City Limits’ series on family homelessness in New York City is supported by Citizens’ Committee for Children of New York and The Family Homelessness Coalition. City Limits is solely responsible for the content and editorial direction.
The 14 building-deal marks the third time the city has purchased cluster site properties to convert into permanent homes. It also illustrates the complicated reliance on bad landlords to provide temporary shelter—and the business of handing those same owners tens of millions of dollars for their buildings.
The property owner, a company connected to an infamous family of landlords, has yet to begin repairs, and tenants in six apartments say building staff have pressured them to return to shelters while they await a large-scale fix with no definitive timeline.
New York City lawmakers on Wednesday adopted a new $98.7 billion budget that bolsters a key rental subsidy for homeless residents and restores some funding to social service providers following last year’s cuts.
‘We need to strengthen the safety-net for families at risk of homelessness, and make sure that even as people get jobs they don’t lose their rental assistance.’
The 40 or so families living at the Hotel Ellington in Manhattan, where the city has been paying for rooms to house homeless New Yorkers for nearly two decades, were told late last month they would have to move. “I’m tired of moving,” one tenant said.
The Assembly’s Housing Committee is scheduled to vote on a measure Tuesday morning that would unlock $100 million in state funds to purchase unused hotels and convert them into affordable housing, what advocates say would serve as a template for future commercial-to-residential conversions.
Source of income discrimination constitutes the most common form of illegal housing bias in NYC. Yet the city has only a handful of attorneys and staffers at the two agencies dedicated to tackling the monumental problem.
The bill would raise the value of city-backed housing subsidies for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness. The voucher values currently trail actual market rents, making it hard for families to find a landlord willing to accept them.
The city’s annual count of street homeless New Yorkers recorded a 38 percent decrease this year. But advocates say the city increased enforcement against homeless encampments—known as sweeps or clean-ups—in the days leading up to the 2021 census.
The chair of the council’s welfare committee says New York City is squandering a ‘once-in-a-generation’ opportunity to address its homelessness crisis, despite an executive budget that would boost Department of Social Services (DSS) funding by nearly $1.2 billion.