The Housing Access Voucher Program bill, an attempt to address issues of housing and homelessness and a host of other related problems, was recently defeated in Albany. Here’s the story of why and how that happened.
According to www.coalitionforthehomeless.org, there were 68,889 homeless people in the New York City shelter system in December of 2022. Solving the problems associated with increasing homelessness is complex and there are no simple solutions. New York City is a “right to shelter” city, meaning the city is legally obligated to provide housing to anyone who seeks it. But inconsistent safety at shelters, high drug use and mental health issues, complicate achieving the goal of reducing homelessness.
VOCAL-NY is a nonprofit organization that has existed for 20 years with a mission to advocate for housing, ameliorate the varieties of homelessness, decriminalize drug use and cut down on the number of overdoses, work with those on the street who have HIV/AIDS and mobilize against the policies of mass incarceration. Half of the organization does direct service work for people who are actively using drugs. The organization aims to have people safely use drugs and reduce harm. The organization provides safe and clean places for drug users to go and also focuses on overdose prevention. As Joseph Loonam, a worker at VOCAL-NY, states, “New York is a right-to-shelter city, meaning anyone who says they need it must be housed in a temporary shelter bed within 24 hours. There are huge nonprofits that run hundreds of shelters around the city, of extremely varying quality. Some are extremely corrupt, some less so. They are all very expensive.”
Loonam believes that the number one factor contributing to the homeless crisis in New York is the lack of affordable housing. “In the late 1990s,” said Loonam, “New York State passed a series of laws that weakened the protections tenants had from major rent increases.” As part of the privatization and deregulation craze that swept America after Ronald Reagan’s presidency, this allowed major banks and big real estate companies, to begin to buy out smaller landlords, or offer them huge loans, in the hope that they would exploit loopholes to kick out long term tenants and increase the rents. Over the next 20 years, New York lost nearly all affordable housing that was in the private housing market.
Mr. Loonam added, “Policies that were meant to increase the supply of affordable housing did so in ways that often made the problem worse; they subsidized the construction of massive amounts of luxury housing in exchange for developers building smaller amounts of affordable housing.”
One large issue was that “affordable” was not a defined term, and many units were only available to people making well over the area median income. Many people who were homeless still couldn’t afford the so-called “affordable housing” since many of the impacted people weren’t working. What is vital for change is to make the housing that currently is defined as “affordable housing” and make it legitimately accessible for homeless people.
Drugs and drug use by homeless people complicate the situation and are an issue of safety both for the homeless and for the public. According toLoonam, half of VOCAL-NY’s work is directly aimed at people actively using drugs. Interestingly, the goal isn’t drug reduction, it is using drugs more safely. VOCAL provides clean needles and trains people to use Narcan to prevent overdoses. I asked Mr. Loonam if focusing on safe drug use can make the problem worse? Loonam said the use of drugs is not the issue: It’s the secondary health issues, like the high number of overdoses nationwide per month, as well as related hospitalizations. In November of 2022, the CDC stated that there were 103,550 reported drug overdoses relative to the 108,712 predicted deaths. The CDC also discloses that “more than 3,000 deaths due to drug overdose are estimated to have occurred in New York City during the 12 months ending in August of 2022.”
Loonam is part of a new school of thinking that sees drug overdoses as a public health issue and not a criminal issue or an issue of moral failure. Mental health issues are another complicated factor in solving the homeless problem.
Mayor Eric Adams has focused recently on taking down street encamps and convincing homeless people to go to shelters. Mayor Adams, according to a recent article in the NY Times “Can New York’s Plan for Mentally Ill Homeless People Make a Difference”(12/15/22) believes that the increase in crime in the transit system is “being driven by people with mental health issues”. Mayor Adams is pushing for greater use of Kendra’s Laws, which lets courts order people into treatment if they have a history of hospitalization or violence. But according to Mr. Loonam, this does not solve the problem, noting that “Particularly under the Adams administration there has been an effort to get people off the street by arresting or harassing them, meaning to move people out of the public view”.
On the Upper West Side, two emergency shelters for migrants were recently opened. The New York Post recently reported on this in their article “UWS Residents Furious As City Quietly Opens 2 Shelters” written on April 18th, 2023. “It’s going to be the beginning of a gradual decline of our beautiful, historic, desirable neighborhood,” says a local resident. So, people want the homeless off the street, but are not in favor of shelters in their “backyard”.
Mr. Loonam says high schoolers should ask themselves whether the housing market in New York will have a place for them and other young people. “Do you have confidence you will be able to afford housing in the place you grew up?” Loonam observed: “We can work with organizations whose main goal is to create more legitimate ‘affordable housing,’ highlighting the point of getting people off of the streets. Anyone can work with various nonprofit organizations that will raise money that will go to more funding for shelters across New York as well as safe places for homeless people who have addictions to drugs. VOCAL-NY focuses on grassroots community organizations and works to recruit people actively impacted by these issues. Fieldston students can think about and explore non-profit organizations they would want to work with in order to continue combating the homelessness issue in New York City.”
VOCAL-NY sponsored the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP) which, in his words, is, “A statewide rental subsidy for low-income families and individuals facing eviction, currently homeless, or facing loss of housing due to domestic violence or hazardous living conditions.” It would specifically target people who are covered by no program such as undocumented people, people with prior felony convictions, or people with absolutely no income of any sort. As Mr. Loonam states, “HAVP would force the state to put money toward permanent housing solutions. […] The state puts a lot of money into temporary solutions like shelters, and it was important to VOCAL-NY leaders to try and force the state to redirect some of that funding to things that are more permanent.” Lastly, the bill would create long-term funding for housing generally. This would allow for buildings that many poor people live in and are receiving less rent to get more funding for maintaining the building.
As Mr. Loonam states, “There are a lot of ideas at the state level about how to build housing for poor people, but not a lot of mechanisms for ongoing subsidies, which are critical. So we are hoping, in the long run, HAVP could be that.” The reason HAVP is needed is because housing throughout New York City is quite unaffordable for the homeless. Additionally, the shelter system is dangerously overcrowded and it is difficult to find room for families and individuals. HAVP would allow rental assistance in order to get families and individuals out of the shelter system.
Unfortunately Joseph Loonam, the man who started the bill, along with workers at VOCAL-NY lost. As Mr. Loonam answers a question about why they lost he states, “I don’t know, and I don’t trust anyone who says they do know. Negotiations like this happen fast, and they very deliberately keep the public and the press away from them, so the only honest answer really is ‘whose to say?’”
A little less than a year ago, the Senate, the Assembly and the Governor agreed that they needed to do something about housing in the budget. Although HAVP was quite popular amongst these three groups, it wasn’t anyone’s top priority. As Mr. Loonam states, “The governor’s top priority was gaining the ability to override local zoning and force places to build high-density housing.” It was a bit harder to pinpoint the legislature’s priorities. After a bit of time, nothing happened with the continuation of passing HAVP. Mr. Loonam added, “Again I can’t say, nor can anyone else, what happened in the 48-some-odd hours of housing negotiations. What I can say for sure is that there was clearly a path here where everyone did something that they didn’t want to do, and the result was a robust housing plan that gave the people of New York a lot of options. Instead, we got nothing.” There was no progression of HAVP, meaning New York City “affordable housing” has stayed out of reach for homeless people.
