Care For the Homeless

Home Stability Support (HSS) Assembly-member Hevesi speaking at Homeless Persons' Memorial Day 2018   Assembly member Andrew Hevesi is continuing his fight in Albany to pass the Home Stability Support (HSS) Legislation, something that he spoke about at our 2018 Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day. Care for the Homeless and our client leaders, have been advocating for this legislation to raise the housing subsidy available to New Yorkers receiving public assistance up to 85% of the average fair market rent established by the federal Department of Urban Development (HUD), for a community based on family size.  HSS is a statewide rent supplement for families and individuals who are eligible for public assistance benefits as well as for those facing eviction, homelessness, or loss of housing due to domestic violence or hazardous living conditions. There are currently 171,000 households in New York receiving the public assistance “shelter allowance”, but the...

The New York Homeless Policy Forum 2015, cosponsored by Care for the Homeless and Baruch College, will feature NYC Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and City Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Gilbert Taylor, as well as leading advocates, policy-makers and clients. We are pleased to announce the following program of panels. Register today! Scope, Scale and Overview of Homelessness in New York City Serving as an introduction to homelessness in NYC, this presentation will include analysis of how many people are homeless or at risk in New York City, the context of the current crisis, NYC’s “right to shelter” and unique issues of homelessness in NYC.   Stigmatization, Criminalization and Attacks On Homeless People This panel will explore how and why we stigmatize homeless people and how the everyday activities of low-income and people experiencing homelessness are effected by stigmatization. Delving into societal attitudes towards poor and marginalized ...

  Join Care for the Homeless and Baruch College for the 2015 New York Homeless Policy Forum, a day of panels addressing issues in homeless and housing policy in New York City. Leading advocates, policy-makers, service providers and clients of the shelter system will discuss topics such as issues facing children in the shelter system, experiences of living in the shelter system and the low-income affordable housing market. Featuring special guest City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Gilbert Taylor. Have questions? Please email policy@cfhnyc.org Register here .   When? Wednesday, April 8th from 9:00 a.m. - 3:30 p.m. Where? Newman Library, Baruch College Room 750, 151 East 25th Street (bwtn 3rd Ave and Lexington Avenue) SUBWAY: N, Q, R (23rd Street) or 6 (23rd Street)       Please register to attend.    Light refreshmen...

Care for the Homeless began the Speakers’ Bureau in September 2013 as a program to help homeless and formerly homeless New Yorkers tell their stories and advocate for changes in homeless policy in New York City.  From presentations at universities such as Pratt, John Jay and Mt. Saint Vincent in the Bronx, to elementary school classrooms, to advocacy events and city council hearings, our first class of ‘Certified Advocates’ have told their stories to a wide-variety of New Yorkers, sharing the message that we can end homelessness as we know it. This past weekend January 17th and 18th saw the second course of Speakers’ Bureau applicants, each a CFH client who has experienced homelessness in New York City,  improve their public speaking and learn about housing policies and advocacy techniques. The program is full of dedicated New Yorkers who want to take a part in calling community leaders to greater action in solving the homeless crisis. The class was taught by Jef...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy Care for the Homeless was delighted to be included last week in a half-day roundtable discussion sponsored by Governing Magazine about “Creating Livable Communities” with about 30 of New York City’s leading policymakers, advocates, business people, union officials, academics and  elected officials. New York City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito began the forum with a review of city concerns and programs. Other participants included the Partnership for New York City, AARP, the New York Housing Conference, the New York Public Library, and business, educational, transportation, healthcare, technology and public safety representatives. Other elected policy makers present included City Council Members Margaret Chin and Paul Vallone, representatives of several Borough Presidents and various state and city government offices including the city Department of Homeless Services. Governing Magazine has sponsored more than a dozen of these discus...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy Few things in life are rarer than real political courage. How often do you find political leaders, particularly elected officials longing to stay elected, standing up for locally unpopular issues at the height of their controversy? This is the province of unique experience, strange curiosity and genuine oddity. Yet at a time of dramatically increasing stigmatization of poor and especially homeless people, particularly in New York City’s Queens Borough where several new homeless shelters have or are scheduled to open, New Yorkers have been treated to an extraordinary show of bravery from political leaders speaking out for what is unpopular among their electorate seemingly just because it’s the right thing to do. That’s about as quirky as the Big Apple itself. In July, the City’s Department of Homeless Services opened a family homeless shelter in the defunct former Pan American Hotel in Queen’s Elmhurst neighborhood. It opened on an eme...

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 Winning Dedication Award from NYC PHCH Last week City Councilman Steve Levin, Chairman of Council’s General Welfare Committee, was the recipient of a “Dedication to Improving the Lives of NYC Under Served People” Award presented by the NYC Providers of Health Care for the Homeless (PHCH).  CFH is a charter member of PHCH and CFH Assistant Executive Director Debbian Fletcher-Blake introduced Councilman Levin and presented him with the award. Councilman Levin has long fought for poor, homeless or underserved New Yorkers and as Committee Chair has been a leading advocate for targeting housing resources to people experiencing homelessness. He told the group of 100 participants at the conference “people who do the life-saving and life-changing work of providing health care and help to homeless people, usually with little recognition, are an inspiration to me in my work on Council” and promised to “be a partner in the fight to do what is right.” Also recognized at the confe...

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 ...

Last week, Care for the Homeless Executive Director Bobby Watts testified before the New York City Council assuring policy makers "with real commitment and the political will to do so, we can successfully end modern day homelessness in New York City."  Executive Director Bobby Watts Watts spoke about the Care for the Homeless Agenda to End Homelessness and how policies to fight, prevent and end homelessness would also save taxpayer dollars. Watts also took the opportunity to thank City Council for restoring funding that would have been cut for services for people experiencing homeless in recent budget cycles, and recognizing City Council Chair Steven Levin for legislation he will be proposing to create a city effort to coordinate policies and programs affecting homelessness. "This is modeled on the federal InterAgency Council on Homelessness , that has been so valuable in improving national policy," Watts said. Watts participated in a public hearin...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy “57,000 is 57,000 too many.” That’s what the sign said that a Care for the Homeless client leader held up   last year at a rally (featured   here ) on the steps of New York’s City Hall, after the media brought us the bad news that we’d set yet another record for the number of people experiencing homelessness in New York City shelters. Last year over 111,000 people spent time in our city’s homeless shelters. More than 40,000 of them were children. Those figures, too, represent new high census figures for shelter populations. Another way to think about it is that in HUD’s recently released Point-in-Time survey for a given day in January of 2013, there were 64,060 people in New York City’s homeless shelters or living on the streets. That’s a 13% increase in City homelessness, year-over-year, at the same time the country as a whole decreased homelessness by 4%.   That study found about 1-in-10 homeless people in America was in New Yor...

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...

Jeff Foreman, Director of Policy  We’ve been writing a lot about our recent, highly successful voter registration drive. You can read more about that here . But it’s not just about registering… Today, September 10 th , is Primary Election Day! Please vote . This is a critical election in New York City. The Mayor, Comptroller, Public Advocate, all Borough Presidents, District Attorneys and every City Council seat is up for election. This election is to choose party nominees. It’s open only to those registered with a political party that’s nominating candidates. Due to term limits and incumbents not seeking re-election, there will be a new Mayor, newcomers in every citywide elected office, new Borough Presidents in 4-of-5 boroughs and a Council with almost half new Members next year. That’s historic. It’s an opportunity to stand up for people experiencing homelessness, access to health care and health clinics, affordable housing and your own visions of what our c...