Showing posts with label Homeless Shelters. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Homeless Shelters. Show all posts

Sunday, April 6, 2014

Mayor Bill de Blasio blocks homeless shelter in Upper West Side

Is Mayor de Blasio backpedaling on homelessness in New York City ?

Mayor Bill de Blasio has opposed the conversion of a building into a homeless shelter after NIMBY opposition to the homeless shelter came from Assemblywoman Linda Rosenthal and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, The New York Post reported.

With growing numbers of people turning to the city's shelter system for housing, progressives have escalated pressure on the de Blasio administration to address the underlying determinants that are exacerbating the homeless population in New York City.

"Last year was the first time the number of homeless people sleeping each night in shelters exceeded 50,000," The New York Times reported.

On the eve of Mayor de Blasio's inauguration, the Legal Aid Society filed a class action lawsuit against the city on behalf of homeless youths, demanding from the city the full resources to provide shelter to homeless youths, as required by law. But many liberal groups, including the administrators of homeless LGBT shelters, have tried to de-escalate the pressure on the administration into making piecemeal or token gestures to address homelessness.

Friday, March 28, 2014

Will Bill de Blasio truly reform aid and services to homeless ?

The New York City Mayor is seeking a change in New York State's budget in order to help provide rent subsidies to homeless families.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has been engaged in a public public relations battle with New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over the city's request for a state budget amendment that would provide rent subsidies for up to 2,800 families a year, "costing a total of $21 million in the first year and growing to $115 million annually by the fifth year," The New York Times reported.

While the mayor tries to shame the governor into approving the city's request for a state budget amendment, the mayor has yet to publicly commit to settling a class action lawsuit filed by homeless youths against New York City for failing to provide adequate shelter, as required by law, to minors.

As the mayor tries to use the state budget amendment to shore up the publicity of his efforts to address skyrocketing homelessness in New York City, former mayoral candidate and head of The Doe Fund George McDonald faulted New York City law enforcement for arresting and incarcerating a homeless former Marine for the sole crime of seeking warmth over a freezing February evening. The homeless former Marine, Jerome Murdough, was placed in deplorable conditions at Rikers Island, where he died while in custody as a result of neglect by city correctional officers.

After recent political popularity polls showed the mayor's favorability ratings sinking after his personal vendetta against charter schools leader Eva Moskowitz, Mayor de Blasio has been trying to shore up his credentials with the liberal wing of city Democrats.

But his efforts to deal with homelessness have thus far been incremental and do not address the larger determinants that make people lose shelter.

The state budget amendment, that will benefit less than 3,000 families, will take five years to fully roll out, if it secures and keeps its precarious funding. After another scandal over the mayor's motorcade openly violating traffic safety laws, the mayor's office announced reforms to two of the largest city-owned family shelters, according to The New York Observer. The mayor's move to reform those two shelters followed an exposée by The New York Times that revealed that homeless families with children living in the two shelters endured deplorable conditions, including "cockroaches, spoiled food, violence and insufficient heat."

Several weeks ago, one homeless man, who suffered through many indignities at the hands of the city's impossible homeless system, demonstrated that New York City makes it a practice to deny housing social workers to people who come in and out of the city's shelters, leading some activists to charge that the city cynically doesn't have to provide shelter if it doesn't first provide housing social workers.

Thursday, March 27, 2014

de Blasio, Cuomo Playing Tit-for-Tat Politics With Homeless

PUBLISHED : TUES, 25 MAR 2014, 08:49 PM
UPDATED : THURS, 27 MAR 2014, 09:04 AM

Mayor de Blasio shaming Gov. Cuomo over state homeless budget request ; meanwhile, Mayor de Blasio ignoring homeless youths class action lawsuit

Andrew Cuomo Bill de Blasio photo andrew-cuomo-bill-de-blasio_zps07f38878.jpg

Gov. Andrew Cuomo is deeply involved in brokering the backroom deals that will produce the state's budget. Since there's been a very public conflict between the governor and the mayor over the mayor's stalled request to increase taxes for the most wealthy New Yorkers and the mayor's plan to close charter schools, both of which the governor has opposed, the mayor appears to be seeking political retribution against the governor by making it look like the governor is, in turn, stalling on the city's request for a change in the state's budget in respect of homeless resources.

