City Limits

By SNP's E.D. Marika Dias:
By opening the door to all these new eviction cases and evictions, the new executive order will quickly take us back to overcrowded housing courts and families facing homelessness—both of which are guaranteed to endanger individual and public health. Cuomo didn’t extend the moratorium, he ended it, outrageously putting all of us at risk.

City Limits

Marika Dias, managing director of the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project, says there are two key categories of tenants that are not covered under the new eviction moratorium: tenants who were being evicted for anything that doesn’t relate to nonpayment of rent (also known as holdover cases) and tenants unable to show that they have faced a financial impact due to COVID-19.

Gothamist

"At the Atlantic Avenue station Friday night, warming buses were not even an option for homeless people because it's not an end-of-line station, said one staffer with the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project."

New York Times

Craig Hughes, a supervising social worker at the Urban Justice Center, said city workers should be offering masks and gloves to everyone they approach and giving blankets to people who do not go to shelters and were now deprived a subway car’s warmth.

NY Post

“We’ve increasingly spoken with homeless folks who reject safe haven beds because they fear contracting COVID in these shared spaces,” said Craig Hughes of the Urban Justice Center.

Queens Daily Eagle

“While these are certainly steps in the right direction, they are nowhere near what the city could and should be doing right now,” said Craig Hughes, a supervising social worker at the Urban Justice Center Safety Net Project.

City Limits

Advocates for the homeless like VOCAL-NY, Human.nyc, and the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center have spoken out about their concerns regarding the need for greater assistance to New Yorkers who are homeless and have been able to access the city’s hotel program.

The Real Deal

"Moving homeless New Yorkers immediately out of crowded shelters, off the streets, and into single hotel rooms with private bathrooms is the best way to protect the community from contracting and spreading Covid-19, and further overwhelming our hospitals,” Peter Malvan, an advocate with Safety Net Activists at the Urban Justice Center, said in a statement.

The City

The “Homeless Can’t Stay Home” crowdfunding campaign has raised $46,000 and has placed 25 people in hotel rooms, according to Helen Strom of the Safety Net Project at the Urban Justice Center, one of the groups behind the campaign.

Erie News Now

Kiana Davis, a policy analyst at the Urban Justice Center's Safety Net Project, says that while the New York is making an effort to do temperature checks, it is not happening consistently at every shelter.