A recently-opened facility dedicated to “reticketing” has sown confusion, emerging as one of the only options—along with new “waiting areas”—for recently-arrived immigrants forced to leave their shelter placements as the cold sets in.
Timely processing rates plummeted to under 30 percent for cash assistance applications and under 40 percent for SNAP for the fiscal year ending in June, according to the latest Mayor’s Management Report.
“Every assessment and transfer deadline that passes without action delays the benefits of a transformed Rikers Island for all New Yorkers, especially those in the communities that have been directly harmed by unjust criminalization and environmental injustice.”
Advocates hoped Adams would kick off his first term by appointing a deputy mayor for housing and homelessness—ensuring that previously siloed agencies would report to the same person. He didn’t, but departing administration member Jessica Katz was the next best thing, they say.
“If Mayor Adams wants to make a positive impact on the city and take his ‘working people’s agenda’ beyond rhetoric, he needs to embrace a trifecta of change that establishes a culture in City Hall centered on the needs of everyday New Yorkers. This means establishing a re-imagined social contract, ending the austerity mindset that has dominated the city’s budget and policymaking, and managing for consequential change.”
“If everything…is just a question of ‘Does the local community support or not support it,’ the answer will almost, inevitably, always be ‘no,’ so it can’t just be that, it has to be a broader consideration,” the former councilmember said during an interview on the WBAI radio program City Watch.
Eric Adams introduced his plan for immigrant communities called WeRISE (Raise Immigrant Safety and Empowerment) while campaigning for office in June 2021. After three months in office, little progress has been made so far.
Edu Hermelyn, a Democratic district leader married to party leader and Assemblymember Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, has been named “Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives” in the city’s Department of Social Services (DSS)—a position tasked with smoothing relations with local elected officials, according to job listings.
“The solution to homelessness is housing,” one stakeholder said. “But the city agency charged with solving homelessness has no jurisdiction over housing, so we are setting them an impossible task.”
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