Families with children now spend nearly 18 months on average in Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelters—two and half months longer than the previous fiscal year, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio’s annual management report.
It’s the first time that New York City has received the grant, despite counting roughly 7,400 homeless young people under age 24 without an adult head of household—often referred to as runaway and homeless youth (RHY)—in 2019
The Democratic nominee for mayor says he wants to convert shuttered lodgings outside Manhattan into 25,000 units of supportive and permanently affordable housing. While his plan is light on details, it’s excited housing advocates.
As a deepening humanitarian crisis inside the Rikers Island jail complex fuels efforts to release more detainees, a judge’s decision can come down to one key consideration: Do they have a stable address?
In June, the city spent $122 million to purchase 14 former cluster site buildings, turning them over to nonprofit organizations to fix up and operate as permanent housing. The organizations have their work cut out for them: There were more than 1,100 open Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) violations across the portfolio at the time of purchase.
In correspondence between city and state agencies in May, before the state lifted COVID-19 restrictions, the Health Department recommended halting hotel shelter transfers if the city saw a major variant outbreak or if average COVID hospitalization admissions exceeded 50 cases a day, which it since has.
Many of the issues homeless new Yorkers with health problems face—abrupt transfers, inaccessible accommodations, shelters in isolated areas—existed long before the pandemic, but they have been laid bare as Mayor Bill de Blasio continues to pursue a summer-long effort to clear about 60 so-called “de-densification” hotels.
‘For every supportive housing slot there are six applications. Nearly 45,000 New Yorkers, including 14,000 children, fill the shelter system. What we need now is the political will to invest in this long-term goal while offering shorter-term pathways to housing.’
The city’s previous policy, which City Limits reported on last month, blocked adults approved for supportive housing—permanent apartments with on-site staff, typically reserved for people with mental illness—from even applying for the roughly 8,000 new rental subsidies.
The soon-to-be governor recently pledged to re-strengthen the state’s eviction moratorium after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a key portion of the law, which expires at the end of this month.
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