TESTIMONY
Jeanine Costley on Overcoming Nonprofit Challenges in Tackling Mental Health and Homelessness
5:40:02
·
141 sec
Jeanine Costley, Senior Vice President at the Institute for Community Living, underscores the urgent needs of nonprofits addressing New York City's mental health and homelessness crises.
- Costley discusses the critical challenges in staff retention and the necessity for substantial investment in the underpaid workforce.
- She highlights a 32% turnover rate across programs and a 70% turnover rate in shelters, emphasizing the need for funding to achieve pay parity with state-funded programs.
- The testimony stresses the importance of a cost of living adjustment for workers and a major transformation of the shelter system, faulting shelters for their size, resources, and locations.
- Costley calls for increased funding to cover the rising costs of food, insurance, and operational expenses, alongside immediate financial support to ensure the continuous provision of services.
Jeanine Costley
5:40:02
Thank you.
5:40:03
Good morning, Cherryella, and members of the committee on General Welfare.
5:40:08
Thank you for this opportunity to testify today.
5:40:10
My name is Doctor.
5:40:11
Janine Costley.
5:40:12
I'm the Senior Vice President of Transitional Services at the Institute for Community Living, ICL.
5:40:18
We are one of the city's largest providers of housing and behavioral health services for children, adults, and families.
5:40:24
We serve over 1300 people, 13,000 people annually in our 140 programs across 5 boroughs.
5:40:32
Including clinics, shelters, residences, and community based programs.
5:40:36
I'm here to talk about the city's concurrent mental health crisis and homeless crisis and what must be done for nonprofits like ours to survive to help people who we support.
5:40:47
Nonprofits face significant challenges in retaining quality quality staff.
5:40:52
We can't begin to address the mental health and homeless crisis without substantial investment in our woefully underpaid work workforce.
5:41:00
ICL faces exceptionally high turnover rates and vacancy rates with turnover rates of 32% across our programs and a massive 70% in our shelters that we operate.
5:41:12
We need more funding to achieve paid parity with state funded programs that jeopardize our city funded workforce by offering more generous compensation.
5:41:23
There must be a cost of living adjustment so our workers' compensation can keep up with inflation, and so they're fairly compensated for our challenging work.
5:41:32
Now is the time for meaningful trans transformation of our shelter system.
5:41:37
We thank the city council for your leadership and advocacy in preserving the the right to shelter law, but that's not enough.
5:41:43
Shelter are often too large and under resource and located in buildings with bad layouts and other unfavorable conditions.
5:41:52
There have been no increases or adjustments to the funding to reflect the growing food costs, the insurance costs, our operational expenses.
5:42:00
This threatens the viability of nonprofit organizations like all of us.
5:42:05
The these delays and payments are off.
UNKNOWN
5:42:07
Thank you so much.
5:42:08
Your time has expired.
Jeanine Costley
5:42:10
We must regularly regularly borrow money to provide our contracted services.
5:42:15
The bottom line is that we need a broader investment in funding for our shelter services and the workforce that ensures our operations.
5:42:21
And thank you so much for for this time.
