During the 2021 fiscal year, just 297 households using Special One-Time Assistance (SOTA) grants found apartments in another state. It was the first time that the majority of SOTA recipients remained in the five boroughs.
Prior to the pandemic, city policy forced entire families—including each school-aged child—to show up at a Bronx facility known as the PATH intake center to complete an initial assessment, which often meant missing at least a day of school.
Con Edison cut the gas to the West 145th Street building—a former cluster site shelter housing dozens of formerly homeless families—on May 14, after inspectors found dangerous corrosion on the line leading to the street. Tenants are still waiting.
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.
‘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 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.
‘The next mayor will inherit this crisis but has a tremendous opportunity with incoming federal funds and a wealth of experienced and committed providers, developers, and advocacy and philanthropic organizations to work with, to transform the city’s housing and homelessness policies and meet the needs of our struggling families.’
Homelessness survivors played a lead role in creating a video voters’ guide on family homelessness starring Eric Adams, Shaun Donovan, Kathryn Garcia, Ray McGuire, Dianne Morales and Scott Stringer.
After the state budget deal failed to include a proposal for an Albany-funded rental voucher system, advocates are setting their sights on getting the City Council to pass Intro 146, which would increase the value of rental vouchers under the CityFHEPS program to better reflect market-rate rents.
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