Less than an hour after Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Fort Greene City Councilwoman Laurie Cumbo held a press conference today in front of Fort Greene’s Auburn Family Homeless Shelter to decry Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s decision to withhold funds from 16 homeless shelters due to poor conditions, the City and the State came to an agreement in which the funding would continue.
“New Yorkers should know that public advocacy works, and it can lead to greater government partnership and improved services for those with the greatest need,” said Adams.
“We know that withholding essential funding will not expedite the correction of problems. We have a moral imperative to save our families from being homeless, and we in fact have a fiscal imperative to spend what is necessary to lift families out of homelessness so they can contribute positively to our economy. I will continue to work diligently with local and state leadership to ensure that government does not play “pass the buck” when it comes to real families facing real struggles we cannot and do not want to imagine.”
The issue came to the forefront this week with Mayor Bill de Blasio out of town yet again, this time pushing his progressive agenda on the national level. Meanwhile, the the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance (OTDA) fired off a letter to City Hall Tuesday announcing that due to poor conditions funding for 16 shelters would be withheld.
In a response letter, the city’s Homeless Services Commissioner Gilbert Taylor noted that withholding the funding came as the state recently cut funding for homeless services while the de Blasio Administration proposed adding $100 million in the city budget.
The dispute prompted Adams, Cumbo and Patrick Markee, deputy executive director for advocacy at the Coalition for the Homeless, to hold the press conference in front of the Auburn Shelter, one of the 16 slated to lose state funding.
Cumbo noted with an estimated 60,000 homeless New Yorkers, most of whom are women and children, the lack of State funding for 16 city shelters would be detrimental to collective efforts to reduce homelessness and improve current living conditions.
“The homelessness crisis in the City of New York can only be addressed through the allocation of additional city and state resources. As Chair of the Committee on Women’s Issues, I commend Governor Cuomo for allowing the de Blasio Administration to put forth a plan that will improve the health and safety of our shelters by addressing the violations that endanger the welfare of thousands across our boroughs,” said Cumbo.
Besides the Auburn site, there are two other of the 16 sites that were threatened with a withholding of funding in Brooklyn. They are Acacia Cluster Kings Highway in Canarsie and HELP I Brooklyn in East New York, which house 254 homeless families, including 525 homeless children.
