(photo: STRIVE New York)

Every Mother’s Day, across America we celebrate the women who have raised us. Cards and flowers are a fine way to mark the day. But at a time when many women face a substantial wage gap with men, struggle economically, face increasing instances of violence and, due to new government restrictions, now face the potential loss of their health care, reproductive rights, and other protections, it’s time to look at how we can make motherhood better for all mothers.

The New York Women’s Foundation has focused on the lives of women in New York City across their lifespans for the last 30 years. From this, we know that the challenges are significant, particularly for women with children. Low-income mothers often have very limited access to the basic guidance, reassurance, and resources that all mothers need to be effective nurturers and first teachers. Low-income women of color are overwhelmingly both the primary wage-earners and the primary caregivers for their families.

But the service and retail jobs overwhelmingly held by women are typically characterized by minimal pay scales, erratic hours, and total lack of any flexibility. Childcare initiatives are few, leaving it unaffordable for many, while those who work as caregivers often earn salaries that put them barely over the poverty line and sometimes they must choose between their jobs as caregivers and caring for members of their own families.

We also know that such a lack of support is consequential for children. Our most recent report focused on the youngest of girls, age 0-8. This time of life, so highly formative, sets girls on their path to womanhood and is when adult role models can have the greatest impact. Their progress is inextricably intertwined with that of the women around them and is affected by how women are treated economically and socially.

For low-income girls, however, there is an appalling lack of consistent nurturance from well-supported and well-prepared adults. Promoting little girls’ healthy development depends absolutely upon making sure that their main caregivers can give them what they need.   Perhaps it should have been obvious, but we found that the best way to help girls is by helping their mothers.

Despite the historic lack of investment and resources, solutions do exist and are being pushed to the forefront. New York City has just introduced a new pilot program that will expand universal full-day pre-kindergarten to children who are three years old. “3K for All” is an ambitious idea from Mayor Bill de Blasio that could have major potential benefits, and not just for children. This program can reduce early education and childcare costs for the neediest and create new opportunities for caregivers to work. For the many women who work as early education providers, there is potential for better salaries and better access to training.

In the coming months, it behooves us to attend to the new challenges and demands facing communities as the federal funds supporting many social safety net programs and policies -- the very ones that poor women rely on the most -- are threatened with extinction.

Several things we must do:

--Support advocacy efforts promoting better workplace protections for working mothers and increased access to high-quality subsidized childcare.

--Seek out, convene, and generously fund organizations pioneering Head Start-caliber early education/parenting programs for all low-income families, regardless of whether mothers are in the workforce.

--Fund providers interested in launching/deepening services supporting mother-child healing and bonding for families living under acutely stressful circumstances.

--Strongly support nonprofit organizations working to build strong community-school-parent collaborations and supporting parents’ ability to be full educational partners.

--Seek out, convene, and fund nonprofits serving immigrant and other low-income communities, local schools, and childcare centers to create programs that support parents as first teachers and that train and place parents in volunteer positions within schools.

--Support youth development-school partnerships seeking to provide pre-K to second grade after-school services in low-income neighborhoods.

--Seek out and support community efforts improving basic overall neighborhood resources, including libraries, community gardens, farmers’ markets, and playgrounds.

Providing low-income mothers and all mother figures with a solid foundation is the most efficient way to make sure that their daughters will not face the same tough odds and the cycle of poverty that is devastating our communities. This critical support will ensure that there are more happy Mother’s Days for all women, for generations to come.

***
Ana Oliveira is president & CEO of The New York Women’s Foundation. On Twitter @NYWomensFdn.

East Midtown (image: City Planning)

As city officials contemplate new zoning regulations for East Midtown, it's important that they avoid “zoning for dollars,” whereby zoning variances are granted to build larger buildings in exchange for cash payments to the city’s coffers.

But that seems to be precisely what is happening with the transit improvements under the East Midtown proposal.

“Incentive zoning,” the term of art city planners use to describe ceding zoning variances in exchange for public amenities, was once aptly described as “sanctioned bribery, abiding a private sector that can ‘buy’ its way out of legal restrictions.”

At first impression, all incentive zoning might seem to be “sanctioned bribery.” But honest governments work to avoid even the appearance of such avarice. In New York, incentive zoning is codified in the city’s current zoning regulations so that buildings are permitted to be built larger than they would otherwise be, provided the developer creates public amenities like public plazas, atriums, or adjacent transit improvements that mollify the larger building that is imposed on the immediate vicinity. This has resulted in some remarkably inviting urban oases, like Greenacre Park in East Midtown, or the atrium at the former IBM building.

The proposed greater East Midtown rezoning, though, is considerably different.  That’s because it allows developers to make a “one-shot” payment for transit improvements that have only a tangential nexus to any specific Midtown development site.  

A history of up-zoning tied to transit public realm improvements shows that similar arrangements in the last 30 years were all directly tied to the immediate vicinity of the up-zoned property. In the past, developments could only be up-zoned with transit improvements if they were built atop or immediately adjoining a transit station, as they were for the Citicorp Building and Zeckendorf Towers.  

But in the East Midtown proposal, city planners offer a menu of transit improvements, unrelated to any particular development site, that developers can fund in order to build a larger building anywhere in the boundaries of East Midtown. There’s virtually no difference between building a transit amenity and making a cash sale of zoning rights, aside from the developer funding the MTA budget instead of the city’s. Developers could simply cut a check to the city coffers and eliminate the middleman.

Exacerbating the tenuous nexus of the up-zoned property and the transit improvement, though, is the very troubling aspect of the proposed zoning regulation that would allow developers to make a “one and done” payment for the transit improvement. Unlike developers who create above-ground amenities like public plazas and atriums, developers who build transit improvements do not have to pay any future costs to maintain, repair, or replace the improvement.

There’s a clear disconnect: on the one hand, city planners assert that transit improvements are necessary to accommodate additional hordes of transit passengers who will occupy new, larger, buildings that will last 50 years or more. But the developers, who created and who will benefit from the additional burden that the transit improvements are needed to ameliorate, pay only at the beginning. The costs to maintain, repair, and replace shorter-lived transit improvements, like escalators and elevators, that were necessitated by the developers’ bigger buildings, will fall upon New York taxpayers and straphangers.  

Payment now; corporate welfare later?