Mayor de Blasio is seeking "permission to use state funds for rental subsidies," Capital New York is reporting, and it's not clear why the mayor submitted his request so late into the state's budget process.

"As everyone knows, the budget is due in less than a week so we can assume the city's proposal will be for next year, because at this point it's too late to take up anything significant this year," the governor's spokesperson Melissa DeRosa was quoted as having said, according to a report by The Wall Street Journal.

“According to the governor’s office, the city’s efforts on its homelessness prevention plan paled in comparison to its push for prekindergarten financing : Mr. de Blasio’s preliminary proposal was less than two pages and omitted crucial details, and the city never scheduled a meeting," The New York Times is reporting, adding that, "The mayor’s office said Cuomo administration officials did not respond to a request for a meeting from an official in the Department of Homeless Services. The governor’s office said the request was merely a text message to an assistant to the deputy secretary for human services.”

While Mayor de Blasio has managed to crash Gov. Cuomo's intricate backroom budget dealmaking, Gov. Cuomo has had to play down the latest public flashpoint between the two. "Anything we can do, I would want to do," Gov. Cuomo said during a press conference, according to Politicker. But, Gov. Cuomo said, "It’s late in the day to put something in the actual budget because the budget train has basically left the station,” he added, sounding irritated, “So, to start a new proposal, it’s too late.”

As Mayor de Blasio is shaming Gov. Cuomo over the unlikelihood that the state will grant the city's homeless budget amendment, Mayor de Blasio has yet to settle in his own right the class action lawsuit filed by homeless youths, who are denied shelter by New York City, a violation of law. If the mayor were truly committed to help people in homeless shelters, then the mayor would settle the homeless youths' lawsuit.

Recent revelations further show that New York City systematically denies housing social workers to people, who seek shelter in its homeless program. By denying housing social workers, the city government does not become obligated to finding permanent housing for people in and out of its homeless shelter system, one of the largest reasons that people in homeless shelters face a catch-22.

  • UPDATE : Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo reopened the door Wednesday to Mayor Bill de Blasio's bid to secure state funds to combat homelessness, with a Cuomo administration source saying the governor is "trying to actively resolve" the issue. (Cuomo relents on NYC homeless aid request * Newsday)

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Caught in a Vicious Circle, NYC Homeless Man Describes "Broken System" in YouTube Video

One homeless man, who is gay, middle-aged, single, and overcoming the past affects of being a victim of domestic violence, describes the "vicious circle" of being homeless in the midst of the brutal 2014 winter season in New York City.

Watch as a harrowing tale of being cycled through single-male shelters, including one on Wards Island, where he was beaten ; through Metropolitan Hospital with its jaded social workers ; through a series of non-profit organizations, such as Safe Horizon, including LGBT groups, like the Anti-Violence Project and Callen-Lorde, which denied social workers based on the man's sero status ; and finally through the cold city agencies, like 311, the mayor's office, and the Department of Mental Health, which, at times, left this man waiting for appointments, sent e-mails from one commissioner no longer in office, and, incredibly, required the homeless man to have a physical address.

According to statistics made available by the Coalition for the Homeless, there are more people, who are homeless, than there is space in the shelter system. “[M]ore than 5,000 homeless adults and children sleep each night in other public and private shelters, and thousands more sleep rough on the streets or in other public spaces.” On top of this, nobody reviews how “the system” treats homeless people.

Video was filmed in its entirety on 01 March 2014, edited, and uploaded on 05 March 2014.

Produced by : @ProgressQueens on Twitter

To protect the man's identity, his real name is being used in the video, but it is not being used in the text about this video. To contact the homeless man, please reach out on Twitter to @ProgressQueens.

Friday, January 3, 2014

Homeless Youths File Federal Lawsuit Against New York City

"Homeless youths sue city for not providing enough shelter" : NYPost

The Legal Aid Society has filed a federal lawsuit in the Eastern District of New York, in Brooklyn, against the City of New York on behalf of several homeless youths. The plaintiffs fault New York City for failing to provide sufficient shelter.

