Coalition for the Homeless released its annual State of the Homeless report, titled Compounding Crises, Failed Responses. The report evaluates the City’s and the State’s efforts to meet the needs of unsheltered New Yorkers; provide safe, appropriate, and accessible shelter to homeless households; and provide access to permanent affordable housing.
The data presented in the report evidences Mayor Adams’ and Governor Hochul’s failure to effectively address the growing housing and homelessness crisis due to poor planning, misguided strategies, insufficient investment in permanent affordable housing, and bureaucratic ineptitude, which have relegated countless New Yorkers to homelessness and left the City ill-prepared to manage the recent influx of new arrivals.
As a result, the number of individuals sleeping in shelters each night has reached an all-time high. The report shows that last year the number of homeless households receiving City rent vouchers to transition into permanent housing reached its lowest level in five years; the number of homeless single adults placed into supportive housing was the second-lowest level since 2004 (with only the previous year being marginally worse); and the number of affordable housing units and homeless set-aside units financed hit its lowest level since 2014.
This report offers a series of recommendations to guide Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul in addressing the crisis, and notably calls on Mayor Adams to commit to financing 6,000 new units of affordable housing per year for five years for homeless households and another 6,000 for extremely low-income households.
“Until the Mayor and Governor get serious about creating enough new affordable housing specifically for those who need it most, New York will continue lurching from one crisis to the next, at a terrible human cost. The City would have had far more capacity to manage the current influx of new arrivals had there been serious efforts to help homeless New Yorkers transition into permanent housing. Harassing and criminalizing unsheltered individuals, allowing bureaucratic red tape to create a purgatorial trap for people in the shelter system, ignoring the need for vastly more permanent affordable housing, and seeking to undercut New York’s bedrock legal right to shelter are, to date, the ignominious hallmarks of the current administration’s response to mass homelessness. New Yorkers deserve better,” said Dave Giffen, Executive Director at the Coalition for the Homeless.
The State of the Homeless report includes a report card that evaluates the City’s and State’s efforts in meeting the needs of unsheltered New Yorkers, providing access to shelters and permanent housing, and preventing homelessness:
Compounding Crises, Failed Responses also outlines key steps that the City and State can take to immediately address the growing crisis:
Helping Unsheltered New Yorkers Mayor Adams must:
Governor Hochul must:
Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul should together:
Shelters Mayor Adams must:
Permanent Housing and Homelessness Prevention Mayor Adams must:
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New York Daily News: “Coalition for the Homeless slams Adams and Hochul homeless, housing response in new report”
NY1: “Scathing report criticizes city and state efforts on homelessness”
Black Star News: “Homeless Report Underscores Scope Of Crisis And Failures Of Governor Hochul, Mayor Adams”