A better solution is to put the future costs of maintenance, repair, and replacement of the new transit improvements on the developers and to enforce collection of those costs for the life of the associated development. Enforcement could take the form of a lien against the up-zoned property or by linking the certificate of occupancy for the up-zoned property to the timely payment of maintenance, repair, and replacement costs of the associated transit improvement. (One official told me that developers do not pay for the maintenance, repair, or replacement of existing adjacent transit improvements because “they just don’t do it.” But in the past, the zoning regulation didn’t require them to and there was no means of enforcement even if it did.)

If transit improvements are required because East Midtown will become more densely occupied with office workers in larger developments, then all the costs of the transit improvements - including maintenance, repair, and replacement - should be coterminous with the life of the development that necessitated them, not just the first few years of the development’s existence. And those costs should be borne by the developer, not taxpayers and straphangers.

Any other arrangement is simply “zoning for dollars.”

***
J.G. Collins runs The Stuyvesant Square Consultancy, a management advisory and consulting firm, and occasionally comments on national and local policy matters. He has also contributed opinion to the NY Post, Forbes, The Hill, and other publications. On Twitter @StuySquare.

(image via ESHV)

In one of the most politically divisive times this country has ever seen, there is still one unifying, bipartisan issue that now – more than ever – needs your support: protecting animals from abuse and neglect.

Over 90% of Americans believe that animals deserve protection from abuse and exploitation. Yet today, in contrast to overwhelming public sentiment, basic protections for animals are under attack in this radically altered political landscape. Recent reports are chilling: Congress obliterated restrictions protecting wildlife from cruel and unethical hunting practices in national parks (including shooting wolves from planes and killing hibernating animals in their dens) and the USDA has stripped public access to Animal Welfare Act inspection reports which document cruelty in puppy mills, labs, and circuses.

It is time to push for meaningful change for animals starting with our own communities.

This week’s launch of Empire State Humane Voters (ESHV) is a long-awaited beacon for New York’s animal advocates. As a grassroots advocacy organization, we aim to build political power for animals in New York State — from Buffalo to Long Island. Our mission is to support city and state candidates who will champion protections for animals, lobby for stronger laws to stop animal cruelty, and hold elected officials accountable to humane voters.

What makes ESHV stand out from the pack? Unlike most nonprofits, our 501(c)(4)* status allows us to engage with candidates for elected office. While other animal groups are legally barred from even talking about elections, ESHV can ask candidates tough questions about humane issues and is uniquely positioned to endorse candidates that prioritize animal protection — and vigorously oppose those who don't by mobilizing animal activists and New York’s 3 million pet guardians into a humane voting bloc. ESHV is empowered with the political savvy and animal law expertise to effectuate change for animals in New York.

The battle to achieve legal protections for animals must be fought on the state and local legislative fronts. Unlike a charity with very limited lobbying capabilities, ESHV is empowered to focus on lobbying and political activities in Albany, New York City, and locally throughout the state. From strengthening New York State animal cruelty laws, ending some of the cruelest factory farming practices, protecting pets from being trapped outside in extreme weather, to ending the use of wild animals in circuses, we will ensure that the voices of all animals are heard.

State and local elected officials understand that animal protection is an important issue to constituents and that ESHV is mobilizing public concern for animals through the political process.

“Effective advocacy requires not only educational outreach, but also political organizing,” said City Council Member Helen Rosenthal. “The animal protection movement has done great work educating the public on the plight of animals. Now ESHV is charged with converting that positive public sentiment into law.”

We have a busy year ahead. With seven open City Council seats and active District Attorney races, now is the time to elect candidates that prioritize animal protection. Recruiting, training and building an active volunteer presence in every local district is a top priority. We will focus on teaching animal lovers about grassroots organizing and how to work on electoral campaigns, embedding them into the political fabric of their communities.

“Local government has the power to create a more humane environment for our animals,” said City Council Member Mark Levine, “and we need advocates engaged in the political process to make that a reality.”

Thursday, May 11 marks the official launch of Empire State Humane Voters at the Upper West Side studio of world renowned artist Peter Max. This sold out event brings together a constituency of dedicated animal protection advocates that is more than ready to channel its passion and enthusiasm into an effective political movement.

Join our pack of political animals.

***
Allie Feldman Taylor is the Founder and Executive Director of ESHV. On Twitter @nyvoteshumane. She has three rescued cats: Willa, Waffles, and Feline Dion.
*Status pending May 2017

City Council Member Gentile, the author (photo: William Alatriste/City Council)

Over two years ago I stood with Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and City Council Member Jumaane Williams on Flatbush Avenue by the ravaged remains of a building consumed by a fatal two-alarm fire. A 23 year-old security guard was killed and 15 others were injured.The cause? Illegal residential conversions.

Partitioning one and two family homes with shoddy construction, faulty wiring, and compromised gas work has become a common practice by predatory landlords. Maximizing profit at the expense of the safety of inhabitants has led to today’s proliferation of illegal home conversions. Just last summer in the Dyker Heights portion of my Brooklyn district, 18 adults and 13 children were vacated from an illegally subdivided home riddled with hazardous conditions such as insufficient egress and extreme overcrowding.

The dominoes of peril continue to fall from there. Our city’s first responders encounter immediate danger and confusion when entering these premises during emergencies. Heightening the already threatening situation, firefighters must navigate their way through a disjointed maze of subdivided units losing people in need of rescue along the way.  

Considering the deterioration to a neighborhood’s quality of life is important to qualify in assessing the effects of illegal conversions. There is direct correlation between 311 complaints of illegal conversions to overcrowded elementary schools as evidence by this cross-section map from Brooklyn Daily. In addition to severely overcrowded schools, public transportation systems are overburdened, sewage systems overflow, and other essential city services are drained thin.  

Very few neighborhoods across the five boroughs are spared from the inhumane predatory scheme of illegally subdividing homes. In 2016, there were 18,049 complaints of illegal residential conversions, an average of almost 50 per day. To put this in perspective, there have been more complaints of illegal conversions than of graffiti, smoking, and illegal fireworks combined!

My “Aggravated Illegal Conversions” bill, Intro. 1218-A, introduced jointly with Borough President Adams, Council Member Williams, and Council Member Grodenchik, will make this unethical practice an unlawful one. We will codify a year’s long rallying cry, “substandard housing is not affordable housing.” Setting this precedent is vitally important as our city rids itself of modern day tenement housing for stable affordable housing.

