Care For the Homeless

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy NYC’s New Rental Programs to Transition Families Experiencing Homelessness Last year Bill de Blasio famously campaigned successfully to become Mayor of New York City on the “Tale of Two Cities.” He spoke about the tragedy of low income people unable to get by or even find barely affordable housing in the U.S.’s biggest city. He promised, and along with City Council is now delivering, programs created to provide affordable housing and to address the expanding crisis of homelessness in our city. In addition to more and better programs to prevent evictions and homelessness (the best solution to homelessness is always prevention), the City has launched programs including priority targeting of a small number of NYCHA public housing units to families in the city homeless shelter system and three rental programs to provide partial subsidies to a modest number of homeless families in city homeless or domestic violence shelters if they can find a low ...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy City Council Majority Leader Jimmy Van Bramer published a great article in Sunday’s New Daily News that startled a number of people.  It was startling because Councilman Van Bramer wrote about his own family’s experience with homelessness – a story certainly most people had never heard. It was a great story because Van Bramer put a face on homelessness and touched people who normally don’t think about homelessness or that the next homeless family in New York might be very much like your neighbor’s family, your own relatives or perhaps the family of your Council member or you. Van Bramer used his story to call on all citizens to be part of the solution: “As the city declares war on inequality and Mayor de Blasio rightly takes a humane and honest approach to ending homelessness, we must all be part of the solution. All human beings have a right to shelter. Some may say that’s feel-good liberalism run amok, but in the City of New York, it ...

On July 10, 2014, Mayor Bill de Blasio signed the   Municipal ID Law, creating a creates a municipal identification card that will be accepted by city agencies and give New Yorkers greater access to cultural, educational and commercial services. Care for the Homeless strongly advocated for the Municipal ID bill since its introduction. One of our client leaders, Anthony Wiliams, was one of 12 advocates who testified at the Mayoral Public Hearing the day before the law was signed and the only homeless advocate who spoke. Read his testimony below. Earlier this spring, Care for the Homeless testified at a New York City Council Hearing on the bill. Read more after the jump. Care for the Homeless Client Testimony Supporting Municipal ID Legislation By Anthony Williams, Client Leader Presented to New York City Mayoral Public Hearing,  July 9, 2014 My name is Anthony Williams. I’m a client leader with Care for the Homeless in New York City, an organization t...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy In recent years families experiencing homelessness, and homeless advocates, have expressed concern and frustration with the difficulties homeless families with children sometimes faced in gaining access to the city’s shelter system. That’s why the Department of Homeless Services’ (DHS) decision during the recent brutally cold winter season to waive some of the eligibility requirements and admittance procedures during especially cold times was greeted with such universal appreciation. In life-threatening weather, why not show compassion to homeless families? But why not show that compassion and concern all the time? That’s exactly what deBlasio administration policymakers decided to do last week. DHS Commissioner Gilbert Taylor and elected city Public Advocate Letitia James jointly announced families with children who apply for shelter and aren’t found immediately eligible would nonetheless be allowed to stay the night. Commissioner Taylor, ...

