For Immediate Release March 12, 2015 Statement on Department of Investigation Report on Family Shelter Conditions See the report here Mary Brosnahan, President and CEO of the Coalition for the Homeless, made the following statement: “These findings are deeply disturbing and reveal how much further New York City must go to provide decent shelter for our homeless neighbors in crisis. These horrendous conditions may have been years in the making, but they clearly demand an urgent and comprehensive response from the City. “The City has a legal and moral obligation to provide these families – mostly women and children – with shelters that are at minimum clean and safe, and we are heartened that DOI has provided a roadmap for improving conditions at these shelters. Given that the most hazardous violations exist in so-called cluster-site shelters, the report provides more ammunition for the City to accelerate steps already taken by the de Blasio administration to phase out that disastrous Bloomberg-era program. Put simply, the most efficient and cost-effective way to stop the insane reliance on dangerous cluster-site housing is for the mayor to increase the availability of NYCHA apartments to more rapidly move families with young children out of these hell holes and into stability.”
