The City

"Marika Dias, managing director at the safety net project at the Urban Justice Center, says “it is absolutely possible” that tenants do not know of their right to an attorney, “and particularly right now.” Dias confirmed that outdated materials on Right to Counsel are currently posted around several city courts."

City Limits

"Craig Hughes, a social worker and organizer with the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center, criticized the new facilities as something of a shadow shelter system and a 'creative and inhumane way to get around the right to shelter.'"

New York Times

Kathleen Cash, an advocate at the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center, called the pictures of what the centers might look like “devastating.” “Opening short-term municipal refugee camps through a separate city bureaucracy — while the mayor has repeatedly failed to honor the right to shelter, and has announced plans to ‘reassess’ it — is the kind of approach many feared this administration would take,” she said.

City Limits

“This decision is directly in line with his belief in widely discredited broken windows theories of public safety, which have hit poor and working-class Black and Latinx New Yorkers hardest,” said Karim Walker, an organizer and outreach worker with the Safety Net Project [of the Urban Justice Center]. “These sweeps are designed to break spirits and get people out of sight.

City Limits

Given the persistent crisis, what New York City really needs is a right to housing, said Karim Walker, an organizer [with the Safety Net Project] who spent years staying in public spaces, in DHS men’s shelters and in SafeHavens—facilities with fewer restrictions than the broader shelter network—before getting an apartment through a housing lottery.

ABC News 7

“Challenging the right to shelter is dangerous,’ the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center wrote on Twitter. ‘Without this right, tens of thousands of people will be on the street.”

City Limits

“But other advocates argued the resources the legislation looks to provide, while well-intended, would be better used to shore up mental healthcare options for families in shelter outside the facilities they’re staying in. ‘We think a better option for the city is to fund dedicated lines for additional mental health support off-site,’ said Helen Strom, homeless and benefits director at the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project.”

Gothamist

“Among the report’s findings was how few people living on the streets and in the subways, parks, and other public spaces were directly placed into permanent housing. ‘That number is shocking,’ said Craig Hughes, a social worker with the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center.

City Limits

“Until recently, the city did not publicly release details on supportive housing acceptance and rejections, forcing advocates at Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project to file Freedom of Information Law requests to access that data (the organization did so for years, sharing the findings on Twitter).”