NY Times
But Craig Hughes, a supervising social worker at the Urban Justice Center, said that outreach teams would be hampered by a lack of stable and permanent housing for the homeless population...“It’s to a good degree smoke and mirrors,” Mr. Hughes said. “Provide outreach instead of housing, but frame it as something more, and then flood the trains with cops.”City Limits
The Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center and #HomelessCantStayHome Campaign issued an even more ambitious demand, encouraging the city to house homeless New Yorkers in affordable units administered by HPD, regardless of the current income thresholds for the apartments.City Limits
Department of Social Services (DSS) records, obtained through Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests by the advocacy group Safety Net Project, illustrate the charge. Supportive housing is, by definition, designed for people with mental illness, but on dozens of occasions over the first 10 months of 2020, providers cited an applicant’s “lack of insight” into their mental health needs as the reason for rejecting them.City Limits
Craig Hughes, a social worker and organizer at the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center, said Banks’ policies and strategies ended up harming many homeless New Yorkers, particularly families and individuals bedding down in public spaces.City Limits
“This is basically what we were asking for. It’s a really, really, really big win,” said Sarah Wilson, an organizer with the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project. “You can take a job that pays $20 an hour and not risk losing your housing."CUNY Law Review
This article examines the practice of movement lawyering through the lens of the author [Marika Dias, Director of the UJC Safety Net Project]'s legal support for tenant organizing in New York City during the COVID-19 pandemic.City Limits
But those earlier draft plans, obtained through a Freedom of Information Law request by advocates from the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project and shared with City Limits, offer a look at the city Health Department’s initial recommendations for the moves, at odds with how the actual transfers have been carried out since.The City
Two days before the bill went to a planned May 26 vote committee vote, a fourth version of the measure appeared, without any mention of income qualifications. That gave HRA the power to continue imposing its own income cap. Advocates [including our Safety Net Project] noticed the change in the city’s online bill tracker and immediately pressed Levin to restore the missing line lifting the income limits as well as a time limit on aid, to no avail.Law 360
Marika Dias, managing director of the Safety Net Project, a legal assistance program operated by the Urban Justice Center, said that with the pandemic-induced housing emergency and a backlog of 18,000 evictions cases pre-pandemic, the city will have to pour more money into civil legal aid services to be able to deliver on its promise — and follow its own law.City Limits
“It’s positive the city made this change. It only took community outcry, intervention from the federal government, and the reality of facing a potential lawsuit for discriminating against people with disabilities,” said Craig Hughes, a supervising social worker at the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project.
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