Thread by @thebl0w

To give a sense of how harmful NYC Dept of Homeless Services is, I’m gonna list the pretty stunningly messed up situations that my friends who are homeless right now are dealing with. There are 80K homeless people in NYC, I know like 20 of them. These stories are not exceptional.

First I’ll lay out some basics of how this harm is accomplished. At the top of it all is Mayor de Blasio. If he decides that 10,000 mostly unvaccinated people are being moved into congregated barracks in a pandemic, even though FEMA will cover all hotel rooms til Dec, it happens.

Directly below the mayor, and holding massive sway over the lives of almost 100K homeless New Yorkers, is Dept of Homeless Services. @NYCDHS. It is run by Steve Banks. Before he had this job he was apparently a good advocate for homeless people. Now his agency does a lot of harm.

NYC Dept of Homeless services doesn’t directly operate most of the locations where homeless New Yorkers stay. They pay nonprofits $2B+ a year to do this. The city pays $3500-$4000 per person, per month for a nonprofit to put someone on a cot in a barrack with 30 other people.

The nonprofits running the shelters each have their own cultures and vibes and levels of accountability. Some are less horrific than others, but all of them are spending more per month to put people in barracks ($3500 a month) than it would cost to supplement rent ($1900 max).

When people were moved out of congregated shelters & into hotels for safety during Covid, the shelter nonprofits went with them & began operating these new locations. So people staying in hotels this year have still been dealing with the same shelter shit, just in nicer rooms.

The food in the shelter hotels still gives people diarrhea and diabetes. The staff still verbally abuse, physically assault, & generally psychologically mess with residents. Caseworkers still tell crazy lies about requirements for getting a voucher & getting out. But it’s safer.

Going ahead I’m going to mention the names of the nonprofits running the hotels & shelters whenever I can to create accountability for what their staff are doing to people. They present themselves like nice places doing good work. They all stay afloat by keeping people homeless.

(We’ve thrown around the idea of creating an anonymous review system for each of the shelter nonprofits so that people can report what happens to them under their care because there is no way to complain, aside from Google reviews which people do use.)

Ok my friend Rosa was recently in a hotel run by @CAMBAInc. She had to stay in the hospital because the doctors were worried she had tuberculosis. @CAMBAInc staff told Rosa’s husband if she wasn’t in by 10pm the next day she’d lose her bed & have to go to a congregated shelter.

All year Rosa has been forced by @CAMBAInc to share a double room with a woman who drank and used drugs. Rosa is in recovery and let staff know many times that this made staying sober hard. One night the roommate threatened to assault Rosa. @CAMBAInc flat out refused to move her.

The only reason Rosa didn’t lose her hotel bed while she was in the hospital is because she’s involved with an advocacy group who repeatedly contacted @CAMBAInc on her behalf. Advocacy groups have limited capacity so most people in DHS have zero recourse when they’re fucked with.

This thread of stores about the terrible things Dept of Homeless Services and the shelter nonprofits are doing to people will be slowly unfolding because there are too many stories to tell them all at once. And the stories will probably not stop coming until DHS is scrapped.

So my friend Rosa got out of the hospital and was moved to a single room in another hotel. It’s in Manhattan, it’s not a shithole. But yesterday the nonprofit staff told her she has to save up $3000 in order to get a housing voucher to get an apartment. This is an outright lie.

Nonprofit shelter staff regularly lie, or make up arbitrary rules. I know several people in a hotel run by BRC who’ve been told the craziest things. BRC isn’t on twitter but here’s their site: brc.org. Their tag line is “Hope, Health, Home.” Even that’s a lie.

My friend Julio texted me just now to say he needed medical care at his hotel & asked to talk to an on-site nurse. The supervisor said they don’t need a nurse on-site because all the employees have medical training. This is plainly false but they face no consequences for lying.

This hotel run by BRC is the same place that kicked out my friend Michael in the middle of the night, even though he has cancer and a heart condition, and refused to give him his heart monitor. They did this again, to a disabled man, a week later. nytimes.com/2021/08/05/nyr…

Brad has been in BRC shelters for 3 years. 2.5 years ago his caseworker told him he had to save $500 to be eligible for a housing voucher (this is false). Brad saved up $1000 doing food delivery, and the caseworker said “oh I was kidding.” And Brad STILL doesn’t have a voucher.

The Hotel Artel is also run by BRC, and the community of @t_h_e_g_y_m_ have reported on the outrageous behavior of the staff there. They reported staff were opening laughing at residents, many with serious health issues, who were being kicked out & forced to congregate shelters.

In the 3 years Brad has been homeless, NYC has paid the BRC nonprofit a minimum of $126,000 for a bed & miserable food. (NYC pays nonprofits minimum $3500 per month per person). It’s pretty obvious nonprofits have zero incentive to help someone like Brad ever leave the shelter.

Brad is in the same BRC-run hotel as Julio, the one where there’s no medical professional on site. It’s specifically for men with physical & mental health conditions. There are hundreds of men there & NYC pays BRC $42K minimum a year for each one. And BRC won’t pay for ONE nurse.

I need to restate this because it’s so outrageous: How can a shelter nonprofit like BRC that is receiving at least $42,000 a year for each resident, and is running a facility *specifically* for people with mental and physical health issues, not have full-time medical staff. ??