Amid crisis, NYC mayor expands outreach to street homeless

Rapid-response teams will hit “every single block” in most of Manhattan, searching for homeless people and responding to public complaints within an hour, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday.

On Tuesday, De Blasio’s chief of homeless services, Gil Taylor, abruptly announced his resignation. “ACTIONNYC will provide $7.9 million for community navigation hubs that will help bring vital services and legal expertise to the more than 1.2 million people living in New York City who are either undocumented or eligible for citizenship”, he said.

“Tackling homelessness is an urgent priority”, de Blasio said in a statement announcing a comprehensive review of the department. Among the most dramatic evidence of the city’s increase in homelessness are the shelter numbers, with approximately 60,000 people calling a shelter home.

Whether or not it is too little, too late, among the plans being put forth by the city in the new homeless initiative are creating and implementing new rental assistance programs; creating a Shelter Repair Squad; expanding prevention services; expanding outreach; cleaning up 26 encampments and putting a system in place to monitor and clean up new encampments as they pop up; creating an Open Doors safe haven program and launching the City’s largest supportive housing program.

The program is slated to start in the spring of 2016 and will be administered by Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, in collaboration with the Human Resources Administration and the Research Foundation of the City University of NY.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo has said the state may even step in to combat the crisis.

“Now, I want to make something clear”. He previously worked for the Administration for Children’s Services.

The new program is part of a sudden full-court press by the de Blasio administration on the homeless.

Some highly visible examples of homelessness have become a regular sight in the city’s tabloids and on local TV newscasts, and a poll released last month showed that almost two-thirds of New Yorkers disapproved of how de Blasio has handled the issue.

In addition, Police Commissioner Bill Bratton said he wants to propose new legislation, 1010 WINS’ Juliet Papa reported. It aims to create 15,000 new housing units for the homeless over the next 15 years and offer social services such as mental and physical health care, and substance abuse programs.

“You can call us, you can approach our HOME-STAT teams on the street or in our subways, and we will deploy the trained professionals to handle the situation in real time“, he vowed.

“In the face of skyrocketing housing costs, wages remaining flat, and the plummeting number of rent-regulated apartments, thousands upon thousands of families simply couldn’t afford their rent”, Mr.de Blasio said.