PTH Rental Subsidies Campaign Wrap Up

2004 to 2007 The shelter campaign brought clarity and evidence to PTH’s analysis that the shelter industrial complex is a business.

2005 Exposed the failures of HSP a flawed housing subsidy for homeless folks with public assistance cases that put homeless people in unsafe and unsustainable apartments, where landlords illegally forced desperate homeless voucher holders into “side-deals”, paying out of pocket monthly amounts higher than what DHS/HRA approved.

2005 Pressured DHS to hold monthly workgroup meetings to include HRA and DHS, as well as homeless New Yorkers to provide oversight of HSP.

2007 Launched the Rental Subsidies campaign.

2007 Moved HRA and DHS to consolidate public assistance cases for folks in shelter to one HRA location.

2007 Forced the city to create the Advantage rental subsidy programs for homeless folks with low-wage jobs, or who had disability income.

2007 Forced the Department of Homeless Services to create an improved inspection process for apartments rented through these subsidy programs.

2009 Published report, “Times Up”, an expose on Mayor Bloomberg’s failed 5 Year Plan to End Homelessness, based upon over 500 surveys and data gathered from City agencies.

Nikita Price: Because, it's one thing to say, “Okay, you know we're getting fucked, we’re getting fucked…” But we had to come up with, you know what's the next step? We know what the problem is, so what do you do? How do you fix it? And I think that was when we would then introduce the issue of all this abandoned property, and that's when we're also doing our abandoned building count. The City does own some of this property and there are this many people in the fucking shelter, and on the street… I don't think the shelter campaign talked a whole lot about street homeless people. We really focused on shelter folks, which was the largest population.