Enhanced Effort to Rid New York City of Homelessness
- From: Rita <nitany_98@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 17 Jul 2006 23:14:22 GMT
The New York Times
The Bloomberg administrtion has already made signficant progress
in removing NYC's homeless from the streets. He unvelled a plan
that seemst to me doable, from my experience with the homeless
situation in the city. Good luck to him, and pehaps LA should take
a look.
July 17, 2006
Bloomberg Unveils Plan to Reduce Homelessness
By MARIA NEWMAN
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced today a new, more aggressive
approach to hard-core street homelessness, while putting in place a
more comprehensive approach to keep people from becoming homeless in
the first place, and to help the homeless get back on their feet
faster.
The mayor unveiled his plan at an address to the National Alliance to
End Chronic Homelessness Annual Conference in Washington.
In a prepared text of the speech, Mr. Bloomberg talked about his
administration?s progress in its goal to reduce homelessness by
two-thirds by 2009. He noted that there are almost 20 percent fewer
individuals and 30 percent fewer children in shelters since 2003. In a
recent census, city officials found 13 percent fewer individuals
living on the streets and in other public spaces this year compared to
last.
He said that his administration?s efforts to keep people who are
living on the margins from becoming homeless were clearly working,
according to surveys, but he said there were still too many people
that were not responding to any efforts of help. And those, he said,
included some people who were living under highways, next to train
trestles and on the streets that the mayor called ?degraded and
unhealthy environments.??
The mayor said that during the last six weeks, the city?s newly
appointed commissioner of the Department of Homelessness, Rob Hess,
and his team, had identified 73 such sites around the city where 350
or so homeless men and women, usually in groups no larger than four or
five, have set up makeshift shelters.
The mayor said that beginning in the next few weeks, the commissioner
and his team, working with community organizations and faith based
groups, will begin visiting these sites to ?humanely, respectfully,
and firmly?? talk to the homeless seeking shelter there to convince
them to ?enter supportive housing, enroll in treatment programs, or go
into shelters.??
?We?re going to let them know that their days on the streets must come
to an end,?? the mayor said. ?We?ll secure and clean up the places
where they?ve been bedding down, to make sure that they won?t be
occupied again.??
?Our motive is the simple belief that every human being deserves
better than to sleep on the streets,?? he said.
Mr. Bloomberg said that many people have long assumed that having some
amount of people living on the streets was a fact of urban American
life. He said that thinking has to be reversed.
?Our view is that any level of street homeless, no matter how reduced
in scope and visibility, is an inexcusable civic failure that consigns
our fellow human beings to lives tragically shortened by exposure to
the elements, to the ravages of disease, and to their own
self-destructive behavior,?? he said. ?Such chronic homelessness
remains a blight on our streets and a blot on our conscience.??
The mayor also said that his administration is continuing its
commitment to increasing the supply of affordable housing. He said
that in November, the city formed a $1 billion partnership with the
State of New York that will help finance the creation of 12,000 new
units of supportive housing in the city.
In addition to that, the mayor said that the city will take the $10
million it saved because the homeless population has declined from its
peak three years ago, and use it to build more housing for the
homeless and provide them with more services that will keep them from
sliding back, such as job training and day care for children.
Two weeks ago, the mayor said, the city shut down the Emergency
Assistance Unit, the intake center in the Bronx, which he called ?the
most visible emblem of the failures of the past and the bankruptcy of
the conventional wisdom about homelessness.??
The mayor recalled that when he took office, the homeless shelter
population swelled to more than 38,000 people, the largest in its
history. The city responded in the old-fashioned way, he said, by
trying to create more beds for the homeless, even renting space at the
Carlton Hotel, near Kennedy Airport, a move that was met with much
criticism.
So overwhelmed was the shelter system, he said, that people were
sleeping on the floor of the intake center. The mayor recalled touring
the center during his first summer as mayor.
?I?ll never forget the squalor and suffering I saw,?? he said. ?It was
heartbreaking. It was intolerable. And it was clear evidence that more
of the same simply was no answer.??
It will be replaced, he said, by a ?new, vastly more humane family
intake center?? that to him symbolizes the city?s new approach to
stemming the number of people who become homeless.
?In a few weeks, we?ll begin demolition of the old EAU and personally,
I can?t wait to see the wrecking ball go into action,?? he said.
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