CFH Joins 30,000 Homes for Homeless New Yorkers Campaign

Last week client leaders serving on the CFH Consumer Advisory Committee held a discussion on the unavailability of housing for extremely-low-income people and households living in deep poverty. Not surprisingly, their conclusion was that the number one housing policy problem facing New Yorkers struggling to find and maintain housing is the unavailability of housing units for the most vulnerable in our city. 
The CAB discussion came as the group endorsed Care for the Homeless joining the “30,000 Homes for Homeless New Yorkers” campaign. The advocacy effort, made up of 35 advocacy organizations, called for New York City to increase the number of newly developed housing units targeted to people experiencing homelessness in our city. In a letter to Mayor de Blasio, the 30,000 Homes for Homeless New Yorkers campaign urged creating 30,000 new stable housing units for homeless New Yorkers by 2026 as part of the City’s affordable housing plan.  
The letter noted that the current plan targets just 15,000 units for homeless households, and “most of the 15,000 set-aside units will be preservation of existing occupied units and thus not available for move-in by homeless families currently languishing in shelters.” In fact, the New York City Housing Preservation and Development Department predicts no more than a few hundred units in the City’s plan will go to households currently experiencing homelessness.
“In contrast,” the 30,000 homes campaign letter says, “at a time when the shelter census was only a fraction of what it is today, Mayor Ed Koch created nearly 15,700 units of homeless housing – constituting more than 10% of the units in his 10-year plan. Nearly all those units were immediately available for occupancy by homeless families in shelters.” The campaign’s request is that the city’s goal be at least 30,000 stable housing units for people experiencing homelessness, with at least 24,000 being newly constructed.
“This plan will require the City to build roughly 2,000 new units of homeless housing each year between now and 2026…homeless housing production on the scale we recommend is not only financially achievable, but morally imperative,” the letter says. You can read the entire 30,000 Homes for Homeless New Yorkers letter to Mayor de Blasio here.

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