TESTIMONY
Kristen Miller, Executive Director of Homeless Services United, on Payment Delays and Systemic Reforms for Nonprofits
3:50:33
·
3 min
Kristen Miller discusses the severe payment delays facing nonprofits in New York City and details systemic reforms needed to alleviate these issues.
- Nonprofit organizations struggle with late payments from the city, affecting payroll and operations.
- Amounts owed range from $700,000 to $31 million, severely impacting the financial stability of these organizations.
- Miller calls for the creation of a rapid response team to tackle the backlog and systemic reforms to streamline bureaucratic processes.
- She highlights the need for additional staffing to process paperwork and a reevaluation of the cost of doing business with the city.
- The issue forces nonprofits to consider contracting with state and federal entities as a more reliable alternative.
Kristen Miller
3:50:33
Good afternoon.
3:50:34
My name is Kristen Miller, and I serve as the exec Executive Director of Homeless Services United.
3:50:39
Thank you, Deputy Speaker Ayala, and members of the General Welfare Committee for allowing me to testify today.
3:50:46
I appreciated very much the earlier questioning of the council members to DSS regarding the contracting and payment issues.
3:50:54
I'm here today to talk about a massive issue facing our nonprofits, and that is the the delay problems, lateness, of working, hardworking, mission driven organizations just not getting paid for the work that they do.
3:51:11
The commissioner mentioned that there was so far this fiscal year only one late contract registration.
3:51:19
While we've seen an improvement in the rate of contract registrations timing, that is only step 1 of a very long process.
3:51:27
We continue to have problems with budget amendments, problems with invoicing, problems with passport information that you've been hearing about already, and process and backlogs in this form 65a process, which allows us to pay our subcontracted vendors.
3:51:46
I think what's important to understand is that the members of HSU are telling me that they are owed anywhere in the range of 700,000 to $31,000,000 from the city of New York.
3:52:00
They're at a breaking point.
3:52:02
They have a hard time meeting payroll in some instances because they are owed so much money from the city.
3:52:09
And the reputations come down to the workers in the field.
3:52:14
A lot of our organizations have not had their WEI money, put into the paychecks of the individuals.
3:52:21
Right?
3:52:21
Because it's a multi, multi complex step process.
3:52:27
This impacts small vendors that might be doing maintenance work and other efforts on the sites.
3:52:33
Everyone is frustrated from clients to executive directors.
3:52:38
There's not one solution, but there are many.
3:52:41
We're calling for a rapid response team to clean up the backlog.
3:52:45
We cannot have it be done on a 1 by 1 basis, but secondly, we need semic reforms.
3:52:51
We need streamlining.
3:52:53
We need to ease up the burden on nonprofits.
3:52:58
To get this paperwork processed.
3:53:00
We need the city to staff up.
3:53:02
There are not enough people back at the ranch to process all of this paperwork.
3:53:08
And lastly, we do need to look at the cost of doing business.
3:53:12
The city of New York is not keeping up with the state and Feds when it comes to paying for the actual amount of cost, you know, that the expenses that it takes to run shelters and homeless service programs.
3:53:27
And lastly, our mission driven organizations are really having a tough choice on deciding whether they should continue contracting with the city of New York or go to state and federal contracts where it's much easier to get the contracts approved and budget and payments approved and same with the federal government.
3:53:45
They don't want to, but they must protect their organizations.
3:53:49
With that, I'll turn it to my colleague.
