Today's New York Times tells the story of Nadeah Rashid, a mother of two daughters who earns $270 a week working at J.C. Penny in the Bronx. Two years ago, she was in a homeless shelter. She was able to leave and move into her own apartment because she qualified for Advantage, a city rental assistance program for low-income families.
Unfortunately, she's about to be homeless all over again.
Nadeah - and more than a thousand families like hers - are caught between an economic downturn that's devastating low-income families and a rigid city policy that cuts off rental assistance for formerly homeless families after two years.
Now, in the face of high unemployment and record family homelessness, the Bloomberg administration is planning even more restrictions to the program that will mean 14,500 families will lose their rental subsidies over the next 18 months.
As Javier Hernandez wrote in today's Times,
"Beginning this fall, the city is to impose stricter requirements for the program; many more shelter residents will probably not qualify, and some may have their support cut off early. For many families, that could spell the end of a nascent rise out of poverty."
The new rules maintain the strict two-year time limit, require families to contribute significantly more towards their monthly rent, and limit rental assistance to only those families with someone working 35 hours a week.
In a city where double-digit unemployment is still an unrelenting fact of life in dozens of low-income neighborhoods, these requirements will translate into thousands of families losing their rental assistance, getting evicted, and returning to shelter.
We can do better than that.
Tell Mayor Bloomberg that this is the wrong time to make it harder for low-income families to stay in their homes. Please join us by sending your letter calling on the mayor to drop these new restrictions on rental assistance and to help more formerly homeless New Yorkers stay in their homes -- and out of shelter.
- Mary
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