Preventing a homelessness cataclysm

The clock is ticking. We have until Aug. 20 – the day that Gov. Cuomo’s eviction moratorium is set to expire – to come up with a plan to help New Yorkers pay rent, or the COVID-19 pandemic will turn into a housing catastrophe that will cripple this city. If emergency housing measures are not a core part of the city’s recovery efforts, nearly one million New Yorkers could be forced out of their homes. That’s 16 times the number of people in shelter tonight.

The moratorium is currently the only measure preventing landlords from kicking out people who have lost their jobs and can no longer keep up. We are dangerously close to turning the corner on this epidemic only to find an even worse homelessness crisis than we had before it began.

New York State has already lost 1.2 million jobs, and predictably, New York’s lowest-income families have been the hardest-hit. Jobs paying less than $40,000 represent nearly two-thirds of all jobs lost in the crisis so far. According to estimates from NYU’s Furman Center, 60% of New Yorkers who make under $30,000 are vulnerable to losing their job due to COVID-19.

This outbreak has exposed the vicious truth that there are very few economic protections for families at the lowest rung of our economic ladder, and New York’s vanishing supply of affordable housing means too many are paying exorbitant rents.

We will spend the next several years rebuilding from the devastation of COVID-19, including health-care delivery, education, transportation and small businesses will be pillars. But no recovery conversation is complete without a plan to address the toxic combination of income loss and affordable housing scarcity.

This unprecedented moment demands an equal response, which is why Win — the homeless services network I lead — has developed an emergency action plan for how New York City can keep families in their homes and rehouse families who lose their homes as quickly and efficiently as possible.

First, we need a new “Stay-at-Home Emergency Rental Assistance Voucher” that can be applied to pay back rent accrued during the current eviction moratorium, and would provide continued rental assistance while the economy and families recover. It’s critical that families be able to access this rental assistance now, before their housing emergency reaches the point of eviction proceedings or homelessness.

Instead of bringing families into shelter, New York City must use funds from the federal CARES

Act to implement “rapid rehousing” — short-term rental assistance to families who have lost their homes but are in a position to quickly rejoin the workforce when the economy improves.

But not all families will be able to avoid shelter, and we should expect that the city’s dire economic forecasts will translate into an influx of newly homeless families in the coming months. The city has been struggling to find safe shelter space for years, so we must get creative about finding new space that can help New York’s working families get back on their feet with dignity.

This means discarding the old playbook of simply renting hotel rooms with none of the necessary resources, and embracing an aggressive strategy to fully convert vacant buildings, including former hotels, into full-service family shelters.

All the while, we have to make reforms to the supportive rental assistance programs that already exist, particularly the CityFHEPS voucher program. This outbreak has already started to narrow the path out of a homeless shelter: the number of families who left shelter at Win is 38% lower this April than in April 2019.

Our legacy will be judged by how we respond to and recover from COVID-19, and how we protect the most vulnerable New Yorkers in the process.

Quinn is the president and CEO of Win, New York City’s largest provider of shelter, social services and supportive housing for homeless families. Quinn served as New York City Council speaker from 2005-2013.