"The Brooklyn federal court lawsuit claims that while the city is legally obligated to provide beds for all homeless people ages 16 to 20, it turns away hundreds of applicants every night," The New York Post reported earlier this week, adding, "With 3,800 kids currently homeless in the city and only 253 shelter beds available, the waiting lists are growing, the suit states."

A coalition of LGBT organizations, including the Ali Forney Center headed by Carl Siciliano, created the Campaign for Youth Shelter, which would press the city to provide additional funding in a lockstep rate of "$3 million in annual funding to create 100 new shelter beds every year," according to a report in The Advocate.

Perhaps the Legal Aid Society's lawsuit was inspired by the activism surrounding the Campaign for Youth Shelter, as one insider said, but the lawsuit has a larger ambition : seeking the resources to provide shelter for every homeless youth today. If successful, the Legal Aid Society's lawsuit would appear to be the answer to this social issue. If so, now would be the time for the Campaign for Youth Shelter to update its plans for how a larger shelter system could be created once all the resources become available.

In the past, Mayor Bloomberg would seek budgetary cuts to homeless LGBT youth programs, but these cuts would get restored during the budget negotiations.

2013-12-30 Legal Aid Society USDC EDNY NYC Complaint Re Homeless Youth by Connaissable

Some noted the irony that the lawsuit would not be defended by the Bloomberg-Quinn administration, which was largely responsible for growing inequities between a new guilded generation of the very wealthy and the famous 99%, a term coined by Occupy Wall Street to describe everybody else. But the flip side to former Mayor Michael Bloomberg always playing the boogyman was the fact that the City Council, headed by former Speaker Christine Quinn, was always comprised of a supermajority of Democrats, yet the City Council never confronted the mayor to demand the resources to fully address any social ill. By the same token, the Public Advocate's office was never visible in the fight for full budgetary resources, either.

This lawsuit seeks to address the deprivation of homeless youths, who have nothing. One activist noted that Mayor Bloomberg's successor, Bill de Blasio, will now have to put his newly-confessed economic sensibilities about "A Tale Of Two Cities" to the test : it will be incumbent upon Mayor de Blasio to fully fund the resources that homeless youth community groups need to provide adequate shelter to homeless youths.

That litigation is being brought now is a sign that the Legal Aid Society means to force the city's hand, and that homeless shelters would no longer be willing to engage in the annual, farcical "budget dance" -- the cut-and-restore budget negotiation process that leaves important community groups unable to adequately plan long-term operating budgets. Based on how the former Public Advocate failed to champion the cause of homeless shelters, the Legal Aid Society seems to not want to take chances now that the former Public Advocate has become mayor.

Friday, December 13, 2013

Hunger Games : Bill de Blasio NYC Andrew Cuomo NYS Budget Realness

Expanding pre-kinder, making good on union backpay demands, and fighting income inequality will be paid for by how ?

Bill de Blasio will be sworn into office as the next mayor of New York City on Wednesday, Jan. 1, 2014, a frigid day of painful New Year's Eve hang-overs and desperate resolutions that this will finally be the year when we make real change come true.

Hold your horses.

"The biggest challenge Mr. de Blasio will face in the first few months of his administration is negotiating contracts with nearly all of the city’s municipal unions," The New York Times reported, noting that, "The unions have been working under expired contracts for several years and are asking for some $7 billion in retroactive pay."

This potential $7 billion backpay price tag comes on top of a campaign proposal central to de Blasio's political win : a plan to expand pre-kinder to every child in New York City, a plan that is estimated to cost several hundred million dollars, WNYC has reported.

According to Mr. de Blasio's campaign Web site, he "called for an increase in taxes for New Yorkers earning $500,000 or more to dramatically expand after-school programs for all middle schools students, and to create truly universal pre-K programs."