Focusing on the most egregious purveyors of illegal conversions, my bill establishes a $15,000 penalty strictly on the unscrupulous owner for each illegally partitioned dwelling unit that is three or more units above the Certificate of Occupancy. So if a two family home is found to have been illegally converted to five illegal residences, a $45,000 fine will be imposed on the person or persons responsible for victimizing tenants and endangering human life. To ensure rectification and payment of the violation, the fine constitutes a lien on the property. If unpaid for one year, the lien can be sold by the city.

Let me be clear, penalizing aggravated illegal conversions will not impede the efforts to legalize and standardize basement apartments, grandma’s basement, or granny flats. Instead Intro. 1218-A will root out those profiteering landlords who gut and partition entire buildings for maximum profit with no concern for health or safety.

The conditions inside these Aggravated Illegal Conversions may be life threatening and possibly immediately hazardous. If the circumstances force the Department of Buildings (DOB) to issue  a vacate order, residents can apply for transitional housing services that are facilitated by the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) and the American Red Cross. My office has been in discussion with the Mayor’s Office to establish a Memorandum of Understanding so these fines would be purposed towards assisting the residents’ relocation from a modern day tenement to safer living arrangements.   

Finally, in the Dyker Heights case, DOB was fortunately able to gain entry to the partitioned home and prevent a catastrophe. However, obtaining access is a tall hurdle to jump over and often an impediment for building inspectors. Intro. 1218-A will institutionalize the process of obtaining an access warrant to an alleged illegal subdivision. After two unsuccessful attempts to gain entry, DOB will request the Law Department apply for an access warrant. Once granted by a judge, inspectors will finally be equipped with the necessary tools to inspect a property and act accordingly based on the violations.    

All in all, this bill will serve as strong deterrents on the front end, and if needed, strong enforcement tools on the back end to combat aggravated illegal residential conversions. Almost half of my colleagues in the City Council have already attached their names to Intro. 1218-A and I look forward to guiding it into law.

***
Vincent Gentile is a New York City Council Member representing the neighborhoods of Bay Ridge, Dyker Heights,  Bensonhurst, and Bath Beach in the 43rd District in Brooklyn.

NYC Ferry (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

Already a holiday, May 1 will henceforth be remembered by hundreds of thousands of people for the launch NYC Ferry, a new, state-of-the-art waterway transit service. New Yorkers are grateful. “You kept your word!” overjoyed Queens residents exclaimed to Mayor de Blasio as he launched NYC Ferry with the inaugural run from the Rockaways to Wall Street.

But while we celebrate the ferry revolution of May 1, please do not forget October 30, December 30, August 14, and September 11: the anniversaries of Hurricane Sandy (2012), the transit strike (2005), the blackout (2003), and, of course, the tragic attacks of 2001. These dates remind us that we are surrounded by water, and more often than we care to think, the vulnerable, land-based transit systems we all depend on break down.

When that happens, our best bet can be a boat ride.

As we celebrate the birth of the city's first new transit system in decades, easing commuting burdens for Rockaway residents now and the residents of Soundview, Red Hook, Astoria, and many others to come, let’s acknowledge that NYC Ferry also delivers a huge bonus in transit resiliency. A new mode of transportation supplying relief to transit-starved neighborhoods is wonderful when times are good; a lifeline when times are bad. And times will be bad. Climate change is a reality; storms like Sandy pose an increasing threat sure to disrupt our rail and surface transit systems again. Our subways, bridges, and tunnels remain a target for those who intend to do us harm.

With a fare of $2.75 pegged to the cost of a subway ride, the new ferries are affordable. But the system is also a bargain for taxpayers. The projected operating subsidies pale in comparison to those that support express bus or commuter rail service. And the capital cost of creating the system is a rounding error compared to other transit–no tunnels to dig, roads to pave, nor tracks to lay. Beyond that, our government’s ability to finance and build major infrastructure is questionable. The fragile condition of our trans-Hudson rail tunnels and the equally fragile political consensus on how to fund Amtrak’s desperately needed improvements demonstrates that we are far from essential infrastructure solutions, despite talk in Washington.

Rediscovering the benefits of ferries is proof of the old song: everything old is new again. Before New York’s bridges and tunnels were built, the local waterways were thronged with ferries. As car ownership swelled, waterborne transit declined until only the Staten Island Ferry was left. Thirty years ago, NY Waterway launched routes connecting New Jersey shorefront communities to Manhattan, soon followed by New York Water Taxi and Seastreak, and the modern ferry renaissance began.

That renaissance is now a revolution, with NYC Ferry doubling the number of neighborhoods served by maritime transit, and other waterfront communities from Coney Island to Throgs Neck to Staten Island’s south shore demanding service.

Back to the calendar. There’s one more date to bear in mind: the day to be determined in 2018 when L train service shuts down for 18 months of repairs. Ferries will be part of a vital multi-modal solution. The city’s greatest resource, our waterways, are beautiful blue highways, blissfully devoid of gridlock, while offering express trips and boundless views. Whether you are a shore-dweller enjoying an easier commute or a landlubber on a weekend water excursion, we can all rest a little easier knowing that when the next transit crisis happens, we can turn to the blue highways and get on a boat.

***
Roland Lewis is president and CEO of Waterfront Alliance. On Twitter @OurWaterfront.

Mayor de Blasio, Parks Commissioner Silver & others (photo: Demetrius Freeman/Mayor's Office)

If you’ve ever wondered about the conversations that take place in the well-appointed inner sanctum of the City Council’s member lounge, you may be deeply disappointed to find the truth. Seldom are the chats like those you’d see on House of Cards; nor is the room even smoke-filled these days. We’ve banned that. The most common thing you’re likely to overhear is this: “Why does it take a decade to build a dang playground in my district?”

As the city grows, New York’s ability to effectively and efficiently deliver public capital projects is diminishing. This is no secret. Efforts to improve the system are not bearing fruit; all the while excuses for the delays, cost overruns, and errors become more commonplace.

New York City needs a drastic overhaul of the management of its capital program. The new approach should include the formation of a new construction authority, the ability to award design-build contracts, the appointment of a construction czar with a proven track record, the re-calibration of contracts to reflect a shorter timeline, and the reexamination of the existing and often duplicative approval processes through multiple agencies.

Speak to any City Council member. They can point to examples within their district that highlight the problem. In mine, on Staten Island, we’ve been waiting since 2011 for a glorified gazebo at Conference House Park, and since 2009 for a plaza and pathways at Crescent Beach. At Bloomingdale Park, our Borough President waited so long for a simple stretch of sidewalk delayed by the Parks Department’s own tree regulations that he re-allocated the money to the State Department of Transportation, which is performing the work in a quarter of the time at half the cost.

