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Q&A
Council member inquires about CityFHEPS voucher and senior housing issues
1:16:23
ยท
128 sec
Council Member Althea V. Stevens raises concerns about a senior citizen who was told to go to a shelter for 30 days when seeking rent assistance. Commissioner Molly Wasow Park acknowledges this as unacceptable communication and explains the various housing stability programs available, including CityFHEPS and emergency rental assistance.
- Park emphasizes that the goal is to keep people in their homes
- Stevens expresses concern about the potential for similar incidents and the need for a more streamlined process
- Discussion highlights the importance of proper communication and utilization of available resources for seniors facing housing instability
Althea V. Stevens
1:16:23
Oh, good morning.
1:16:24
How's everybody doing?
1:16:25
I just have a couple of questions.
1:16:27
One, I wanna say I know, our very fearless leader, and chair, deputy speaker Ayala, has been working with you guys on this issue, but I just wanted some clarity around like, especially with like seniors and the city feps and what I had a senior who had an issue and was having some issue paying his rent and he went to to get support and he was told that he should go to the shelter for thirty days.
1:16:54
And so I'm just trying to understand like in this situation and I always say this in a lot of hearings is if this is happening in in one incidence, it's probably happening in other incidents which is why I'm bringing it up.
1:17:05
So I'm just trying to understand what the process is.
1:17:07
Like I said, I know I've been working with the deputy speaker and she's working with your office and everyone's been super responsive, but I'm just trying to get a better understanding of this process because telling seniors to go to a shelter for thirty days is insane to me.
Molly Wasow Park
1:17:21
Yep, thank you councilmember.
1:17:23
I would agree that that is not an acceptable communication.
1:17:27
We can certainly follow-up on the who and the how, but we have a complement of housing stability programs at DSS.
1:17:36
So CityFepps is one of them.
1:17:39
We also pay emergency rental assistance and other one shot support for people.
1:17:46
Last year there was something like $540,000,000 worth of emergency rental assistance paid.
1:17:52
We can connect people with an attorney.
1:17:56
Homebase is really intended to be the gatekeeper there and helping people find the resources that they need to the extent that we need to do some training engagement with our homebase providers.
1:18:09
That's certainly something that we can talk about offline.
1:18:13
CityFepps does have specific eligibility requirements and simply being a senior is not necessarily sufficient to be But as I say, we do have a complement of programs.
1:18:25
Our goal always is to keep people in their homes and it does seem like there was a missed opportunity here.
Althea V. Stevens
1:18:31
Yeah because and like that's my biggest issue right, and I know that when the city fest voucher was passed that was one of the things that chair kept speaking about, how are we keeping people in homes and like trying to pull back some of the restrictions to ensure that we don't have those instances.