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Q&A
Fair share policy and impact of asylum seeker crisis on shelter system
0:55:20
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138 sec
Council Member Alexa Avilés inquires about the management of the fair share policy for shelter distribution, particularly in light of her district having a significant number of shelters. Commissioner Molly Wasow Park explains the challenges faced due to the asylum seeker crisis and its impact on shelter distribution.
- The asylum seeker crisis led to a dramatic increase in shelter census, requiring rapid opening of shelters
- Emergency situations resulted in very short notification periods for new shelter openings
- The use of hotels as emergency shelters led to disproportionate distribution in certain neighborhoods
Alexa Avilés
0:55:20
I'm sure I'm sure you do.
0:55:23
In terms of I think that's helpful clarification because that language is often cited.
0:55:29
We know we have a we have the city has a fair share policy.
0:55:33
Can you tell me how you manage the fair share of policy?
0:55:39
And in particular, my district has pretty much significant number of shelters compared to districts actually all around me.
0:55:50
How do you manage this fair share policy?
Molly Wasow Park
0:55:54
So I'd say there are two answers to that question.
0:55:58
There is a formal fair share process, so every non emergency Actually, let me take a step back here.
0:56:08
This also gets to some of the notifications that you mentioned.
0:56:12
Over the last several years because the shelter census has increased extremely dramatically, particularly from the spring of twenty twenty two through early twenty twenty four.
0:56:26
We saw tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers entering the city and it really changed the nature of our shelter system.
0:56:35
There were points in time where DHS in particular was opening three, four, five hotels a week in response to the asylum seeker crisis.
0:56:45
We absolutely did very short notifications in those instances.
0:56:50
That is not how we like to operate and not our standard operating procedure.
0:56:56
It was very much reflection of the emergency.
0:57:00
With our more standard and contracted shelters, we look to do much longer advanced notification.
0:57:06
I know the site that you're talking about, as you note, it's several months.
0:57:11
Even that for us is a relatively short notification period.
0:57:17
I think there is when we were responding to the emergency, we had to use hotels because that's what could be turned on very quickly.
0:57:29
There are more hotels in certain neighborhoods than others and so it came to a disproportionate location.
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.