“ A municipal ID is a great common-sense and cost efficient way to help many vulnerable New Yorkers access and utilize our city’s human service and safety net programs. As an official government ID it holds the promise of access to banking, cultural, educational and business services too often denied or made difficult to get because of insufficient ID. This will be a tremendous resource for our clients and many other New Yorkers. Council Speaker Mark-Viverito and Council Members Menchaca and Dromm deserve a lot of credit for their legislation.”                - Bobby Watts, Executive Director, Care for the Homeless That’s the quote City Council used last week in announcing introduction of legislation to establish a new official city ID. The proposed program, modeled on working programs in New Haven, Connecticut, in San Francisco, California and other places specifically makes it easier, quicker and more conv...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy Advocates to end homelessness in New York City owe policymakers a love letter, so this is ours. The new de Blasio administration, a new more progressive City Council, new Council General Welfare Chair Steve Levin and their teams are just about 100 days into their responsibilities. And the ship of state is turning. That’s quite an accomplishment for the highest homelessness rate city in America. In January, following a decade of crisis growth in homelessness, the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) census of city homeless shelters documented just how bleak the situation had become. That month we hit new record census highs for total shelter population (53,615) and children in the system (22,712). Worse yet, over 111,000 people, including more than 40,000 different children, had to use those shelters at some point in 2013. And the duration of stay for homeless families with kids keeps getting longer to its current 435 days (that’s 14 ½ mo...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy New Yorkers can celebrate the opportunity for a tool to move people experiencing homelessness from shelters to stable housing because of the last-second success of advocates and policy makers in removing language from the New York State budget that prohibited it. Yesterday, as state legislators and Governor Cuomo enacted the new state budget, they removed language prohibiting any city in New York of over 5 million (that’s only New York City; the second largest city, Buffalo, has a 260,000 population) from using state money to fund a rental subsidy program for homeless people. That language prohibiting state and federal funding from the old city Advantage program in 2011 has remained in each budget since then. Just 5 days before this year’s March 31 st deadline the prohibitive language was still firmly in place. There were media stories reporting policy makers were saying it was too late in the process to change it. But client leaders, ad...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy Tomorrow, Wednesday, March 26 th , at 9:30 a.m. in City Council Chambers in at City Hall, Council’s General Welfare Committee is holding   a hearing on Resolution 123-A, calling for a rental subsidy program to assist people experiencing homelessness in moving from shelter to permanent housing. Care for the Homeless is testifying in support of the Council Resolution and it’s open to the public.  You can attend and even testify if you want. The Care for the Homeless Agenda to End Homelessness includes a working rental subsidy to fight homelessness. The need is greater than ever before. New York City’s homeless shelter census is over 53,000 daily and growing. Over 22,000 children are in those shelters daily.   The fastest growing shelter population is families with children. Here’s our view: Public policy choices helped to create modern day homelessness; better policy will help end it. We can end modern day homelessness ...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy For the past year, Care for the Homeless client leaders and our certified client advocates have fought for extending a “30% rent cap” to all people living with HIV/AIDS in city subsidized HASA (HIV/AIDS Services Administration) housing programs. So it was with extreme pleasure that we got the word last week that the Mayor and Governor have jointly taken action to guarantee the 30% rent cap to more than 10,000 New Yorkers in HASA housing. Mayor de Blasio hailed the city-state effort, and so do we! Unlike most extremely low income housing and subsidized housing for poor households with disabilities, HASA housing never guaranteed a 30% rent cap. It always should have. Governor Cuomo said, “By implementing a 30% income cap for low-income renters with HIV/AIDS, we are protecting New Yorkers in need and making our communities stronger, healthier, and more compassionate for all.” Our client advocates spoke out for this most recently Wednesday mor...

Jeff Foreman, Policy Director The client leaders of Care for the Homeless are working hard on their Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day program for this Saturday, December 21. We hope you’ll attend. Homeless Persons' Memorial Day Saturday, December 21, 2013 at 3:30 p.m. New Song Church 2230 Frederick Douglass Boulevard (8 th Avenue) between 120 th and 121 st Streets in Harlem  In the meantime the week leading up to the event has been exciting. Last week Mayor-Elect Bill de Blasio appointed his Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services, who   supervises the Department of Homeless Services among other agencies. The Mayor-elect and Deputy-Mayor designate Lilliam Barrios-Paoli immediately charted a course to radically reduce homelessness in New York City. If that wasn’t enough, de Blasio’s Chief Deputy Mayor Anthony Shorris– his second in command – joined in calling the homeless situation in our city unacceptable and lamenting how we ever got in this kind of...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy New York is flush with conversation about the new city administration and the typical who is coming/who is going chatter, not to mention the interest in who the new City Council Speaker will be. It is exciting. And for homeless advocates there’s special excitement with a new Mayor committed to a progressive agenda that includes housing the homeless and 200,000 units of affordable housing. We’re also excited with the prospect of Councilwoman Letitia James, who stood with our Care for the Homeless contingent on the steps of City Hall at a recent United to End Homelessness rally, and Scott Stringer as new citywide officials. Mayor-elect de Blasio has taken on the most hopeful agenda to fight homelessness in New York City ever. His promise of 200,000 units of affordable housing, commitment to reinstate a priority for people experiencing homelessness to get NYCHA and Section 8 housing, and his pledge to never cut shelter beds for runaway and h...