Here's more about it via the RXHome website:
New Yorkers will have the opportunity to walk through the maze and learn about the challenges many people experiencing homelessness face in New York City. The interactive maze will educate New Yorkers about the proven solutions the next mayoral administration can take to end and prevent homelessness in New York City.
For New Yorkers experiencing homelessness, the city's homeless service system is at best, a maze. At worst, barriers like unnecessarily burdensome systems that determine who is deserving of rental assistance and outdated policies that prioritize emergency shelter ahead of permanent housing, keep thousands of New Yorkers, the majority of whom are Black and Latino families, in an unending cycle of homelessness and housing instability.
The Department of Homeless Services says people can expect to spend 90 days to a year in a shelter while they apply for affordable housing, but city data shows the average person spends 520 days there, trying to find a home.CBS 2 has more about the challenges of trying to navigate the shelter system in the search for permanent housing in this report from last night.
The exhibition — open today and tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. — has been here since Wednesday after a stop outside Brooklyn Borough Hall.
Here's a video preview...
Homelessness will never be solvable as long as it is compounded by mental illness and drug abuse. Good luck with that. As for treatment programs forget about that too. The Government cannot force someone to take meds or participate in their rehab if they don't want to or simply can't.
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ReplyDeleteI think the idea is to educate people and help identify the world around us. A lot of people have an attitude towards homelessness as if it were a disease or act as if they’re not human. If we can convince people to take a kinder gentler approach we will have a better society and better methods of helping others.
Homelessness in NYC was created by Ed Koch when he sold the city to real estate developers while destroying SROs that gave marginal working poor individuals an inexpensive place to live. And from there we now have over 80,000 homeless living on the streets, unable to find safe and humane shelter.
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ReplyDeleteFew homeless want to be homeless. Other countries, such as Finland, have greatly reduced the number of homeless people by, well, giving them homes as well as access to treatment and other social services. That turns out to save a lot of money in the long run, too.
Our problem is that we ask the police to deal with all sorts of problems that they're just not very good at.
There's also a misunderstanding that most homeless are street homeless like in the park when it's actually a minority. More than half are families and children whose homelessness is not readily visible. That homelessness can be addressed and will have real positive effects on hundreds of thousands of lives.
ReplyDeleteSome stats from (should've been mayor imo) Quinn's homeless org, WIN: https://winnyc.org/the-homelessness-crisis/
NYT ran a segment on the Daily last year for those of you who prefer listening to reading
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/13/podcasts/the-daily/homelessness-new-york-coronavirus.html
In 2020-2021 there were over 100,000 homeless students in NYC. Someone please explain how finding viable shelter for these people isn't issue number one for Albany and Gracie Mansion?
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