The Parks Department may be first up in the Council’s crosshairs as it was the subject of an April Parks Committee grilling on this topic, and there has already been the rumblings of legislation to form a Parks Capital Authority. Yet, the agency is far from alone.

The Department of Design and Construction, which was originally launched in 1996 to be the solution to these types of problems, is now part of it. I half joke and half cringe when reminding my constituents that both a DDC-managed little league field and the replacement of the Goethals Bridge were approved and funded around the same time, but there will be cars driving to Jersey before any fly balls are shagged in Tottenville.

Mayor de Blasio did not cause this current problem, but since it now falls in his lap, he should look to form an independent authority as one way to combat its growth. I have heard him publicly and privately praise the work done by the School Construction Authority and the efficiency at which it operates. Respectfully, Mr. Mayor, please take this as a not-so subtle hint, as I trust it may be something you’ve already pondered.

The difference in cost and pace between the SCA and mayoral agencies is enough to drive many City Council members to scrap funding for those like Parks in favor of the SCA. For example, I’ve received rough estimates for a new playground at over $1 million and three years on the Parks side of a jointly-operated schoolyard, while a similar project on the other side of the invisible line controlled by SCA is half the cost and time. As a result, we’re getting several new SCA playgrounds this year on Staten Island.

However, to blame the agencies without acknowledging that some of the delays stem from the design and procurement rules they must follow would be disingenuous. Appointing a Capital Construction “Czar” would allow an overarching review of these policies, primarily to see if they are causing unnecessary delays without meeting their own goals.

A good place to start would be where agencies like the Parks Department often place the blame themselves: right at the doorstep of the Public Design Commission. In the age of data-driven results, it is unclear what the PDC points to as a quantifiable success. To many in city government, it is simply a mysterious all-delaying entity that occupies secluded office space in the rafters of City Hall’s cupola, like a project-killing Quasimodo. All Council members have at least one anecdote about construction being delayed by the PDC. But much like the Hunchback, there’s a belief that it, too, may be a fictitious tale, and one which the Parks Department conveniently uses to account for any postponement.

A new authority led by a czar could reevaluate the usefulness of obstructionist procedural check-offs like the PDC and seek innovative ways to streamline the flow of capital projects. We need a top to bottom review of internal timetables we set, and the contract deadlines we impose. Much of this has already been attempted in earnest by Parks Commissioner Mitchell Silver. He should be commended, as there does seem to be a new focus by the agency on capital efficiency. Still, many of the factors are outside of his agency’s control and thus his reach extends only so far.

This new authority could also look at other municipalities for innovative ideas. Both Chicago and Los Angeles have significant capital programs, which go through similar procedural hurdles during design and contract procurement. However, both cities also split work between separate jurisdictions at the county and city level. Perhaps empowering borough presidents to shepherd and procure capital programs at our own county level could work in our favor.

Additionally, both cities have more liberal design-build laws. This is a policy that is already supported by Mayor de Blasio, who has tried to lobby the state to grant the city this power. For a Governor who is eager to criticize city government, it is unclear why Andrew Cuomo supports a potentially productive expansion of design-build elsewhere in the state, but not New York City.

These are just two ways New York could employ new ideas from elsewhere; but, if we do begin comparing our city to others, we may not be entirely happy with the blunt results. Skim the budget documents of Chicago, Cook County, Los Angeles, and Los Angeles County, and you’ll notice that all of their combined capital dollars are a fraction of what New York City plans to use, especially as our new ten-year capital plan now tops $95 billion.

The fact that New York spends a lot of money is nothing new. Our city budget is roughly the size of Poland’s budget, and the NYPD alone spends more than Mongolia. But when it comes to servicing our capital debt, New Yorkers have a right to raise new questions.

Debt service obligations are predicted to rise by 33% to $8.4 billion by 2021, and the percentage of tax revenue budgeted for it will trickle up to almost 15% in the same period.

Much of this growth is due to expanding interest payments on our ambitious capital program, which with a typical municipal general obligation bond we may be paying interest on for 20 years. It’s easy to accept this cost for a bridge when it’s constructed and the commuters are using it. It’s much harder for the public to digest the fact that we are paying interest on the bonds used to finance a playground or building while it’s delayed by our own morass.

The new statistic the administration should focus on and include in future capital plan slideshows is the amount of debt we are paying on projects that only exist as piles of paper aging on bureaucrats’ desks. Hopefully, by tracking that we can put even more pressure on City Hall to reform the way capital projects are worked through the system.

***
Joseph Borelli is a New York City Council member for the 51st District on Staten Island, a former state legislator, an adjunct professor at CUNY College of Staten Island, and a Lindsay Fellow at the CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance. On Twitter @JoeBorelliNYC. (The opinions expressed are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of CUNY ISLG or any other affiliated entity.)

(photo: @NYPDRecruit)

Upping the immigration deportation ante, a San Francisco federal judge found “irreparable harm” and ordered a national preliminary injunction blocking President Donald Trump’s threat of cutting off law enforcement funds to “sanctuary cities” that defiantly refused to comply with his deportation policy.

Under the proposed Trump policy, cities would lose funding if undocumented and even legal immigrants are not reported to federal authorities for deportation after being charged with low-level criminal offenses, such as disorderly conduct, possessing small amounts of marijuana, or a variety of non-violent, “broken windows” offenses.

Although federal law mandates deportation of noncitizens convicted of serious crimes, Trump’s executive order promulgates a simplistic view of “let’s kick them out” because all undocumented immigrants, non-citizen Muslims, or anyone overstaying a visa, “present a significant threat to national security and public safety and the presence of such individuals in the United States...are contrary to the national interest...[causing] immeasurable harm to the American people and to the very fabric of our Republic.”

This Trumpian misinterpretation of constitutional law is a giant step backward reshaping the country’s immigration policy by diminishing civil liberties, due process, and constitutional protections, which for more than 100 years were guaranteed by our federal courts even to those who are illegally in the U.S.

But threats have been elevated to the big lie.

Trump’s press secretary, Sean Spicer, in an over-the-top and uninformed response to the court’s decision to block defunding, shouted that it was an “egregious overreach by a single, unelected district judge.”

Spicer should read the Constitution -- federal judges are appointed pursuant to Article 3, by the President -- as should Trump.

