Care For the Homeless

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 Commentators found lots to like in Governor Cuomo’s Budget address last week. There was more money for supportive housing (that’s a big issue for us at Care for the Homeless), a commitment to fund pre-K and aid education across New York State, even if the “how to fund it” issue is still open for debate, excellent programs to aid victims of domestic violence and more.   But one really critical issue in the fight to end the homelessness crisis in New York City just has to get fixed in the budget before it gets adopted over the next three months. That’s the opportunity to set re-establish a critically needed subsidy to move families from homeless shelters to permanent housing. Earlier this month the Citizens Committee for Children, our advocacy partner in fighting homelessness in New York City, released a report decrying that over 22,000 kids sleep daily in city family homeless shelters and arguing we can’t successfully end that without a large...

Bobby Watts, Executive Director  Shortly before heading to D.C. for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, I  engaged in an email exchange with the NYC Independent Budget Office. I was sure that a figure in their recently-recently released report was incorrect. But it wasn't a typo - the annualized cost of an inmate in NYC jails is $167,731 per year. 

Over this last weekend, “CNN Money” ran a feature report it calls “Paying to House NYC’s Homeless,” but it’s really an endorsement of part of the Care for the Homeless Agenda to End Homelessness . Not that they talk about us or our plan - but what they say supports our advocacy for a transitional rental subsidy program to move homeless families and individuals from streets and shelters to permanent housing, because we can’t end homelessness in New York City without it. CNN reports “New York City used to have a rental assistance program that cost $10,000 a year per family. But that program was cut, and taxpayers now pay more than twice that to house a family in shelter.” In fact, city taxpayers now pay more than three times the cost of the former Advantage rental subsidy to house families in temporary shelters rather than helping people rent permanent housing. And CNN reports the homeless population in the city shelter system has increased 60% in the last decade. The CNN report in...