Adi Talwar
On the evening of December 18, 2024, Urban Pathways and Care for the Homeless hosted the 2024 Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day at Congregation Rodeph Sholom in the Schafler Forum at 7 West 83rd Street, Manhattan.
“Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day” has taken place every December for more than 20 years. The event serves both to remember and mourn those who died, and as a stark reminder of how homelessness is also a health crisis, its organizers say.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s yearly nationwide census, based on data collected in January 2024, counted 771,480 people experiencing homelessness—up 18 percent from 2023.
The City Planning Commission will meet next Monday, and a dozen of the city’s rental housing lotteries will close to applicants this week. Here’s the roundup.
During the final week of 2024, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed several long-awaited environmental bills into law: forcing polluters to pay for climate destruction, expanding the state’s fracking ban to prohibit a a new technique that uses carbon dioxide, and limiting new construction of schools within 500 feet of major highways.
There are seven of the city’s affordable housing lotteries closing to applicants this week.
At the Brooklyn complex, 83 tenants voted to join the Public Housing Preservation Trust and another 83 opted to convert to private management under the PACT initiative. A final recount will take place Jan. 8, and if the numbers stand, a runoff vote will be scheduled.
A provision to extend the federal refund program for victims of SNAP theft was tucked into a massive Congressional spending bill that failed to pass, leaving future reimbursements uncertain. “They took every penny,” said Pinkie Grier, a great grandmother in Red Hook who had her benefits drained earlier this month.
Increased housing supply created under the zoning reforms could bring an estimated 70,000 to 97,000 new riders to the city’s subway, bus and commuter rail lines—bringing an additional $224,188,000 to $309,224,000 per year to the MTA’s coffers, a new report found.
City Limits rounds up the latest housing and land use-related events, public hearings and affordable housing lotteries that are ending soon.
Officials attributed the closures to a steady decline in the number of people in the shelter system over the last several months—though nearly 55,000 migrants and asylum seekers remain, the majority of them families with children.
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