“Just Home”—a NYC Health + Hospitals (HHC) plan to convert an empty staff residence on the Jacobi Hospital campus into supportive housing for a few dozen people with serious medical problems discharged from Rikers Island—is a pressure cooker for many of the most fraught issues in the city: homelessness, mental health, development, and the risk of crime, whether real or perceived.
New potential funding mechanisms—including a measure that New Yorkers will see on the ballot this November—may provide an opportunity for homeowners in areas of high flood risk to sell their at-risk properties to the state or city. The properties are then rebuilt to be more resilient, or removed so the land can be used for coastal protection measures.
A bill introduced in the City Council this week would create a 15-member commission that includes people who have experienced homelessness to study current shelter locations, identify new sites and figure out how to pay for them. “Homeless New Yorkers come from every neighborhood in New York City and accordingly we need to equitably site shelters,” the bill’s sponsor said.
About 20 houses in South Jamaica are prone to sewer backups every few months, say homeowners, some of whom have dealt with the issue for more than a decade. But because the sewer line is on private property, the residents are left to contend with the problem on their own.
Con 99 camas menos que el año pasado, se están agotando las plazas en el conjunto de albergues para adolescentes y jóvenes de la ciudad de Nueva York, que ofrecen asesoramiento, educación, formación laboral y otros servicios.
Down 99 beds from this time last year, space is running out in New York City’s patchwork of shelters for teens and young adults, which provide counseling, education, job training and other services. Many who qualify for the youth shelters—including newly arrived immigrants—are instead turning to the strained Department of Homeless Services system.
The city’s ‘right to shelter’ provides a basic safety net not seen anywhere else in the country, allowing anyone who wants a shelter bed to get one (at least temporarily). But that right appears to be under siege as the city struggles to meet shelter demand amid a surge in homelessness.
During the most recent fiscal year, just 16 percent of New Yorkers approved by the city for supportive housing were actually placed with an apartment. More than half of the 7,426 eligible applicants during that time were never even referred for an interview, according to data recently published by the city’s Department of Social Services (DSS).
A six-month cap on stays and a lack of permanent housing options have combined to drive more than 1,550 families out of domestic violence shelters and directly into the Department of Homeless Services system over the past two years, records show.
La ciudad calcula que unos 7.600 solicitantes de asilo han llegado en autobuses desde la frontera en los últimos meses. Muchos no saben dónde encontrar comida, ropa y otros servicios disponibles, por lo que City Limits ha preparado esta guía de recursos para ayudarles a navegar la ciudad después de hablar con decenas de ellos.
Citywide, workers at nonprofits under contract to provide support and essential services to New Yorkers at a time of unprecedented crisis say they feel overworked, overwhelmed and burnt out. As costs continue to increase around them, many have said their low wages make it difficult to justify staying in the sector, even with a recent pay bump from the city and state.
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