He accused “sanctuary cities” such as New York of "putting the well-being of criminal aliens before the safety of our citizens" and says city officials who authored policies protecting people living in the country illegally "have the blood of dead Americans on their hands...a gift to the criminal gang and cartel element in our country" that puts "thousands of innocent lives at risk."

This is the big lie, but Spicer is not the only Trump perpetrator.

On April 21, Attorney General Jeff Sessions declared in an official DOJ memo that New York City “soft on crime” and it “continues to see gang murder after gang murder,” blaming the city for failing to turn over to federal immigration authorities for deportation a gang member who was released from Rikers Island after a conviction of a non-serious misdemeanor.

The truth is New York City is a national success story of driving crime down over the past 20-plus years – especially violent crime. The president, a New Yorker, knows this. However, accepting this fact means superseding political grandstanding, and acknowledging that New York’s fight against violent and especially gang crimes have occurred with great success and has continued during Trump’s first 100 days.

Since Trump’s inauguration, the NYPD and the city’s District Attorneys have prosecuted gangs and others violent criminals, refuting Session’s big “soft on crime” lie. (Sessions did walk back some of his criticisms after major blowback from NYPD Commissioner Jimmy O’Neill and others.)

March 9, the Queens D.A. and NYPD arrested six members of the ABK street gang for plotting to kill two rival gang members and 11 individuals affiliated with the ABK for selling drugs in Queens neighborhoods.

March 15, the Bronx D.A., NYPD, and federal law enforcement officials charged 49 members of two Bronx drug distribution organizations with narcotics, robbery, firearms offenses and murder.

March 22, the Manhattan D.A. and NYPD charged six men, ages 19-22, as part of a firearm ring for trafficking 105 guns from South Carolina into New York City.

March 28, the Staten Island D.A. and NYPD announced the “takedown” of a heroin distribution ring that operated on the South Shore of Staten Island.

April 18, the Brooklyn D.A. announced four gang members were sentenced to 25 years to life for robbery and murder.

Although the federal courts sent a clear message to Trump that airport detentions, religious profiling, and now defunding threats are unconstitutional, this president does not accept that our nation’s history of protecting individual freedoms no matter one’s race or religion – or how one entered the United States – that our country was not founded on threats, unlawful, odious executive orders, or the big lie.

***
Arnold N. Kriss is a Manhattan attorney who formerly served as a Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney and Deputy Commissioner of Trials in the New York Police Department.

NYPD's Ben Tucker with a body camera (photo: @NYPDnews)

After many months of waiting, the New York City Police Department recently announced its proposed rules for the use of body worn cameras. The NYPD developed the policy in response to a mandate by the federal court in the  Floyd v. City of New York “stop and frisk” case. To their credit, the NYPD, with the help of the Policing Project at NYU Law School, undertook an extensive public comment process to solicit input from experts, interest groups, members of the public, and police officers. Twenty thousand members of the public and 5,000 police officers sent in survey responses.

Unfortunately, many of the suggestions that emerged during that process were not included in the final NYPD policy, leading the lawyers in the Floyd case to pledge that they would move to block approval of the new rules by the court.

The main objections are that officers would have access to footage before making statements about what happened in an incident, the lack of privacy protections for those captured on video, and too much officer discretion as to when the cameras should be turned on. In addition, unions representing police sergeants, detectives, and lieutenants have threatened to fight the new rules in court because they were not consulted about their new roles in overseeing the process. Only patrol officers will wear the cameras.

Perhaps it’s time then to hit the reset button on our approach to this new technology. Body cameras produce a profound tension between our desire to enhance officer accountability and our concerns about the growing surveillance powers of the police.

The killings by police of Michael Brown and Eric Garner ushered in a wave of popular support for body worn cameras as a singular tool for improving police accountability. The hope is that the existence of video evidence will act as a deterrent to police misconduct and allow for easier prosecution of officers who abuse their authority. Expanded use of such cameras was a central recommendation of President Obama’s Task Force on 21st Century Policing and has been embraced by police accountability activists and civil rights organizations across the U.S.

Despite this strong support, there remain significant privacy concerns. In New York City alone there will soon be over 20,000 officers on patrol with cameras. These cameras will likely record millions of mundane interactions with the public as well as capture the activities of people merely going about their daily lives. Some of these people may be engaged in lawful activities that they would prefer their neighbors, employers, or the government were not aware of, such as visiting an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, attending a political event, or entering an adult book store.

In addition, extensive use of the cameras could contribute to an expansion of police surveillance capacity. By geocoding camera data, new databases could be established that allow police to review all footage from a designated area before or after a crime, potentially subjecting thousands of people to unwarranted intrusions into their lives merely because of where they live or work. Law professor Elizabeth Joh refers to this as an increase in “surveillance discretion” in which police have dramatically more potential reasons for looking into someone’s personal life based on suspicion rather than concrete evidence of wrongdoing.

Such “big data” endeavors turn innocent behavior into suspicious behavior because of correlations on a grand scale that may have absolutely no relevance to a specific individual now brought under investigation. For example, if there is a belief or evidence that drug dealers are more likely to frequent a particular park or corner and I happen to also regularly walk that way while going to work, then I can easily end up under suspicion.

Police would also be in a position to populate gang databases and political dossiers using camera footage in high crime areas or at political demonstrations. This effort could be aided by emerging facial recognition software. There is a long history of police misusing such databases. Gang databases are notoriously easy to end up in and near impossible to get out of. They have been used to target people for gang injunctions resulting in enhanced penalties. There have even been cases where they have been shared with current or prospective employers. There is a long history of local police maintaining political intelligence files with the names and images of individuals engaged in totally lawful political activity. These databases have also been shared with employers and resulted in politically motivated harassment.  

Camera footage of people walking down a particular street or lawfully interacting with friends or neighbors could also be used to populate databases of people considered at high risk for committing violence. Several major cities including Chicago and New York use these databases to produce “heat lists,” based on complex algorithms of potential risk factors such as prior arrests or involvement with child welfare systems. Being on such a list can trigger intensive surveillance or enhanced prosecutions.

Raw footage and databases that rely on the footage could also be shared with other law enforcement agencies such as Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the Drug Enforcement Agency, or the FBI. These agencies then might feed this data into their own algorithms triggering yet more surveillance, suspicion, and investigations based entirely on probabilities rather than individualized probable cause or reasonable suspicion.  

So what is to be done?

One way to reduce concerns about this enhanced police surveillance would be to take control of the footage away from police and hand it over to an independent civilian agency. From the moment officers download the data it would be under the control of such an agency and could not be reviewed, released, or altered by the police without probable cause.

