Mayoral task force recommends new direction for supportive housing

Mayoral task force recommends new direction for supportive housing

By Brendan Cheney

10/18/2016 05:29 AM EDT

A task force convened by Mayor Bill de Blasio has recommended an overhaul in the city’s approach to selecting applicants for supportive housing, several participants told POLITICO New York.

De Blasio announced the task force in January, two months after he pledged to create 15,000 new units of supportive house over the next 15 years.

The recommendations – which have not been made public – were submitted to the administration on June 30 and will be used, in part, to create a request for proposals to develop new congregate supportive housing.

Supportive housing refers broadly to affordable housing for those who are homeless or are at risk of homelessness, and includes ancillary services like case management and mental health. Congregate supportive housing refers to housing in which those services are provided on-site.

The previous supportive housing plan, signed by Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Governor George Pataki in 2005 and called New York / New York III because it was the third joint supportive housing plan between New York City and New York State, created 9,000 supportive housing units statewide.

Under that plan, individuals had to qualify in one of nine categories to receive housing, and more housing was created for some categories than others.

There were 5,550 units of housing for people with serious and persistent mental illness, 1,500 units for people with substance abuse disorder, 750 units for chronically homeless families where the head of household has a disabling medical condition, substance abuse disorder or HIV or AIDS, 1,000 units for single adults with HIV or AIDS and 200 units for youth aging out of foster care.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo and de Blasio, who have engaged in a highly public feud, have fashioned competing plans, rather than agreeing on a fourth joint plan.

De Blasio’s task force – comprised of administration officials and supportive housing providers – has called for the city to offer housing based on overall need, instead of categorizing applicants by a specific need that corresponds to a set number of units.

The task force urged the city to create a vulnerability index as part of the referral process, which would evaluate and measure an applicant’s vulnerability according to a predetermined metric.

Since the task force did not itself create a vulnerability index tool, it would be up to the administration to create one if city officials accept the recommendation.

While the task force called for evaluating people based on their overall vulnerability, it also called for specialized programs for recipients, to reflect the unique needs of residents who might suffer from disparate conditions such as substance abuse, HIV/AIDS, or mental health issues.

The recommendations have not yet been approved or released publicly, and the administration declined to share a copy of the report.

“The feedback we received from this extraordinary group of experts is being taken into consideration as we proceed with the procurement process for additional supportive housing units,” said Lourdes Centeno, a spokesperson for the Human Resources Administration, in an emailed statement.

“The RFP for additional congregate units will be issued in the near term. We are also currently reviewing the competitive bids to develop the first 500 scattered site supportive housing units that will be awarded during this this fiscal year,” Centeno added.

The city released an RFP on scatter site housing (where individuals are living in private apartments in different buildings) in August, reflecting some of the recommendations from the task force. In April, the city released an amended version of a previous RFP for congregate housing to make sure money would be available to projects while the administration is creating the new congregate RFP.

POLITICO New York spoke to a number of members of the task force who described the deliberations as substantive and productive, and were optimistic that it had the support of administration officials.

George Nashak, executive vice president at HELP USA and the former deputy commissioner for adult services at the Department of Homeless Services under Bloomberg, called the task force “a legitimate effort to really understand how to best deploy the resources that the mayor is putting on the table.”

Former City Council speaker Christine Quinn, now the executive director at Women in Need, a shelter and supportive housing provider for families, said the task force “had attention from the highest levels of government.”

“The point now will be how quickly can we input the recommendations, get [the] RFP on the street, and keep this kind of a structure or a streamlined version moving forward,” she said.

The task force was co-chaired by social services commissioner Steven Banks, Department of Housing Preservation and Development commissioner Vicki Been, and Laura Mascuch, executive director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York.

The full task force met three times and subcommittees on development, data evaluation, new models, and referrals also met regularly, for a total of 30 meetings altogether.

Members of the task force also discussed the need to deal with challenges with scatter site supportive housing.

They also considered the need to move more quickly when planning new supportive housing, due to the heated real estate market.

Members said the city should implement a holistic family approach, to improve the process for applications and to be more proactive in finding candidates for supportive housing at shelters and service locations.

Members of the task force said they hoped it would meet again in the future, but a spokesperson for the administration did not respond to a question about whether it plans to reconvene the task force.

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