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March/April 2012
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Jarrett Murphy
City Limits
Helen Zelon
Johann Hamilton
Neil deMause
City Limits Criminal Justice Reporting Honored
According to city data, 30 percent of New York City's homeless shelter entrants have been incarcerated. According to a Justice Department survey, in 2008 and 2009 Bayview Correctional Facility in Manhattan had the highest inmate-reported rate of staff sexual abuse of any prison or jail in the country that participated in the research.
Related topic categories: Homelessness, Workforce and Labor, Justice, Housing Policy, Sexual Abuse of Female Inmates, Corrections
Feds Fall Down on Homeless Women Vets
The Government Accountability Office said women veterans failed to receive housing referrals, usually could not access a shelter that served both women and children, worried about the safety of such shelters and sometimes weren't even aware of the services that do exist.
What's more, the GAO found, VA's existing data on women veterans was spotty, making it hard to "plan services effectively, allocate grants to providers, and track progress toward its overall goal of ending veteran homelessness by 2015.
Related topic categories: Homelessness, Housing and Development
Plan Calls for Longer Shelter Stays
A new report on homelessness in New York calls for some shelter residents to be housed for a year to 18 months, so they can get the time and resources needed to become self-sufficient.
The plan, by the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness, says the current shelter system works fairly well for the roughly 50 percent of homeless families who need help only because of a temporary financial emergency.
But the rest of the homeless population, the report says, needs more help. Some 35 percent require a longer housing stay.
Other Read More»
Related topic categories: Homelessness, Housing and Development, Housing Policy
Read It: Court Backs City Cut of Homeless Program
In a blow to as many as 16,000 formerly homeless people, a state judge ruled Tuesday that the Bloomberg administration has the legal right to end a rent subsidy program after state and federal budget cuts left the city as its lone funder.
The decision on the Work Advantage Program was "bad news, but the legal fight is still not over," says Coalition for the Homeless senior policy analyst Patrick Markee.
The Work Advantage Program helped formerly homeless people rent apartments by providing up to two years of subsidies. In this year's state budget, Albany withdrew its one-third share of the $200 million annual funding for the program, a move that also eliminated federal support for it. The Bloomberg administration then stopped adding new renters to the program and planned to stop payments for people already participating. Advocates went to court to block the move, and a judge ordered payments to continue while the case played out.
But i Read More»
Related topic categories: Homelessness, Housing and Development
AIDS Program Cuts Stir Protest
Members of several organizations from all over the city met outside of City Hall on Monday morning to rally against the proposed cuts to meals and housing for New Yorkers living with HIV and AIDS. Armed with protest signs, they spoke out against Mayor Bloomberg's plan to cut what they say amounts to almost $ 1 million from meal services, and an additional $5 million in funding for supportive housing.
One potential casualty of the proposed cuts is the Momentum Project, a volunteer-run organization that has been helping people with AIDS and HIV since 1985. Donnell Tillman-Basket, director of client services at Momentum, said that if the organization does wind up closing, the results would be disastrous.
Related topic categories: Homelessness, AIDS, Housing Policy, Michael Bloomberg, Budget