If police feel there is something relevant to a legitimate investigation they can request a warrant to access it. Since the officer was present at filming, meeting the standard of probable cause should be easy in cases where criminal behavior is alleged. Similarly, police misconduct oversight bodies would need to have a sworn complaint in hand before they could review footage.

Following the guidance of the ACLU and the Constitution Project, there should also be tight restrictions on public access to the video. Footage should only be made available to the public with the consent of those seen in the video (or family members of someone deceased) or if there are no privacy issues at stake, which might be accomplished with extensive redaction. Individuals who are the subject of police action captured by body cameras should have the right to review it.

These tight privacy controls would help reassure the public that their non-criminal interactions with police will not be reviewed by police or the public. This is especially important for people who are victims of or witnesses to a crime or who may want to informally or anonymously provide police with information (these groups are not supposed to be recorded by the NYPD under the new rules).

Such a policy would also help overcome the legitimate concern of police officers that cameras should not be used to monitor them for administrative violations or be used for vendettas by supervisors. By taking control of the footage away from police, the chances of such personally or politically motivated reviews would be greatly diminished.

Placing the footage under the control of an independent agency would also ensure that defense attorneys and prosecutors have equal access to it. Currently, district attorneys are at an advantage as they receive evidence directly from the police and make their own determinations about whether something is relevant to the case and if so, when to give it to defense counsel. According to representatives of the public defender services here in New York, such evidence often only materializes the day before or the day of a trial, forcing many to take plea deals or be unprepared for trial.  

We must keep in mind that the primary basis for public support of body cameras is the need for increased police accountability. In the words of Michael Sisitzky of the New York Civil Liberties Union, “Public support for body cameras will not last if the technology becomes just another gadget to help police and prosecutors, instead of a tool for meaningful reform of police practices.”

***
Alex S. Vitale is Associate Professor of Sociology and Coordinator of the Policing and Social Justice Project at Brooklyn College. He is the author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics and the forthcoming The End of Policing.

Mayor de Blasio & Commissioner Banks (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

This is part one of a three-part series.

Part One: The Challenge of Homeless Policy
During the course of his overwhelmingly successful campaign for mayor, Bill de Blasio made poverty and income inequality his main issues. As the liberal journalist and fervent de Blasio supporter Eric Alterman put the matter, “De Blasio made economic inequality the central issue in his campaign and attempted to tie nearly every issue he addressed to that problem.” Homelessness was obviously such an issue, and so when de Blasio took office in January 2014, expectations were high that he would address that problem effectively.

The Way Things Are Now
Unfortunately, as of April 2017, under the mayor, the homelessness problem had, by some important measures, gotten worse. The month de Blasio assumed office there were 53,615 people in the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelter system. That number has hovered around 60,000 people since December 2014. The annual enumeration of street dwellers—the HOPE count—is down from 3,537 people in 2014 to about 2,794 in 2016, which is a positive trend but not a dramatic improvement. And the DHS budget remains high: $1.29 billion for the current 2017 fiscal year.

De Blasio himself recently admitted that the city has not made nearly enough progress, while announcing another new homelessness-fighting plan and creating new, unambitious goals for reducing the homeless population. Voters and other observers are not impressed. Surprisingly, given the emphasis de Blasio put on poverty and homelessness in his campaign, a March 2017 Quinnipiac University poll found that voters rated this the weakest aspect of the mayor’s performance, with 55 percent disapproving. And The New York Times editorial board, which supported de Blasio’s mayoral run, recently concluded, “The rise in homelessness is arguably the mayor's biggest failure in that goal to close the gap between the haves and the have-nots.”

How did the mayor end up in this position, and what is he doing about it?

How We Got Here
To put de Blasio’s situation in context, we have to go back to 2004, when Mayor Bloomberg developed a five-year plan to “make the condition of chronic homelessness effectively extinct in New York.” Preventing homelessness would be emphasized through a “Home Base” program that would intervene with at-risk families to keep them housed. Analysis would show that Home Base did lower homelessness and even paid for itself.

More supportive housing—that is, apartments with services for the mentally ill and other disabled street dwellers—was to be developed. This goal was accomplished in 2005, when the city and state signed the third in a series of “New York/New York” agreements, which produced 9,000 such units. Under the “Housing First” philosophy, street dwellers would be moved into supportive housing as quickly as possible, an approach that both reduced street homelessness and encouraged enrollment in rehabilitative services. Shelter use was to be cut by rehousing long-term shelter stayers. And, very importantly, shelter clients were to be moved out through rent subsidies, which, a key document noted, “must continue to be available in shelter to re-house chronically homeless individuals and families.”

Bloomberg pledged to reduce the shelter census—36,399 people in June of 2004—by two-thirds in five years, to about 12,000 persons by 2009.

On October 19, 2004, DHS abandoned its long-term policy of giving shelter residents priority for entering public housing and for federal Section 8 rent vouchers, which were forms of housing subsidies. Commissioner of DHS Linda Gibbs believed that policy attracted poor families into the shelters to receive the subsidies and so drove up the census. But moving one family out of the system with a subsidy meant the census would go up only if subsidies also drew in more than one new family. But economists found that to draw one family into the system requires placing seven families into subsidized housing. Perverse incentives are real but too weak to drive up the shelter census. Nonetheless, shelter families lost preferential access to public housing and Section 8 vouchers; instead, they were eligible for a temporary five-year rent subsidy, Housing Stability Plus. This system was then replaced in 2007 by Advantage, a two-year-maximum rent-subsidy program funded jointly by the state and the city.

By Bloomberg’s deadline of June 2009, the shelter census had not dropped appreciably. Then, as a result of a falling out between the city and the state over funding amid the unraveling financial crisis, Advantage ended. At that point no subsidies of any kind were offered to move families out of the shelter system. The number of people in the DHS shelter system began going up, and in January 2014 de Blasio inherited a record high shelter census.

De Blasio’s challenge was to create a new rent subsidy, implement it effectively, do nothing to encourage shelter entries, and hope for a decline in the census. How well did he meet that challenge?

De Blasio’s First Steps
First, the new administration made striking changes in personnel as well as policy. Steven Banks, the Legal Aid lawyer who since 1983 had litigated against the city for the right to shelter for homeless families, became commissioner of HRA, which runs public-benefit programs including rent subsidies. Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, a former Catholic nun who served in the city’s social service bureaucracy under Koch, Giuliani, and Bloomberg, became deputy mayor for Health and Human Services. And Gilbert Taylor, formerly executive deputy commissioner for the Administration for Children’s Services, was appointed commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services.

