Mayor Bill de Blasio today announced his vision and plan to combat homelessness. In response, the Coalition for the Homeless released the following statement from Policy Director Giselle Routhier: “We applaud Mayor de Blasio’s announcement that the City will finally strive to live up to its legal and moral obligation to provide decent shelter to all homeless New Yorkers and will address decades of neglect and mismanagement of the shelter system. Well-designed and properly staffed shelters located in the same communities as the displaced families themselves would be a tremendous improvement over the current system that relies far too much on expensive and inappropriate cluster sites and hotels. “More important than improving the quality of shelters is reducing the need for them. What New Yorkers need from the Mayor is a bold and comprehensive plan to tackle our homelessness crisis by providing access to truly affordable housing and by better utilizing federal resources like public housing and Section 8. Mayor de Blasio could immediately and dramatically reduce the number of homeless families by simply increasing the number of NYCHA units for families in shelters from 1,500 a year to 3,000.”
