“House Our Future NY” Plan Can Help End Homelessness in NYC

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 Care For the Homeless, along with 56 partner organizations including the leadership of Coalition for the Homeless, is advocating for the “House our Future NY” campaign asking Mayor Bill de Blasio to make available 30,000 new units of affordable housing for homeless New Yorkers by 2026, with 24,000 of these units to be created through new construction.
            In 2014, Mayor De Blasio announced his Housing New York 10-year affordable housing plan aimed at creating 200,000 units of affordable housing. In 2017, he announced the Housing New York Plan 2.0, which increased the number of affordable homes from 200,000 to 300,000. This is in the midst of an ever-increasing homeless population fueled by rising rents in NYC, stagnant wages and the unavailability of affordable homeless to extremely low income New Yorkers. Currently there are 58,773 people in the City’s Department of Homeless Services’ shelter system, 21,639 of which are children. In fiscal year 2017, 129,803 unique individuals spent time in DHS shelters. The numbers are unprecedented and alarming.
            The De Blasio administration has created several programs that help families to get out of shelter, or keep people from becoming homeless in the first place. He has devoted resources to a program guaranteeing legal assistance to low income household under threat of eviction in housing court and has committed to creating 15,000 units of supportive housing over 15 years. De Blasio has also created many new subsidies to prevent homelessness and help individuals and families moving out of shelter, established a plan to close cluster sites. However, we as advocates recognize that homelessness in NYC is a complicated issue, but to truly decrease the number of homeless people and move the tide towards ending homelessness Mayor De Blasio needs to commit to creating an adequate supply of deeply subsidized affordable housing for the most vulnerable populations in NYC.
            In his current housing plan (Housing New York 2.0); De Blasio commits 10,000 units of affordable housing to people experiencing homelessness, or 3.3% of his 300,000 plan. Of those 10,000, only 4,000 will be newly constructed units. The other 6,000 units will come from the preservation of occupied units serving formerly homeless households and any that are vacated (when the rate of vacancy is only 3%). So far, though the city has made significant progress on its affordable housing plan targets, it is far behind pace to provide 10,000 units to people experiencing homelessness.
            The “House our Future Campaign” calls for an increase to 30,000 units of affordable housing for homeless New Yorkers, or 10% of the overall plan, with 24,000 of those units to be new construction. The Coalition for the Homeless estimates that 2,000 units could be constructed every year to meet the demand by 2026.
            The “House Our Future Campaign” is a decisive strategy to truly affecting the unprecedented number of homeless individuals and families in New York City and put us on the path to ending homelessness. It is part of the Care for the Homeless’ mission to advocate for policies and programs to fight, prevent and end homelessness. Only a robust program to create housing for extremely low-income people and people living in deep poverty can do that. Please join us in this important campaign by signing up on the Coalition for the Homeless’ website here. You can also read the Coalition’s report here.

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