NYC Council pushes de Blasio to do more for the homeless
With New York City’s homelessness population reaching an all-time high, the City Council has urged Mayor Bill de Blasio to increase funding to programs aimed at keeping families off the city’s streets.
More than 58,000 people, including 25,000 children, sleep in the city’s shelter system each night. De Blasio, who has made helping the less fortunate the center of his administration, has said that he will devote more resources to combating the problem but some advocates — and now the council — have suggested that he is not going far enough.
The council budget plan includes a call for the administration to designate 2,500 of the approximately 5,000 public housing units that become available each year for homeless families leaving city shelters. Advocates believe the program helps families transition from shelters back into the private housing market, but the de Blasio administration has earmarked only 750 apartments a year for the project, far less than several recent mayors.
Additionally, the council is calling on the administration to increase funding into the Court-Based Homelessness Prevention Project, which fights on behalf of families facing eviction in housing court.