REMARKS
Council Member Shahana Hanif on Proposed Legislation to End Caps on Shelter Stays for Homelessness
0:45:43
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162 sec
Council Member Shahana Hanif advocates for Intro 210, aiming to prohibit caps on shelter stays for those experiencing homelessness, including asylum seekers.
- Hanif criticizes the mayor’s 30-60 day shelter stay policies as a human rights catastrophe and counterproductive.
- She claims these policies result in people living on the streets, in subways, or in unsafe living conditions, and disrupts families and children by forcing them to move.
- Hanif mentions a supportive coalition of faith leaders and advocacy groups.
- She calls on her colleagues to support and expedite a vote on Intro 210.
Shahana Hanif
0:45:43
Good morning.
0:45:44
Thank you deputy speaker Ayala for including intro 210 on today's hearing agenda.
0:45:50
This bill would prohibit the administration from implementing haps on shelter stays for all New Yorkers experiencing homelessness, including asylum seekers.
0:45:58
The implementation of the mayor's 30 60 day rules has been nothing short of a human rights catastrophe.
0:46:05
I'm proud to be advancing legislation that would put an end to these cruel and counterproductive policies alongside 12 of my colleagues in the council, the public advocate, and the comptroller.
0:46:16
The mayor brags that shelter evictions have reduced the number of people in the city's care, ignoring the obvious question.
0:46:22
Where are the people who are foreshadowed the shelter system ending up?
0:46:26
Absent any comprehensive data from the administration, let's try our best to answer.
0:46:31
Many are in line outside Saint Brigitte in the East Village where they wait every day in the cold for weeks on end, hoping a bed placement opens up.
0:46:39
Of these folks, a percentage are spending their nights in city run bare bones waiting rooms that lack even basic costs.
0:46:47
But ultimately many, if not most of them, are sleeping in the subways or the streets, an outcome that benefits nobody.
0:46:54
Alternatively, some are resorting to dangerous and formal congregate living situations like the one just discovered in the storefront in Queens.
0:47:02
Those who are unwilling to endure the suffering the city is putting them through are being reticoted by emergency management to other cities without any coordination with their local governments.
0:47:12
This effectively repeats the same dynamic that occurs when Texas governor Greg Abbott buses people to port authority with that warning, which mayor Adams has been decrying for the last year and a half.
0:47:22
FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN ARE BEING GIVEN NEW SHELTER ASSIDMENTS BUT ARE DESTABLIZED BY BEING SHUFFLE AROUND.
0:47:28
STUDENTS WHO HAVE BUILT sense of community in their schools are being pulled out of their classrooms.
0:47:33
Progress that their parents have made on asylum, TPS, or work authorization up applications is stemming by the operational complications of an address change.
0:47:41
It's tempting to say that this policy is pointless, but that would be incorrect.
0:47:45
As a cruelty, it's self is the point.
0:47:48
A growing chorus of New Yorkers is seeing the harm created by these shelter evictions and calling on on them to end.
0:47:55
It was an honor to be joined earlier this morning by a broad based coalition of faith leaders and advocates, including the Interfaith Center.
0:48:02
Jay Fredge, New York Jewish agenda, tiered off, the Synagogue, coalition on the refugee and immigration crisis, Malika, the working families party in New York, immigration coalition, vocal New York, women in need, safety net project, and make the road New York.
0:48:17
I look forward to hearing their testimony later on.
0:48:19
I urge my colleagues to sponsor intro 210 and to swiftly bring it up for a vote.
0:48:24
Thank you chair.