Image courtesy of Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office on Flickr
New York City officials are fighting the city’s looming housing crisis with a few major policy changes. Mayor Eric Adams on Monday announced new housing reforms that will help homeless New Yorkers easily transition from the shelter system into affordable and supportive housing and give them access to housing in higher-income neighborhoods that have previously been out of reach for lower-income families.
Image courtesy of mari small on Unsplash
The city has delivered on its promise to create more housing for homeless and mentally ill New Yorkers but has had trouble actually filling the units, according to a new report. Data released by the city last week obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request showed that 2,600 supportive housing units are still vacant despite New York City’s urgent housing crisis and despite Mayor Eric Adams’ pledge to streamline the application process for these apartments, as first reported by the New York Times.
Image: Framlab
The growing population of homeless New Yorkers is sending creative agency Framlab up a wall–literally. The Oslo- and New York City-based agency has proposed a way to provide shelter for the city’s homeless in an arrangement of 3D-printed micro-neighborhoods comprised of hexagonal modules designed to attach to a scaffold structure, creating a second layer of properties, basically, alongside a building’s empty wall (h/t designboom). In the project, called “Homed,” the modular pods can be clustered together, creating a “cellular mosaic” with their fronts facing the street.
Rendering via Think Architecture and Design
Facing an unprecedented homelessness problem, in February, Mayor de Blasio announced plans to open 90 new shelters and expand 30 existing ones. But when it came down to which neighborhoods would house the developments, it became a not-in-my-backyard issue, especially in Crown Heights, an area already heavy with shelters and transitional houses, where the Mayor said three of the first five projects would be built. The animosity intensified shortly thereafter when it was announced that one such shelter would open in a new building at 267 Rogers Avenue, originally planned as a condo. But despite opposition from local residents and a temporary restraining order, the building began welcoming tenants over the summer, with space for 132 homeless families and another 33 units reserved for low-income New Yorkers. The latter, set aside for those earning 60 percent of the area median income, are now available through the city’s affordable housing lottery and range from $931/month one-bedrooms to $1,292/month three-bedrooms.
In February Mayor de Blasio announced that he plans to open 90 new homeless shelters, but during this same month, only 38 percent of families seeking shelter through the Department of Homeless Services were approved, reports the Daily News. This is a 50 percent drop from the same time last year, which comes after the agency’s Commissioner, Steven Banks, received approval from the state in November to require families seeking shelter to present “clear, convincing and credible evidence” that they absolutely have nowhere else to go.
The exact details of the mayor’s proposal, to be announced Tuesday afternoon, are not yet known, but the focus will undoubtedly be the mayor’s ongoing battle to significantly beef up the city’s overwhelmed shelter system, according to the New York Times. New York–along with Los Angeles, San Francisco and Washington, D.C,– has experienced an increase in homelessness in recent years, though the number of homeless people has declined nationwide. The city’s shelter infrastructure is over capacity to the point that, as 6sqft previously reported, around $400,000 a day is being spent on using hotel rooms as temporary shelters. Homelessness is one of the mayor’s thorniest problems; the proposal will reportedly increase the number of shelters throughout the city by nearly one third.
Back in November, the Wall Street Journal reported that Mayor de Blasio had spent a record $1.6 billion on homeless services since taking office three years prior, a 60 percent increase that came with 20 percent more New Yorkers in city shelters. Now, as shared by the Post, Comptroller Scott Stringer says that homeless spending will reach a whopping $2.3 billion when this fiscal year ends on June 30th, almost twice the $1.2 billion spent three years ago. “We have to pause and ask ourselves, are we seeing results?” he said.
Though Mayor de Blasio said early last year that he would phase out the process of using hotel rooms to fill the gaps in supporting the city’s growing homeless population “as quickly as possible,” a new request from the Department of Homeless Services would extend the practice for up to nine years. The Post reports that the agency’s proposal is in response to the record 60,686+ New Yorkers in shelters, and they’re asking for vendors to supply “emergency shelter social services in commercial hotels.”
Less than a week after the city announced that they’ll be increasing the number of commercial hotel rooms housing homeless families and individuals by more than 500, a report from Comptroller Scott Stringer puts the average cost a night citywide for the current batch at $400,000, according to the Daily News. The report, which is being released today, says that since November 2015, the city booked a total of 425,000 hotel rooms, costing more than $72.9 million. As of last month, there were 5,881 homeless New Yorkers staying in hotels, with the average nightly bill climbing from $163 to $194 over the past year.
As he readies himself for reelection this coming year, Mayor de Blasio is looking to address the city’s surging homeless population. Just this week, the city reported a record 60,686 New Yorkers in shelters, nearly 40 percent of whom are children. This number was closer to 51,470 when de Blasio took office in 2014, and despite the $1.6 billion he’s spent on homeless services since this time (a 60 percent increase), the shelter system still can’t support the growing population. Therefore, as the Times explains, he’s looking to ramp up a controversial initiative that uses hotel rooms to fill in the gaps, earmarking more than 500 additional rooms for this portfolio.
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