While housing advocates say the budget deal included a major victory for tenants––creating a multi-billion dollar program for rent relief––it included less funds for NYCHA and homelessness prevention than stakeholders had hoped for.
‘New York State could receive $23 billion as part of the ARPA, representing a once-in-a-lifetime financial base to significantly reduce childhood homelessness, a condition that often sets up the cycle for homelessness as an adult.’
‘Supportive housing has been notably absent from most mayoral candidate housing discussions in spite of the fact that our homelessness crisis is the worst on record – and that it disproportionately impacts Black and brown New Yorkers. It is time for that to change.’
‘Our state and federal governments have a moral responsibility to go beyond emergency measures and implement systemic, long-term solutions that will direct more public resources to preventing eviction and homelessness.’
‘To reach those currently experiencing homelessness, it is essential for organizations with longstanding visibility to be empowered and unrestricted to vaccinate in non-traditional settings. Imagine a popup clinic under the GW Bridge, inside Port Authority or inside the MTA terminals at Barclay Center or Grand Central.’
Breaking down the issue that defined and sometimes derailed the de Blasio administration and the challenge confronting the next mayor.
Advocates believe the city won’t see meaningful reductions in the number of kids who grow up partly in homeless shelters until policies target the social mobility of women of color.
Thirteen questions for the candidates, to separate meaty plans from mere paperwork.
‘We need to abandon once and for all the idea that homelessness is a choice, and that people are not in shelters because they don’t know better. The problem is they do and that’s why they are choosing to sleep on subways and sidewalks.’
‘We did have a major emphasis on affordable housing, and a great deal of spending on it,’ during the de Blasio administration, says Samuel Stein, the report’s author and housing policy analyst for CSS. ‘And yet the problems have persisted.’
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