The new administration’s biggest initiative in homeless policy is the Living in Communities (LINC) programs, which are a batch of rental-subsidy programs designed to help various sorts of shelter clients move out of the system. But the new programs had implementation problems. Getting LINC started required cooperation from New York State and thus between de Blasio and Governor Cuomo. The necessary small adjustments were not accomplished in a timely manner. LINC did not get fully up to speed until December 2014, and the nonpartisan Independent Budget Office concluded that “the homeless shelter population has remained stubbornly high this year. This is largely due to a slower than anticipated start to the LINC rental assistance programs.”

The ongoing Cuomo-de Blasio turbulence also delayed the development of more supportive housing. Supportive housing provided through the New York/New York agreements is one of the great successes in homeless policy and has been demonstrated to keep the disabled off the streets and reduce the cost of their care. The last of these agreements was signed in November 2005, and by 2014 most of its units were occupied. Thus, many homeless people remained on the streets, where they attracted the attention of unsympathetic media and the general public and fostered the perception of a homeless crisis. In fact, despite the declining street homeless population documented by the HOPE count, the March 2017 Quinnipiac poll reported that 54 percent of city voters believed that they were seeing more homeless people on the streets and in parks and subways than they did a few years ago.

The de Blasio team made a big misstep when in 2015 it decided to halt development of new shelters for eight months due to community opposition. When the delayed LINC program did not reduce the shelter census, the city was forced to rely on various unsatisfactory stopgaps to put up homeless clients.

Cluster Sites
One such stopgap is the cluster site program, which was initiated by the Bloomberg administration and harshly criticized by de Blasio before he became mayor. Under this program, DHS rents out a “cluster” of private apartments to shelter homeless families. Private landlords own the apartments while nonprofit providers under contract with DHS provide the families with services, and the buildings have a mix of homeless families and private rent-paying tenants.

The cluster site program is a policy disaster. It is premised on putting shelter families in apartments that would otherwise have gone to still-independent families, thus making an already tight low-income housing market even worse. And cluster site apartments are of poor quality. In March 2015, the Department of Investigation (DOI), which is a non-mayoral agency, released a scathing, 180-page report on family shelters that focused mostly on cluster site apartments.

The DOI report found DHS’ cluster sites to be “poorly monitored” and said that they “provide the least adequate social services to families.” Among the issues were rodent infestations, fire safety code violations, defective window guards, a lack of furniture, and units in need of major repair. Landlords can charge three times the market rent for such low-quality apartments.

Moreover, as the buildings are privately owned, DHS is unable to monitor who is using the apartment, security guards cannot screen guests, and there are many unauthorized visitors. Assaults, prostitution, gang activity, and other crimes are frequent. DHS is even renting from landlords who are on the Public Advocate’s list of the city’s 100 worst landlords. Well before he became mayor, de Blasio was aware of these problems and pledged to end the use of cluster sites. But his moratorium on building new shelters and continuing high demand left him unable to do so. Given the vastness of the cluster site program—3,000 families—improvement will take years.

Commercial Hotels
De Blasio inherited the cluster site program from Bloomberg, but is himself responsible for reviving the old and unfortunate practice of placing shelter system clients in commercial hotels. In the late 1980s, the common practice was to place homeless families in private, for-profit “welfare hotels” where conditions were infamously bad. Eventually the federal government refused to fund these hotels, and the practice was curbed.

But because of increased demand, de Blasio has had to return to using commercial hotels. Unlike with traditional, “Tier II” shelters, use of commercial hotels does not require community board notification, for the city is able to claim that it is not actually opening up a “facility,” but merely renting out hotel rooms. DHS has to make sure its clients maintain a low profile in these hotels to avoid protests from other guests.

Further, providing social services in a private facility is difficult. DHS clients in commercial hotels, although they may like the relative independence hotels offer compared to Tier IIs, are thus less likely to receive the necessary assistance to obtain permanent housing. Also, security at the hotels is poor. Visitors are not monitored and only recently have security guards been stationed at hotels. In February of 2016, there was a triple homicide at the Staten Island Ramada Inn. A man murdered his girlfriend and her two children, one of whom was his own. Had this hotel had the same security and monitoring that is provided in Tier II shelters, it is unlikely that this tragedy would have occurred.

This is part one of a three-part series.
Read Part Two: Setbacks and Responses
Skip to Part Three: Can de Blasio Turn the Tide on Homelessness

***
by Peter Nasaw and Thomas J. Main. Nasaw, MPA, LMSW, is an expert on homeless policy who has worked in the social services for several years. Main is a professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York and author of Homelessness in New York City: Policymaking from Koch to de Blasio.

Mayor de Blasio & aides visit a shelter (photo: Michael Appleton/Mayor's Office)

This is part two of a three-part series, De Blasio and Homelessness: A New Progressive Mayor Wrestles with an Old Social Problem, by Peter Nasaw and Thomas J. Main. [Jump to Part One: The Challenge of Homeless Policy]

Part Two: Setbacks and Responses
The new administration was set back when Barrios-Paoli, a seasoned administrator and voice of moderation, left just 20 months after she had joined with much fanfare. Moreover, Gilbert Taylor did not work out as DHS commissioner and stepped down on December 15, 2015. Thus, for about the first two years of his administration, while he was being battered in the press and in public opinion over the issue of homelessness , de Blasio tolerated the presence of an ineffective point person on this crucial issue. With Taylor’s departure, HRA Commissioner Banks took temporary charge of DHS.

Thus, by mid-December 2015, city homelessness policy was perhaps not in crisis but certainly less than optimal.

Responsibility was widespread. Bloomberg failed to follow up on promising beginnings, eliminated housing subsidies, and drove up the shelter census. Candidate de Blasio underestimated how difficult a reversal would be. The conflict between de Blasio and Cuomo delayed the renewal of rent subsidies and kept the shelter census higher than it would have been. The feud also put off a fourth New York/New York agreement, leaving the city with few supportive housing units for unsheltered mentally ill people, who remained on the streets to be seen by all. The mayor responded slowly to the resulting media flap. Putting off building or opening new shelters forced the city to rely on cluster sites and commercial hotels. Turmoil and turnover in city leadership hurt. If de Blasio was to prove that a progressive could govern New York City, he would have to pick up his game, and he tried to do so.

