Now or Never: The High Stakes of Federal Housing Funding Posted on October 21, 2021 by Sarah Murphy in Gotham Gazette When President Biden and Congress first announced the details of the Build Back Better Act, they sent a loud and clear signal to housing advocates and stakeholders that help was finally on the way. The $330 billion investment into the Department of Housing and ..Read More
More than 100K NYC students were homeless at some point last school year Posted on November 8, 2021 by Sarah Murphy in New York Daily News More than 100,000 city public school students were homeless at some point during the past school year, according to new state Education Department data. For the sixth year in a row, more than 101,000 city kids lived in unstable housing, including 28,000 who sp ..Read More
Op-Ed | Section 8, or one man’s quest for a golden ticket Posted on November 3, 2021 by Sarah Murphy in amNY I am an aspiring software engineer, and first met Bill de Blasio, who was then the Public Advocate, in 2010 at a General Welfare Committee hearing, at which I testified about the challenges of trying to pursue an education while homeless. At the time, he was m ..Read More
‘The Moratorium Saved Us. It Really Did.’ Posted on September 30, 2021 by Sarah Murphy in The New York Times Lakia Higbee thinks she got Covid-19 at the Amazon warehouse near Cleveland where she worked as a picker, filling orders for bleach and cat food and anything else customers wanted. ..Read More
NYC Eased Rules for Families Entering Homeless Shelters. Advocates Want the Changes Made Permanent Posted on October 4, 2021 by Sarah Murphy in CityLimits A coalition of nonprofit service providers is calling on New York City officials to formalize pandemic-related rule changes that have made life easier for families seeking space in municipal homeless shelters. ..Read More
Homeless NYC veterans moved out of hotels and into cubicles in Queens shelter Posted on September 29, 2021 by Sarah Murphy in New York Daily News This is how New York City thanks them for their service. Cramped cubicles, a leaky ceiling, and a community bathroom. That’s not what homeless veterans — who were promised sanitary, private accommodations to keep COVID at bay — were expecting when they m ..Read More
NYC Council, convicts seek background check ban in fight against ex-prisoner homelessness Posted on September 6, 2021 by Sarah Murphy in New York Daily News After a 1979 double murder conviction, there was little question where Roslyn Smith would lay her head for the foreseeable future. ..Read More
Pandemic Worsens Hard Road to Housing for Homeless New Yorkers with Health Needs Posted on September 1, 2021 by Sarah Murphy in City Limits Kenneth Jones learned he lost his room in an East New York hotel, rented out as a temporary homeless shelter, as soon as he returned from Brookdale Hospital last week. ..Read More
The Unhoused Don’t Want to “Go Back to Normal” Posted on July 19, 2021 by admin in Slate During the height of the pandemic, New York City put up some of its homeless population in the city’s empty hotels. Now, as the city comes back to life, the program is ending—but the city’s unhoused population doesn’t want to go “back to normal.̶ ..Read More
