New York is losing residents faster than nearly every state in the country.
Governor Kathy Hochul found a new way to light taxpayer money on fire.
What she just did with that money explains exactly why New Yorkers keep packing their bags.
Hochul Quietly Handed New York Taxpayers a $2.5 Million Bill for Prostitute Healthcare
New York Governor Kathy Hochul's Department of Health just extended a pilot program through June 2028 providing free primary care, STD treatment, dental care, and mental health services to prostitutes in New York City and Buffalo.
The original program launched in 2023 with $1 million in public funds.
It was awarded without a vote from the state legislature.
New documents reviewed by the New York Post show the price tag has now grown to $2.5 million.
The program runs through the Department of Health's AIDS Institute, channeling $250,000 per year to each of two contractors.
One of them – the Callen-Lorde Community Health Center in Brooklyn – describes itself as having "pioneered healthcare equity in the spirit of resistance."
"The lengths by which New York Democrats will cater to the far left has no greater example than Gov. Hochul funding healthcare for hookers to the tune of millions while actual frontline healthcare workers live on food stamps," said Republican Assemblyman Michael Novakhov.
He added that prostitutes in New York can already receive abortions and STD treatment at state medical facilities at no cost.
This program is on top of that.
Zohran Mamdani Has Been Pushing to Decriminalize Prostitution and Hochul Is Paying for It
Republican Assemblyman Sam Pirozzolo knows exactly who handed Hochul the pen.
"She is a target and trying to keep them at bay during her re-election bid with other people's money," Pirozzolo said, pointing directly to New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani and the Democrat Socialists of America.
Mamdani has been pushing to decriminalize prostitution statewide since his 2020 state assembly campaign.
"Not only must we decriminalize sex work, we need a comprehensive platform of justice for all," he posted on X.
Pirozzolo on the Hochul-Mamdani agenda:
"The governor likes to say, 'New York is open for business,'" he said. "We are open for business – but it's the business of selling needles and marijuana, prostitution and other business that is bad business for New York."
New York still has prostitution listed as an illegal profession on the books.
Hochul funded free healthcare for it anyway.
New York Has Lost Over a Million Residents and the Spending Never Stops
New York has shed more than one million residents to domestic out-migration since 2020 – a five-year hemorrhage that only California has matched.
In 2025 alone, the state lost 137,586 more residents than it gained.
Blue-collar and middle-income New Yorkers led the exodus – lower-income residents left at higher rates than the wealthy for the first time on record.
Florida gained them. Texas gained them too – and in 2024, Texas surpassed New York as the state with the most financial services employees, as Wall Street's talent base quietly relocated to a state with no income tax.
New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned in February 2026 that state spending is growing faster than inflation and projected revenues.
In March 2026, Hochul floated a personal trip to Palm Beach – the same destination she once told Republicans to flee to – to lure wealthy former residents back to fund her spending priorities.
"I need people who are high-net-worth to support the generous social programs that we want to have in our state," she told Politico.
She called the millionaires who stayed "patriotic."
This is the same governor who stood at a 2022 rally for Democrat Pat Ryan and told Trump, Zeldin, and Molinaro to "just jump on a bus and head down to Florida where you belong."
They did.
So did a million working-class New Yorkers who just wanted to keep more of their own money.
The city is staring down a projected $10.41 billion budget gap by 2027.
Hochul's answer is to extend a hooker healthcare program nobody voted for – and then fly to Florida to beg the people she drove out to please come back and pay for it.
Sources:
- Rich Calder, "Hochul extends free healthcare program for sex workers, and taxpayers will foot the $2.5M bill," New York Post, June 20, 2026.
- "NYC lost more residents across all income levels in 2025 as Americans flee high-cost blue cities," Fox Business, May 3, 2026.
- "New York State Is Headed for a Decade of Population Decline," City Journal, January 29, 2026.
- "New York Gov. Hochul Begs 'High-Net-Worth' Refugees To Return and Be Taxed," National Review, March 20, 2026.
- "Hochul calls millionaires 'patriotic' for staying in New York," Fox News, March 20, 2026.
