Rising Ground to Lay Off 257 Workers Across NYC and Yonkers
One of New York’s oldest social service nonprofits is cutting 257 jobs, including positions at a Yonkers site, as the sector faces mounting federal and state funding pressure.
Rising Ground Inc., the 195-year-old organization formerly known as Leake & Watts, filed a WARN notice with the New York State Department of Labor in February. The layoffs begin May 21, 2026.
The cuts span nine locations across five counties. The largest site, with 68 employees, is on Third Avenue in the Bronx. A Yonkers location on Hawthorne Avenue is among those affected. Rising Ground did not give a reason in the filing and has not publicly detailed which programs or roles are being eliminated.
Deep Roots in Yonkers
Rising Ground’s history in the city runs over a century deep. Founded in Manhattan in 1831 as the Leake and Watts Orphan House, it moved to a Yonkers campus in the early 1900s and ran that campus until announcing plans to sell it in 2021.
The organization still operates key programs in Yonkers. The Ames Early Childhood Learning Center serves preschoolers with and without disabilities, and the Residential Treatment Center provides 24-hour care for youth dealing with trauma, mental health challenges, and developmental disabilities. The treatment center partners with the Yonkers Police Department and the Food Bank for Westchester on community service work.
Across all its locations, Rising Ground runs 101 programs at 138 sites in New York City and lower Westchester on a $187 million annual budget, serving more than 25,000 children, adults, and family members each year.
A Sector Under Pressure
The layoffs come as New York’s human services nonprofits absorb cuts from multiple directions.
In January, the Trump administration moved to freeze roughly $10 billion in federal funding to New York and four other states, targeting the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, the Child Care and Development Fund, and the Social Services Block Grant. The Department of Health and Human Services froze child care and family assistance grants to New York, citing concerns about fraud in state-administered programs.
At the state level, nonprofit child welfare providers pushed for an 8.5% cost-of-living adjustment to keep pace with inflation. The final state budget came in at 4%, less than half of what providers said they needed.
The Center for an Urban Future reported after interviewing more than 40 NYC nonprofit leaders that federal cuts have already done real damage. AmeriCorps was dismantled, eliminating federal funding for over 1,200 nonprofit and government workers across New York. The worst of the cuts is expected to hit in 2027.
New York City foster care spending, a major revenue source for agencies like Rising Ground, is also on a planned decline, from $637 million in 2023 to a projected $616 million in 2026.
What’s Next
Under New York’s WARN Act, employers with 50 or more workers must give 90 days’ notice before mass layoffs, stricter than the 60 days required under federal law. Affected workers are eligible for state Department of Labor services, including unemployment benefits, career counseling, and job placement through the Rapid Response team.
For a nonprofit that has served New York children and families since before the Civil War, and spent more than a century of that history based in Yonkers, the scale of the cuts is a signal. The safety net is tightening, and the people who depend on it will feel it.
