Full Voter Guide
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NEW YORK CITY MAYORAL CANDIDATE VOTER GUIDE: HOMELESSNESS & HOUSING TABLE OF CONTENTS 01 Introduction 04 About RxHome 06 How to Use this Voter Guide 10 Summary of Mayoral Candidate Policy Platforms 17 Candidate Responses to RxHome’s Mayoral Questionnaire 70 How to Register and Vote in the 2021 NYC Municipal Election 75 List of Acronyms & Glossary 78 Additional Resources 80 Acknowledgements i N N N O O O I I I T T T C C C U U U D D D O O O R R R T T T N N N I I I Introduction How Your Vote Can End Homelessness This year’s election will be unlike any other in New York City history. The implementation of ranked choice voting—in tandem with the impact of the pandemic on our city’s civic fabric, the massive turnover in city government leadership due to term limits and the uncharacteristically large field of candidates vying for mayor—creates an unprecedented opportunity for civic engagement to spur long-term change. Voting in both the primary and general elections can ensure that our next elected leaders commit to ending homelessness. New York City needs a leader who will create the structures and systems that prioritize permanent housing over emergency shelter, ultimately making homelessness a rare, brief and nonrecurring experience for New Yorkers. Even with more than 8.4 million people in New York City, each voter’s voice matters. In 2013—the last mayoral election year without an incumbent—only 22% of registered Democratic voters (fewer than 700,000 people) participated in the primary election. De Blasio won that primary election with just over 282,000 votes, meaning that approximately 1% of New Yorkers determined our current city leadership. COVID-19 has raised the stakes even higher. This past year has revealed just how many New Yorkers are on the brink of homelessness and the racial disparities among those facing housing instability. The dual health and economic crises—both of which disproportionately impact Black and Latino families—only exacerbated the existing homelessness crisis. In the wake of the pandemic, New York is not only continuing to manage a public health crisis, but also a looming avalanche of evictions, record unemployment and growing income inequality. However, the recovery is an opportunity for swift change. The next mayor of New York City will play a major role in realizing this opportunity to end and prevent homelessness. The New York City mayor has the power to take sweeping action without approval from other government bodies and can immediately redesign the city’s homeless service system by putting permanent housing ahead of temporary shelter. New Yorkers have a real opportunity to help move our neighbors experiencing homelessness off the streets, out of shelters and into stable homes for good. By voting in the upcoming primary and general elections, New Yorkers can choose who will make the investments that create a healthier, safer, equitable and more just city—where everyone has a place to call home. 01 N O State of the Crisis in New York City I T 77,943 New Yorkers experienced homelessness on a single night in New York City in January 2020— nearly double the capacity of Citi Field. While many people think street homelessness drives this crisis, C only about 5% of people in New York City experiencing homelessness live on the street. In fact, 95% of all New Yorkers experiencing homelessness live in a shelter facility and are effectively invisible to the general U public. In other words, for every one person living on the street, there are twenty people living in shelters, many of whom are children and their families. D Children and their families bear the brunt of New York City’s homelessness crisis. Families account for more than 60% of city shelter residents and children themselves account for more than one third. Family O homelessness in New York City has increased 40% in the last decade, and one out of every four American families experiencing homelessness in the United States live in New York City. The average family spends R 495 days in a city shelter before moving into permanent housing. T Homelessness is indisputably both a public health crisis and racial justice issue. Experiencing homelessness makes it harder to become and remain healthy. Living in shelters during a child’s early years can cause N irreversible damage to their health and development that will follow them for the rest of their lives. I Children who experience homelessness—even prenatally and for short periods—are at increased risk for asthma, hospitalizations, developmental delays, mental health conditions, food insecurity and educational barriers. These inequities are much more prevalent in communities of color. As a result of centuries of discrimination, Black and Latino households disproportionately experience homelessness and housing instability compared to white households nationwide and in New York City, compounding economic and health issues for these communities throughout the city. How Did We Get Here? Ultimately, the ever-growing number of New Yorkers experiencing homelessness is a policy choice. The New York City homeless response system is designed to manage homelessness, rather than solve it. New York City and State are legally mandated to provide emergency shelter accommodations to individuals experiencing homelessness, as established in Callahan v. Carey (1981) and subsequent lawsuits (1983, 1986, 2020). The right to shelter mandate has led the New York City Department of Homeless Services to pursue a myopic, shelter-focused strategy that looks to “prevent and address homelessness in New York City” rather than solve it with permanent housing. But a right to shelter does not preclude addressing homelessness with housing. Shelter can—and really must—be defined as permanent housing rather than temporary emergency facilities. By choosing to focus on shelter instead of housing, the city institutionalizes poverty, denies households experiencing housing instability— who are disproportionately Black and Latino—the resources that would allow them to avoid the trauma of homelessness and ultimately hides people experiencing homelessness in emergency shelter facilities. For example, the system mandates a minimum 90-day shelter stay for most families to even qualify for rental assistance, which forces nearly 700 families into shelters instead of long- term housing each month. This policy, and others that prioritize shelter and services over housing, are steeped in the incorrect belief that not everyone experiencing homelessness is “housing ready” and that everyone needs “stabilizing services'' before being connected to permanent housing. Without exception, everyone is housing ready and deserves to have a place they can call their home. The city also lacks a coordinated, data driven process to address homelessness, resulting in an inefficient and often ineffective patchwork system across 19 agencies that frequently fails to meet the needs of people facing homelessness. Fundamentally, these policies undervalue and ignore the input of those directly impacted by homelessness, who time and again identify needing help paying rent and finding affordable permanent housing as their primary needs. The overuse of shelter facilities and the siloing of the homeless response systems creates the dangerous appearance that homelessness is a problem only for people living on the streets. This undermines and diminishes the daily lived experiences of tens of thousands of New Yorkers experiencing homelessness who deserve solutions, and not to be relegated to the shadows. 02 N O Solving Homelessness in New York City I T Historically, New York City’s “right to shelter” mandate has led officials to believe that the city is required to focus only on shelters for its residents in need. However, this simply isn’t true. The next administration C shouldn’t remain beholden to the rigid consent decree’s stipulation of providing emergency shelter. Shelter must be defined as permanent housing. A housing first approach can coexist with a right to shelter, and it U can do so while providing a pathway to permanent housing for those who need it and help keep people out of shelters in the first place. D The majority of New Yorkers staying in the city’s shelter system just need help paying their rent. By redesigning the homeless service system to proactively help New Yorkers pay their rent and remain stably O housed, the city can better use its resources to focus on rehousing individuals who need the most assistance due to mental health needs, physical disabilities or other issues where a case manager can R provide guidance or care. T For New Yorkers experiencing street homelessness, the solution to homelessness is housing—not services or shelters. People who live on the street know this better than anyone, and many do not want to move N into emergency shelter facilities when they are asking for a place to live with dignity and call home. Ending I homelessness requires an intersectional approach that is anti-racist and proactively addresses the root causes of homelessness and housing vulnerability—specifically, structural and systemic racism—by creating policies and systems that lead with what people with lived experience say they want and need: permanent housing. The next mayor can solve the dynamic challenge of homelessness by moving beyond today’s band-aid, ad hoc and short-term strategies and instead invest in accountable leadership, comprehensive prevention and rapid rehousing. The next mayor must focus their policies on providing actual homes—not just shelter —to those in need. Homelessness must be approached collectively and collaboratively across city agencies, nonprofit entities and partner organizations with a housing first strategy. By prioritizing prevention instead of warehousing people in shelters, the city can create a true housing first system. Read about RxHome's vision for a New York City where homelessness is rare, brief and nonrecurring on page 5.