To raise other money, Mr. de Blasio plans to also raise property taxes on empty lots, in order to spur more real estate development. "The goal is to spur development of affordable housing — the theory being that lot owners would rather sell to developers than face dramatically higher taxes," CBS reported. It's not known, as usual with desperate campaign promises, how the tax rate hike on vacant lots will exactly only create "affordable housing" and what will govern just how "affordable" the new housing will be. But there is a great need for affordable housing. By City Council Speaker Christine Quinn's own account, New York City has lost 300,000 affordable housing units in the past few years alone.

The mayor-elect's campaign promises are set to clash with a neoliberal governor set on window dressing the state budget as a springboard to a presidential run in 2016.

With so much pressing need, how can social, legal, and economic reforms be paid for ?

  • Since 2006, a total of 10 New York City hospitals have either closed or downsized, and several more hospitals have been identified for possible closure. Some astute political observers have said privately that they believe that Governor Andrew Cuomo is trying to make large, indiscriminate healthcare cuts by closing entire hospitals in a desperate effort to window dress the state budget in preparation for a run for the Democratic nomination in the 2016 presidential race. (Activists take protest to save hospitals to governor’s office * WestView News)

Bill de Blasio Andrew Cuomo Bill Thompson photo 2013-09-16Bill-de-Blasio-Andrew-Cuomo-Bill-Thompson_zps4c42cc21.jpg

Economic realities will fracture Democratic unity : Pension IOU vouchers and hospital closings that will pay for the $2 billion election year tax cut gimmicks of Andrew Cuomo

Gov. Cuomo faces an election year campaign that overlaps with mayor-elect de Blasio's first year in office. Gov. Cuomo is already out of the gate with an expensive $2 billion tax cut proposal to endear himself with big business interests as he eyes a presidential run in 2016.

"New York’s corporate tax rate would be cut to its lowest level since 1968 as part of reductions in property and business levies called for by a commission appointed by New York Governor Andrew Cuomo," reported Bloomberg News.

Former New York Lt. Gov. Richard Ravitch has blasted Gov. Cuomo's tax cuts on NY1's program The Road to City Hall :

"I think he's going to look for additional help, and I think the problem is the state is likely to put very severe caps on the growth of healthcare spending and education spending, which will have a terrible effect on New York City," Mr. Ravitch said, adding, "Based on what we read, the governor wants to cut taxes at at time when his social needs are growing, and that will be an interesting political battle. I think we are going to see a very, very interesting dilemma given Bill de Blasio's genuinely-held social commitments," noting that Gov. Cuomo's tax plan was "frankly … nonsense : The cities in New York state and the largest counties in New York State are in serious trouble."

Mr. Ravitch identified several counties, which are having to borrow money, in order to pay for operating deficits. "That's why New York City almost went bankrupt in 1975. Nobody learned the lessons of the past," Mr. Ravitch said.

"Chicago, Philadelphia, New York, Phoenix and Jacksonville, Florida, are among large cities that had 60 percent or less of what they need in their retirement systems to cover promised benefits, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. At least 29 public plans in 16 states are less than two-thirds funded, according to Boston College’s Center for Retirement Research," reported Bloomberg News. While city, county, and state governments continue to wallow in a fiscal mess exacerbated by the 2007-2008 global financial crisis and recession, one dangerous quick fix governments have resorted to is to issue IOU's or vouchers to their pension plans, leading to severely underfunded conditions.

The Neoliberal Hunger Games - Andrew Cuomo and Bill de Blasio Tax Cuts Realness photo TheNeoliberalHungerGames-AndrewCuomoandBilldeBlasioTaxCutsRealness1_zpsb21b75db.jpg

  • Moody’s has put 12 towns and villages in New York on notice for failing to provide enough details to maintain their credit ratings, a move that affects $56.5 million in debt, reported Gannett Albany.
  • Gov. Andrew Cuomo spent $140 million of emergency relief meant for victims of Hurricane Sandy in an ad campaign to convince businesses to move to update New York, reported The National Review.

