New York City Council Member David G. Greenfield today introduced a bill to create a commission with full authority to determine where to put new homeless shelters throughout the city. Greenfield’s law would take the politics out of a notoriously contentious process and fulfill the city’s promise to uphold New Yorkers’ right to shelter. Because it fundamentally changes city land use rules, the bill would require passage in the Council, the mayor’s signature, and the voters’ approval in a referendum. “I’m asking New Yorkers to buy into the idea that homelessness is every New Yorker’s problem and support the mayor’s effort to build the necessary amount of homeless shelters. We need to take the politics out of siting homeless shelters so that our friends and neighbors who are homeless can have somewhere to live.”

Homelessness is the most serious crisis facing New Yorkers that is also primarily the responsibility of local government to solve. For a generation, advocates have successfully litigated the right to shelter in New York courts and reached settlements with mayors going back to the Edward I. Koch administration requiring that every homeless New Yorker have a place to live. With rising apartment rents in the past 20 years, the problem has become especially serious and the city is now housing more than 60,000 homeless people, the majority of whom are families. Yet siting individual shelters is taking far too long and the city resorts to renting apartments and even hotel rooms every night to meet its legal obligations.

“As a neighbor and council member, I know how politically difficult it is to accept a new homeless shelter in a community. In most communities, even elected officials who want to support new shelters cannot without guaranteeing themselves a serious political challenge,” said Councilman Greenfield. “But the city must site new shelters, efficiently and fairly. By having an outside, apolitical panel of experts make the siting decisions, New Yorkers and their elected representatives will be relieved of a politically impossible choice.”

Earlier this year, Mayor de Blasio committed to siting 90 new homeless shelters citywide over the next five years, primarily in neighborhoods where homeless people previously lived. Meanwhile, some council members have supported other legislation that advocates believe would make it even more difficult to add shelters to communities that already have them. This may have the unintended consequence of driving up outdoor homelessness to newly tragic levels, with families living on streets through hot summers and frigid winters.

Greenfield’s proposal, Intro 1691 of 2017, would realize the aims of the mayor’s plan and alleviate advocates’ fears. Just as Congress established the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) Commission, because closing bases individually was politically toxic, Greenfield’s proposed commission would be a neutral arbiter of homeless shelter locations. It would establish a unified, citywide plan based on need, determining what neighborhoods need new shelters. Once the commission approves the plan, site acquisition would be the responsibility of the Departments of Homeless and Social Services, which would acquire sites in the same way that the Department of Education does when it needs a new school. In short, this plan would guarantee that New York City is able to build all the homeless shelters it needs so that we no longer see homeless on our streets.

(YWN Desk – NYC)