Hello!
The following letter is being sent to the Governor, Assembly Speaker, and Senate Majority Leader to urge them to create the Housing Access Voucher Program funded at $250 million, to prevent or end homelessness for more than 50,000 New Yorkers across the state.
**Please sign your organization on at the bottom of this page to show your for support the program by DECEMBER 16th at 5pm ** see the full text of our letter below:
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Housing Access Voucher Program is the Tool We Need to Prevent
and End Homelessness in the 2023
With tens of thousands of people living in state shelters
and more coming in every day, and thousands now facing evictions, HAVP is
desperately needed to get folks housed.
To Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate Majority Leader Andrea
Stewart-Cousins, and Speaker Carl Heastie,
We, the undersigned, submit this memo in strong support of
enacting and funding the Housing Access Voucher Program (HAVP) (S2804A/A3701A),
which would put New York on a pathway to ending the homelessness crisis in our state. Including HAVP in this year's budget would help ensure more than 50,000 households statewide can avoid the trauma of homelessness.
New York State is in the midst of the worst homelessness
crisis since the Great Depression. On any given night, 92,000 people live in
shelters and on the streets. Thousands more are uncounted and doubled- or
tripled-up in apartments. This represents an astounding 150 percent increase in
housing instability since 2009.
In New York City, shelter capacity is dangerously low. To
cope with rising demand for services the City has had to rapidly expand shelter
capacity adding over 50 new shelter facilities in less than a year. This trend
is not unique to New York City. The crisis of homelessness has brought many
communities to a breaking point in localities that have far fewer resources
with which to manage the homelessness crisis than New York City. As federal aid and eviction protections from the COVID-19 pandemic have lapsed,
and thousands of people have flocked to New York City seeking asylum, more and
more people across the state are at risk of becoming homeless.
Despite the historic nature and scale of this crisis, last
year's budget failed to fund the most inclusive rental assistance program
proposed: the Housing Access Voucher Program. HAVP is a permanent, statewide
Section 8-like rental assistance program. At least fifty percent of the
program's resources will be dedicated to help homeless New Yorkers across the
state find stable housing. The rest will go towards eviction prevention for
households at risk of becoming homeless. HAVP is designed to be accessible,
flexible, and non-discriminatory, making it the most effective program for
moving homeless households into stable, permanent housing and for preventing
homelessness in the first place. A state housing voucher would reach thousands
of New Yorkers left unserved by the underfunded federal Section 8 program.
We are pleased to hear Governor Hochul’s commitment to a
bold housing agenda aimed at building more affordable housing. However,
developing housing takes years, and we need solutions that will meet the crisis
today. In order to reduce the number of unhoused people in our state, we must
offer families and individuals a pathway out of the shelters and off of the
streets. HAVP does this by offering immediate rental assistance to New Yorkers,
both helping people secure permanent housing and preventing others from losing
it in the first place.
We, the undersigned, urge Governor Kathy Hochul, Senate
Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and Assembly Speaker Carl E. Heastie,
to pass this essential legislation and provide $250 million to fund HAVP, and
put New York on a path to end our housing crisis.
Signed,