The Hunger Games : more of the tumultuous clash between community groups that have been starved of budgetary resources.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo wants billions from Washington in federal Medicaid dollars he's "saved" by making wholesale healthcare cuts, including closing entire hospitals, through the his neoliberal austerity program, the Medicaid Redesign Team.
(Cuomo spars with Obama administration over Medicaid exemption * The Washington Post)
The Rep. Paul Ryan federal budget deal will cost New York hospitals several hundred million dollars a year by cutting reimbursement rates for hospital procedures provided to patients, who do not remain hospitalised for more than two days under a controversial "two midnight rule."
(House budget tweak costs N.Y. hospitals millions * Capital New York)

Gov. Cuomo made an ''implicit threat that he could unilaterally pull out of Medicaid expansion, dealing a major blow to the success of the Affordable Care Act at a critical juncture if the state’s request isn’t granted.''

In an environment where mayor-elect de Blasio made brash "pie in the sky" promises to attract the votes of working families with school-age children as an election year gimmick, he must now contend with Gov. Cuomo's own "pie in the sky" promises of corporate tax cuts, in spite of the fact that voters have expressed demands for economic equality, not more corporate welfare.

Gov. Cuomo plans to pay for his $2 billion tax cut by having gutted Medicaid. He achieved wholesale healthcare cuts by closing entire hospitals that served the poor, uninsured, or underinsured. Those savings, and the billions he is now demanding from the Obama administration, will go to pay for corporate tax cuts. Added to that, Gov. Cuomo's gambling initiative will suck more money from the desperate poor, further depriving some poor people of their poverty wages. The poor are rightly looking for an elusive safe harbour from the today's tumultuous economic straights, but how sad that Gov. Cuomo wants to herd them into casinos, instead of giving the working class a living wage. Mayor-elect de Blasio, meanwhile, made it a fiscal priority to propose a tax-the-rich plan to pay for universal pre-kinder, that only benefits taxpayers with toddlers. Of all the pressing needs across the five boroughs, did taxpayers agree that the first order of business should be to expand pre-kinder ? First of all, there aren't enough classes to accommodate the number of children enrolled in New York City public schools. Where will the de Blasio administration find the classrooms to house toddlers ? It's unclear if the $500 million price tag for universal pre-kinder includes the cost of classroom construction that may be impossible to accomplish in old school buildings in dense urban New York City neighborhoods.

The finite tax dollars is already squeezing governments, as Mr. Ravitch said. "We're using promissory notes to make the contributions to the state pension funds."

Left out of the debate, for now, are the unions, affordable housing activists, healthcare activists, education advocates, homeless activists, public library supporters, and other stakeholders on how the decreasing tax revenues are going to be spent.

In this era of government budgetary famine, stakeholders are already having to fight against each other for resources. When Gov. Cuomo empaneled his Medicaid Redesign Team to close hospitals, he appointed affordable housing community groups to the panel and convinced them that the only way to find nickels and dimes for new housing programs was to close entire hospitals and to make cuts to healthcare for the poor.

One also saw this kind of friction between community groups when Carl Siciliano, executive director of the Ali Forney Center for homeless New York City youth, threw Rev. Pat Bumgardner under the bus over allegations of inferior conditions at Sylvia’s Place, the homeless shelter for LGBT youth operated by Rev. Bumgardner's church.

Because New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn never made it a political and budgetary priority to put an end to homeless problem of LGBT youth, one could view Mr. Siciliano's attacks on Sylvia's Place as a way to shut it down in order to keep more of the city's homeless tax dollars for himself -- the same way affordable housing activists went along with an irresponsible spree of closings entire hospitals in order to build 154 housing units in the Bronx. These units are set to open in either 2015 or 2016.

Why are community advocacy groups pitted against each other, instead of trying to lift everybody up ? The fact is that there's only so much public assistance and private philanthropy, making community advocacy groups get stuck in a "us vs. them" worldview. The price society pays is that nobody dares to make a demand for all the resources needed to fully address social issues, like providing universal healthcare for everybody or providing shelter for all LGBT homeless youth. Where's the focus on the bigger picture to get *all* the needed resources ?

