t Pay EMS Workers Better

13 0
31.03.2026

Many of the challenges Zohran Mamdani has encountered in his first 100 days as mayor — like ending street homelessness, halting the deterioration of public housing, or preventing the deaths in custody of jailed detainees on Rikers Island — are not just tough but essentially unsolvable.

But raising the abysmally low wages of emergency medical-services workers, New York’s fabled corps of skilled “street doctors” who staff fire-department ambulances and respond to every manner of health crisis, is not one of those problems. Even in a tough budget season, it will be a scandal if City Hall doesn’t fix this pronto.

“We have quite a few members who are homeless — either living in shelters, sleeping in their cars, sleeping at the station, sleeping on a friend’s couch,” says Oren Barzilay, president of FDNY EMS Local 2507, which represents most emergency medical technicians in the city. “They put on a uniform during the day, and at night, they’re homeless.”

You read that right. The first responders who answered more than 1.6 million 911 calls last year, often alongside cops and firefighters, get starting pay of $39,000 a year and top out at $59,000 after several years on the job. EMS is part of the Fire Department, but EMTs get paid far less than the $54,000 starting pay of firefighters, who can expect to make $110,000 after five years.

It’s a daily slap in the face of responders who show up within minutes when New Yorkers have a bad fall, a heart attack, or a bleeding cut. “I worked overnight, so........

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