Street Homelessness and Supportive Housing
To deal with the perception that street homelessness was out of control, the administration introduced the Home-Stat program. Sixty workers from the Mayor’s Office of Operations now patrol Manhattan streets and call in sightings of homeless people to the city’s nonemergency phone number, 311. Funding to private outreach nonprofits will be increased so that they can expand their street outreach teams from 175 to 312 workers and thus be able to respond to 311 calls within one hour. The Police Department will redeploy 40 officers to its Homeless Outreach Unit. Two extra mini-counts of homeless people living on the street will be done each year for a total of four yearly counts. The idea is to identify street homeless individuals quickly and bring them to shelter rapidly. It may also be that the administration finally realized that more frequent and more accurate enumerations of street homelessness will be likely to rebut the belief that this population has exploded.

Further, it seems that a way around the Cuomo-de Blasio impasse, as it concerns supportive housing, may have developed. There is still no New York/New York IV agreement, but there is what might be called a New York/New York IV disagreement. In his State of the State speech of January 13, 2016, Governor Cuomo announced plans for the state to develop 20,000 supportive housing units over 15 years. Earlier, de Blasio had announced the city was moving forward without the state and pledged that the city would develop 15,000 supportive units over the same period.

In other words, since the mayor and governor cannot get along well enough to sign a formal agreement, each will undertake part of the job on his own. Supporters of a New York/New York IV had been calling for 30,000 more units and are pleased that in sum the city and state plan to create 35,000 units. The New York/New York agreements were strikingly successful ventures in intergovernmental cooperation, so it is a pity that that process has apparently been abandoned for largely personal reasons. No one knows yet whether the lack of a formal agreement will prove to be a problem.

HRA/DHS Integration
A key part of the effort to get on top of the homelessness issue was the partial re-merger of DHS with HRA. Homeless services were spun off from HRA in 1994. In April of 2016, a 90-day review authored by City Hall with the help of outside management consultants PriceWaterhouseCooper argued that having two different agencies provide services to largely overlapping populations was inefficient. The mayor’s solution was to have both HRA, which runs subsidies, and DHS, which runs the shelters, report to Banks, who was now dubbed commissioner of social services. The review projected $38 million in savings from the combined management structure.

But this partial merger may not be a good idea. As an independent agency, DHS was able to communicate and bargain with other city entities. Most homeless services are performed not directly by DHS, but by contracted providers, who are generally not enthusiastic about the new arrangement. Most providers prefer to deal with a small agency focused on their specific issue rather than a very large but possibly more powerful super-agency. Bureaucratic coordination via consolidation is rarely achieved in America’s fragmented administrative system. Agency effectiveness is more likely to be achieved by smaller, mission-driven organizations. But if the new, better-integrated structure is to work, the mayor needs to get serious about it: so far, no new head of DHS has been appointed.

Housing Subsidies and Their Limitations
Another problem for the de Blasio administration is that the LINC subsidies did not have as much of an effect as was hoped, at least through 2015. According to a report from the Independent Budget Office, as of December 2015, the program was unlikely to meet its targeted goals. Although new data are yet to be made available, there remain concerns about whether enough landlords will accept city-funded housing vouchers.

Analysts believe that since the end of Advantage, housing prices have risen, and so LINC vouchers are too paltry (between about $1,200 and $1,550 depending on household size). Also, many of the very apartments that would be assigned to LINC voucher-holders are still being used as cluster site units.

De Blasio’s other housing voucher program is CITYFEPS. FEPS stands for Family Eviction Prevention Services, and is designed for families that have experienced eviction. The program guarantees four months of rent upfront to incentivize landlords to rent to homeless families. The CITYFEPS vouchers provide the same support as LINC vouchers.

But the FEPS program has serious problems. Apartments that participate in housing subsidy programs—including Section 8, NYCHA, and LINC—are inspected by the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) in order to meet federal standards for habitation. However, CITYFEPS units are not inspected by HPD. According to an HRA spokesperson, “For CITYFEPS, not-for-profit service providers generally do an assessment of the units, including a walk-through of the units.” But providers are judged by DHS partly by the number of families they place in independent apartments. Underperforming providers are at risk of losing their contract. So providers have an interest in approving apartments that can undermine their objectivity.

The HPD inspection process is time tested; their inspectors are trained and regulated, and there are rules in place to prevent conflicts of interest. CITYFEPS apartments need to be inspected by HPD in order to protect vulnerable families from being exploited by unscrupulous landlords. Allowing potentially self-interested shelter providers to inspect FEPS units is incautious and likely to provoke criticism when it comes to light.

The Eligibility Process
A major factor that has driven demand, but has rarely been spoken about in public, is the eligibility process for families that apply to shelters. The city must direct scarce housing resources to those who are most in need, and the eligibility process is designed to keep out all but the most needy families.

The city shelter system is regulated by the state welfare department, the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA). In December of 2015, OTDA issued a new regulation that drastically loosened eligibility rules. Very often, families applying for shelter had previously been living in an apartment leased to a family member or friend. Essentially, the new administrative directive made it much easier for the primary tenant of an apartment to refuse to let a family applying for shelter return to the apartment where it had been staying.

Often, prior housing history, public assistance records, and close family ties would show that despite the primary tenant’s refusal, the applicant was in fact lawfully permitted to reside at the address of origin. With the new rules, any applicant who told eligibility specialists that they were not allowed to return to their former apartment would more likely be found eligible for shelter. In effect, the primary tenant now had a greater power to evict family members than did the city marshal.

According to the Coalition for the Homeless, “the 2015 change in policy resulted in a decrease of the percentage of families denied shelter.” No doubt many needy families now received shelter, but the census was also driven up. Whether this was on balance a good deal may be doubted. In any case, almost one year later, in December 2016, a new OTDA regulation allowed the city to re-tighten eligibility standards.

In effect, eligibility standards were loosened, more families were found eligible, the shelter census went up, and then the standards were tightened again. Fiddling with the eligibility standards at the very time when the new rent-subsidy programs were supposed to drive the shelter census down was probably not a good idea.

This is part two of a three-part series.
Read Part Three: Can de Blasio Turn the Tide on Homelessness?
Jump to Part One: The Challenge of Homeless Policy

***
by Peter Nasaw and Thomas J. Main. Nasaw, MPA, LMSW, is an expert on homeless policy who has worked in the social services for several years. Main is a professor at the School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College, City University of New York and author of Homelessness in New York City: Policymaking from Koch to de Blasio.