The Grand Central Air Rights Deal Won't Be Enough To Feed Everybody

Because community advocacy groups fail to make a full demand for resources, and because politicians lack the courage to impose a Wall Street financial tax of less than ½ of 1% on Wall Street transactions, you see all manner of budgetary and economic contortions, to try to mine new tax dollars (aka "resources"). The scramble to structure bespoke taxes or new government fees is wrought with corruption. Take, for example, the city plan to sell air rights for several blocks around Grand Central Station in Manhattan. The plan, which was the vision of outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg to upgrade the size, facility, and infrastructure of Midtown East office buildings, would raise about $1 billion in new tax resources for New York City, reported Bloomberg News.

Should Gov. Cuomo succeed at both enacting his foolish $2 billion tax cut and blocking Mayor-elect de Blasio's tax-the-rich plan, this $1 billion would be all that there is to divide among unions, affordable housing activists, healthcare activists, education advocates, homeless activists, public library supporters, and other stakeholders. Either the mayor-elect will miraculously divide the fish and loaves sufficient to satiate the hungry, or else look for either an escalation of the "interesting political battle" between City Hall and Albany predicted by Mr. Ravitch or else more community groups taking each other down as they fight for survival.

Big business interests always win, even after countless "change" elections

Note how the Grand Central air rights sale turned taxpayer's $1 billion bailout will enrich real estate speculators and developers.

This is, after all, a city that allows billion-dollar real estate projects to exploit tax breaks only after they make campaign donations in a corrupt political culture of pay-to-play. (Gov. Cuomo got $100,000 from developer, then signed law giving it big tax breaks * The New York Daily News)

And lobbyists, such as James Capalino, George Arzt, and others, stand to exploit their close connections to both the Cuomo and de Blasio administrations to benefit their lobbying clients, and it should come as no surprise that these and other lobbyists get involved in politics in order to keep their pockets lined while community groups go at each others' throats.


(Updated : Saturday 14 Dec 2013 15:10)

Carl Siciliano contacted me by Facebook to deny that he was motivated to close Sylvia's Place. He made complaints about the lack of licensing and other problems with Sylvia's Place, and he said that he's committed to "calling upon the City and State to commit to a plan to add 100 youth shelter beds per year until there are no longer waiting lists at the youth shelters."

Separately, statistics from PFLAG NYC show that, "Studies indicate that between 25% and 50% of homeless youth are LGBT and on the streets because of their sexual orientation or gender identity."

According to New Alternatives NYC, "Every night, thousands of lesbian, gay bisexual and transgender youth and young adults are homeless in New York City. Whether they have been kicked out by homophobic families, forced to flee conservative communities, aged out of foster care, or come from families torn apart by poverty, AIDS, drug abuse or eviction, these youth sleep in the City’s parks, on the subway, and in public facilities such as Port Authority and Penn Station. A fortunate minority find a safe haven in one of NYC’s handful of housing programs and shelters designed for this population, facilities so underfunded that youth wait months to get in or sleep on concrete floors and countertops. Another portion of the homeless youth population finds not-so-safe shelter in large, City-funded institutions or the men’s shelter on Ward’s Island, where they are subject to homophobic harassment- and even violence -at the hands of both staff and peers. The least fortunate of all find themselves practicing “survival sex” – trading their bodies for money or a place to stay."

Two years ago, GLAAD estimated that the census of homeless LGBT youth in New York City is approximately 1,500. It would take several years before all homeless LGBT youth in New York City would find housing if the rate of expanding shelters is capped at 100 new beds per year. Left unexplained is why community advocacy groups fail to make demands today for all the resources needed to provide shelter to all homeless youth in New York City, a point made to Mr. Siciliano, but which Mr. Siciliano refused to directly address.

Tuesday, February 19, 2013

Bloomberg: "No One Is Sleeping On The Streets"

Mike Bloomberg is blind to the homeless problem. No surprise.

Homeless advocates are criticizing Mayor Michael Bloomberg's assertion that "no one is sleeping on the streets," after he was asked today about a report that the city shelter system is turning away families during cold winter days. (NY1)

How can anybody take Mike Bloomberg seriously, if he is so blind to his own elitist worldview ? Will anybody take him seriously when he makes an endorsement in the mayoral campaign ?