Unmentioned at Friday’s press conference and ceremonial signing is a new work requirement to qualify for a voucher—10 hours per week for adult-only households. Previously, adult households only had to demonstrate they had worked any number of hours per week for the last 30 days in order to qualify for a City Family Homelessness and Eviction Prevention Supplement, or CityFHEPS, voucher.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams announced Friday that he will eliminate a 90-day waiting period for New Yorkers in shelters to apply for rental vouchers, even as he declined to endorse a broader package of reforms recently passed by the City Council.
Advocates hoped Adams would kick off his first term by appointing a deputy mayor for housing and homelessness—ensuring that previously siloed agencies would report to the same person. He didn’t, but departing administration member Jessica Katz was the next best thing, they say.
The mayor defended the move, saying the city had little choice as it struggles to keep up with a ballooning shelter population. But advocates say the change undermines the city’s social safety net and protections to ensure homeless families with children have access to safe conditions.
“If Mayor Adams truly wants to make good on his promises to stem the homelessness crisis in the city and provide substantive mental health to the city’s youth, he must first make it easier, not harder, to access safe and affordable housing.”
“Cutting corners by slashing social service programs will only force New Yorkers to stay homeless longer, reduce their chances of finding permanent housing, and ultimately cost the city more taxpayer dollars to warehouse people in inhumane shelters.”
For weeks, City Limits has been speaking to people sheltered at two of the city’s Humanitarian Emergency Response and Relief Centers, or HERRCs: one at The ROW Hotel and another at The Watson Hotel in Manhattan, where adult men were recently transferred out and relocated to a congregate facility at the Brooklyn Cruise Terminal in Red Hook.
It’s been an eventful year in New York City housing. Mayor Eric Adams launched a new plan for housing production and a controversial approach to street homelessness. At the same time, the city’s homeless shelter population reached historic highs this year, fueled in part by an increase in migrants from the southern border and by soaring rent costs, including the biggest price hike for rent-stabilized apartments in nearly a decade.
“Study after study has shown that stable housing is the linchpin for successful reentry and for creating strong social bonds. These outcomes, in turn, lead to a substantially reduced likelihood of facing a new criminal charge, which—contrary to the scare tactics of this bill’s opponents—will make our city at large safer, too. “
“We learned decades ago that institutionalizing people, or locking them away in state mental hospitals, was not the solution. This practice demonized people with mental health challenges, disappearing them, and led to facilities that were dirty, dangerous, and inhumane.”
City Limits uses investigative journalism through the prism of New York City to identify urban problems, examine their causes, explore solutions, and equip communities to take action.
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