After undergoing an influx of more than 13,000 migrants, NYC Mayor Eric Adams, is scrambling to find alternative housing for the city’s homeless population left on the streets from the overfilled shelter system being unable to help them.
Adams has awarded $34 million in contracts to provide stabilization beds or temporary safe havens. The Department of Homeless Services has awarded two contracts totaling $34 million to the Bronx Family Network
Bronx Family Network provides services including full showers and kitchens, access to clothing, and appropriate referrals to substance abuse treatment and rehabilitation centers, medical and health services.
It has been estimated that there are 3,182 homeless adults currently living in the streets, subways, or in other public places of NYC. The number is continuously rising every day.
Earlier this year, Adams launched a program to remove homeless individuals from encampments and from the subway system and dispatched outreach teams to persuade them to access shelter and services.
However, many homeless individuals refuse to go to the large congregate shelters because they consider them unsafe.
“For those individuals living outdoors for an extended period who agree to accept services, stabilization beds provide a less restrictive alternative to traditional shelter. In this way, stabilization beds provide shelter to the unsheltered and help facilitate ongoing coordinated services with outreach teams to help individuals who were previously residing in the subway and other public spaces get back on their feet,” DHS said in the announcement of the contracts.
Alternatives for the homeless come at just the right time as cold weather approaches. With the city already struggling to house more than 7,000 of the migrants that have crammed an already overburdened shelter system, new alternatives would be a god send at this time.
The city has already issued emergency contracts with hotels to provide 6,000 rooms to house migrants to provide relief for a shelter system that Adams said is at a breaking point.
There are about 55,000 individuals in the shelter system and the city is under a federal court order to provide shelter to anyone who seeks it and can be sued for denials or delays.
One homeless advocate said, “The city is way behind the curve in providing shelter and permanent housing to street homeless individuals.”
“This morning we were at sweeps in two different boroughs to support homeless New Yorkers as the City conducted yet another blitz to remove people from sight. Last year the City placed only 16 people eligible from the street into supportive housing,” said Helen Strom, a supervisor of benefits and homelessness advocacy at the Safety Net Project. “Stabilization beds that are single rooms are urgently needed, but the mayor also needs to get people into permanent housing and stop these vicious sweeps immediately.”
An administration official said the new contracts to combat street homelessness is part of a larger $171 million program Mayor Adams announced in April.
“As part of the mayor’s focus on addressing unsheltered homelessness, the Adams administration allocated an additional $171 million a year to aggressively expand and enhance outreach efforts and specialized resources, including Safe Havens, stabilization beds, and Drop-in Centers (DICs),” a spokesman for the city Department of Social Services said.
“This is the largest investment made by any city administration in street outreach and targeted low-barrier programs to support some of our most vulnerable New Yorkers experiencing homelessness on the streets and subways.”
The stabilization program provides overnight single room beds for chronic street homeless individuals while outreach teams work with them to find a more permanent housing option.
Adams said, “The huge surge of migrants has put an additional strain on our housing and our shelters. The administration has to become extremely creative as we place people into temporary housing arrangements so we could get them into permanent housing.”
“But we do need the federal government and we need the state to assist in that, and we have been in conversations with both,” Adams said while addressing a Crain’s power breakfast gathering.
bring in the cruise ship to housed people
What a bafoon, this coward, who was run up the police ladder because of his skin color is an idiot and a fool, perfect for the New York scum that voted for him, another great city on the decline, I guess Escape from New York wasn’t a fantasy.
I just love how these idiots can come up with Millions of dollars when people are suffering and homeless, These ILLEGALS aren’t homeless they are ILLEGAL and should have been deported