AGENCY TESTIMONY
Importance of keeping pets and people together and addressing housing challenges
0:16:36
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159 sec
Alexandra Silver emphasizes the importance of keeping pets and people together, discussing various initiatives and efforts to address housing challenges for pet owners in New York City.
- Focus on reducing shelter intake by helping animal guardians access resources
- Appointment of board members committed to helping people and pets stay together
- Launch of a pet-inclusive pilot program at a shelter for families experiencing homelessness
- Inclusion of the Mayor's Office of Animal Welfare in the Tenant Protection Cabinet
- Efforts to make housing more pet-inclusive and accessible to people with pets of all sizes
Alexandra Silver
0:16:36
This is an essential component to ensuring the safety and well-being and welfare of companion animals in New York City.
0:16:42
But as stated earlier, animal rescue is part of a larger ecosystem.
0:16:48
And in addition to improved facilities and promoting pet adoption and fostering, we must do what we can to prevent animals from needing shelter and rescue in the first place.
0:16:57
Leaders in the animal sheltering field across the country are emphasizing the importance of keeping pets and people together, thereby reducing shelter intake.
0:17:06
Doing so means helping animal guardians access resources and doing our best to adjust policies so that they reflect our understanding that pets are family.
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Mayor Adams, 2 appointees to ACC's Board of Directors, have each demonstrated a deep commitment to helping people and pets stay together.
0:17:25
Prior to focusing on such efforts in her current position with the humane society of the United States, Aliyah Simpson helped build ACC's surrender prevention program.
0:17:35
Christine Kim, who was the 1st director of the mayor's office of Animal Welfare, is the founder of my dog is my home, a national nonprofit organization that highlights and helps preserve the bonds between people experiencing homelessness and their companion animals.
0:17:51
We marked a milestone in New York City just the Spring, when the Department of Homeland Services joined with the Nonprofit Urban Resource Institute, URI, to launch a pet inclusive pilot program at a shelter for families experiencing homelessness, ensuring their 4 legged family members can be kept with them.
0:18:10
URI has led the way in keeping families together with their people and animals living safely, pals program, at many of their shelters for survivors of domestic violence.
0:18:20
Also this year, the mayor's office of animal welfare joined the newly created tenant protection cabinet, which aims to better serve tenants by creating pathways to renter focus programs and services and to ensure safe and fair housing conditions.
0:18:36
Our office was eager to take part in such a cabinet.
0:18:39
Since housing related challenges are a major contributor to the high populations that animal shelters across the country are experiencing.
0:18:47
One of the initiatives that the cabinet is working on is a flyer to raise awareness specifically about protections for tenants with pets and assistance animals.
0:18:57
The office of animal welfare is also exploring ways to make housing more pet inclusive, more accessible to people with pets of all sizes, for example, to begin with.
0:19:07
Doing so would not only enable more animals to stay with their families who already love them, but also widen the pool of potential adopters.