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PUBLIC TESTIMONY
Testimony by Amy Blumsack, Director of Organizing and Policy at Neighbors Together, on CityFHEPS Administration
2:21:37
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5 min
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Amy Blumsack, representing Neighbors Together, provided testimony on the administration of the CityFHEPS voucher program. She highlighted significant issues with the program, including delays, administrative barriers, and a lack of care for homeless New Yorkers. Blumsack emphasized that the experiences of voucher holders differ greatly from what was described by the commissioner earlier in the hearing.
- Blumsack shared specific examples of how program inefficiencies have negatively impacted voucher holders, including a case where a person lost their apartment due to delays in voucher renewal.
- She provided recommendations for improving the program, such as increasing capacity in the shelter system, creating more efficient tracking processes, and implementing CityFHEPS reform laws.
- Neighbors Together called for the $215 million negotiated in the City of Yes agreement to be applied to protecting vulnerable New Yorkers at risk of eviction.
Amy Blumsack
2:21:37
Hi.
2:21:38
Good, Yeah.
2:21:39
Good afternoon.
2:21:40
My name is Amy Blumsack.
2:21:41
I'm the director of organizing and policy at Neighbors Together.
2:21:45
We'd like to thank the general welfare committee and deputy speaker Ayala as well as the council overall for the opportunity to submit testimony on the administration of CityFEPs, and we wanna give a deep seated thank you for all of your work to improve the voucher and to fight for its expansion.
2:22:04
Briefly, Neighbours Together is a is a community based organization located in Central Brooklyn.
2:22:11
Over 60% of our members are homeless or unstably housed.
2:22:15
We have been organizing with voucher holders for many years now.
2:22:19
We fight for policy and, legislative improvements to vouchers so that they will be effective tools for moving out of homelessness and into housing.
2:22:30
And at Neighbors Together, we also provide direct services such as housing search assistance for people with vouchers.
2:22:39
As many others have said, CityFEPs is a critical tool for moving out of homelessness, that it is rife with problems, delays, administrative barriers.
2:22:52
And so I did wanna say that after listening to the commissioner's testimony this morning, I really need to emphasize, as other panelists have said, that our members' experience of working within the city theft program is incredibly different than what was described by the commissioner and her team this morning.
2:23:12
To name a few quickly, it's already been covered, but our members as well experience late payments or payments sent to the wrong address, a very unclear, nontransparent application process, significant delays in every single step of the voucher process from receiving a shopping letter all the way through packet submission and processing to move in and the final check cutting.
2:23:39
Additionally, our members are also experiencing really long wait times at Homebase, anywhere from 1 to 4 months for an appointment regardless of the urgency of need.
2:23:57
And we're also hearing our members say that some of the Homebase locations are not giving them a shopping letter at all, but instead telling them come back once you've received your shopping letter, which is a surefire way to lose an apartment, which is super hard to come by if you have a voucher or just at all in New York City.
2:24:17
I think what I wanna emphasize is just that, you know, I know you guys listen to this.
2:24:22
You've been listening to it for 2 and a half hours, and it's you know, it sounds like a list of problems, but behind every problem are many, many homeless New Yorkers who should be treated with the dignity and care that they deserve.
2:24:35
It's those are somebody's mom, someone's sibling, someone's auntie.
2:24:39
And we see such a lack of care for them in the system that the, you know, that city fetched voucher program, it is in in the bureaucracy of it all.
2:24:51
I wanna give 2 examples, and then I'll wrap it up.
2:24:54
One of our members had a city FEPPS voucher.
2:24:56
He was scheduled to move into a set aside unit, which means it was being held through negotiations done through the city commission on human rights for a source of income discrimination.
2:25:06
And he in the middle of the process to the, application or process to the apartment, his voucher came up for renewal.
2:25:13
His renewal took so long.
2:25:14
It took months months months.
2:25:17
It was so difficult to get responsiveness from the agencies that he lost the apartment, and he remained homeless, and he is still homeless.
2:25:26
Another member of ours, is disabled.
2:25:30
It's very hard for her to walk.
2:25:31
She is supposed to be moving into an apartment, but over over the break, we we shut down for the holidays.
2:25:40
When we came back, our housing specialist followed up with the case manager only to learn that the submission of their preclearance documents hadn't been done yet.
2:25:49
So a month went by where no action was taken on this application, and our member is currently in a nursing home.
2:25:56
But she is going to have to pay now for an additional month in the nursing home at a cost of $600 per day.
2:26:03
Because of the delay in her preclearance, there's no way she's moving in on February 1st.
2:26:07
It's gonna be March first at the very earliest, and that's best case scenario.
2:26:11
So, you know, she's gonna be paying 1,000 of dollars that she doesn't have because of an unnecessary delay.
2:26:20
So our recommendations are to increase capacity at the shelter system, you know, for the shelter providers and at home base to create better transparent, more efficient tracking processes for the application of city thefts, to baseline and increase the funding in f y 60, twin in fiscal year 26 and out years.
2:26:42
We want to see the city FEPPS reform laws implemented, of course, and we really wanna see the $215,000,000 that was negotiated in the city for all city of YES agreement applied to protecting the most vulnerable New Yorkers, who are at risk of eviction, and we need to continue to resource the human rights, city commission for human rights to fight source of income discrimination, ensure access timely access to the utility allowance, and ensure timely distribution of shopping letters to name a few.
2:27:14
I wanna thank you for your, perseverance and patience listening to all of the testimonies today, including mine.
2:27:20
We'll be submitting more detailed testimony in writing, and we thank you again for your attention to this important issue.