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Q&A
Balancing shelter needs with affordable housing development
0:57:39
·
176 sec
Council Member Alexa Avilés expresses concerns about converting buildings into shelters rather than permanent housing. Commissioner Molly Wasow Park explains the need for both shelters and affordable housing in New York City.
- Commissioner emphasizes the need for both emergency shelters and affordable housing
- Explains the analogy of shelters as 'emergency rooms' for the housing sector
- Highlights the policy to avoid converting existing residential buildings into shelters
- Discusses the need to reduce reliance on hotel rooms for shelter and develop more suitable, cost-effective shelter facilities
Alexa Avilés
0:57:39
Commissioner, this site, chair if you don't mind, in this site it blows my mind actually that we would be building shelters from scratch and or fully rehabbing a building to a shelter when our problem is homes, housing individuals.
0:57:57
So this is another circumstance where a building is getting gut rehabbed, that was a manufacturing building, for a shelter when we should be building supportive housing to bring down the census because our community is a very welcoming community.
0:58:12
We have had shelters for many, many years.
0:58:16
But the concentration in seeing buildings flip into shelters rather than homes is problematic for especially at the expense that we are putting into these temporary facilities.
Molly Wasow Park
0:58:30
From my perspective we really need it's not an or, it's an and.
0:58:35
I am the biggest cheerleader for affordable housing that you will ever find.
0:58:40
I started my career in the affordable housing space.
0:58:43
One of the things that I am very proud of is that under my tenure as commissioner that we have really been able to expand DSS's housing footprint including and actually into housing finance, but there are literally a million low income rent burdened households in New York City.
0:59:00
Any one of those households is an emergency away from needing shelter.
0:59:05
The analogy that I like to use is this is really the emergency room for the housing sector.
0:59:11
We don't want anybody to be getting their primary health care from the emergency room, but that doesn't mean that we don't need an emergency room.
0:59:18
In previous years, previous administrations, there have been instances where actually apartment buildings, like full on existing residential apartment buildings have been converted to shelter.
0:59:30
That in my mind is the worst of all possible worlds because we are actively taking housing out of the housing stock and using it as shelter.
0:59:38
It's my policy and our policy now not to do that, but we do need to add to the shelter stock.
0:59:45
We are in about 18,000 hotel rooms.
0:59:47
Those are poor quality shelter for clients, and they are very expensive for the city of New York.
0:59:54
While we are absolutely committed to reducing the size of the shelter census, given the size of our hotel footprint, we need to also be adding regular contracted shelters.
1:00:07
They are suited for serving clients, for being able to provide the wraparound services that are valuable to us.
1:00:16
They are less expensive for the city, and it's an important thing to do.
1:00:21
Without speaking specifically to the site in your district, because I don't know the details off the top of my head, but generally there is more flexible zoning on shelters than there is for housing so that there are sites that we can use for shelter that are
Alexa Avilés
1:00:34
actually not So just the last bit here.