Posted on March 6, 2018 by Jacquelyn Simone This week, Coalition for the Homeless Policy Director Giselle Routhier visited the Max & Murphy podcast with City Limits and Gotham Gazette for a wide-ranging conversation on the policies needed to effectively combat record homelessness: “It’s ok to say [homelessness] is stabilized, but it’s important to remember that it’s stabilized basically at record levels. We now have over 63,000 people sleeping in shelters each night. To that point, I think the Mayor has implemented policies that have led to that stabilization, but has not implemented policies that have been bold enough to actually ‘turn the tide,’ as he has said that he’s wanted to do in his plan that they released last year. We’re basically stuck here at record levels, in unacceptable territory, with 63,000 people sleeping in shelters, and thousands more in other shelter systems and on the streets, so we really need bolder solutions that are really targeted at housing specifically for people in shelters.” Some of the bold solutions Routhier discussed include increasing the number of Section 8 and public housing units available for homeless New Yorkers to leave shelters. She also reiterated the urgent need for Mayor de Blasio to set aside 30,000 units of his 300,000-unit Housing New York 2.0 plan for homeless households – sign the petition. Listen to the full podcast episode here.
