{"id":379222,"date":"2026-10-22T03:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-10-22T03:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/379222\/"},"modified":"2026-10-22T03:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-10-22T03:28:07","slug":"housing-advocates-discuss-frontline-solutions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/379222\/","title":{"rendered":"Housing advocates discuss frontline solutions"},"content":{"rendered":"

Public and private sector leaders from across New York City convened Wednesday at City & State\u2019s Upstream 2026: Frontline Solutions to Homelessness<\/a>, a day-long event presented by shelter provider HELP USA dedicated to mitigating New York\u2019s persistent housing and homelessness crisis.<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about \u2013 all of you in this room \u2013 not having a home to go back to,\u201d said Andrea Reid, executive deputy commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration. \u201cYou may start thinking about, \u2018Oh, I\u2019m going to go to my sister, my brother, uncle, a family friend or someone.\u2019 But imagine that you\u2019ve already exhausted all of those options. Where are you going?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThink about your children that may be in school, thinking, \u2018How am I focusing on class if I don\u2019t know where I will be tonight, I don\u2019t know where I\u2019m going to go home and sleep, and I don\u2019t know where my parents are?\u2019\u201d she added.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Speaking on a panel at the event at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, Reid laid bare the most recent statistics<\/a> of the shelter system, reporting that 84,037 individuals currently lived within the system as of October 14, 2026. Of that growing number, 28,157 children, 19,400 single men, and 7,583 single women depended on shelter services.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Despite the challenge, she believes that improving economic self-sufficiency \u2013 meaning that New Yorkers in need should be better situated to be able to afford living expenses \u2013 and logistical advancements that expedite existing processes can help close gaps in service and effectiveness.<\/p>\n

RuthAnne Visnauskas, commissioner and CEO at New York State Homes and Community Renewal, felt similarly regarding process acceleration and ensuring that those in need are able to get services quicker and with less friction.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to stop asking people to give us \u2013 especially people who are not housed \u2013 to give us 17 pieces of paper to describe how unhoused and how little money they have to pay their rent,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eyeing solutions to such a large-scale issue, Visnauskas pointed out New York\u2019s \u201cmassive\u201d supply issue, describing a systemic scenario where people are unable to afford better units, leaving them stuck in units that others in need, such as those in shelters, could benefit from.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to make it less expensive to operate housing. [There\u2019s] a lot of pressure on services and service provision. It sometimes doesn\u2019t get attention \u2026 water bills, property tax bills, insurance bills,\u201d she said, emphasizing that New York State Homes and Community Renewal is aiming to keep its \u201ceye on the prize,\u201d also paying attention to services just outside New York City proper, as people seek affordability and housing just beyond city lines as well.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Reid highlighted a number of initiatives the city\u2019s Human Resources Administration is seeking to implement in an effort to mitigate bottlenecks in service, including a proposed \u201cpre-qualified\u201d list of unit inspectors for landlords to use as a resource, slated for the upcoming year.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Public and private sector leaders from across New York City convened Wednesday at City & State\u2019s Upstream 2026:…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":379223,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-379222","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379222","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379222"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379222\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/379223"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379222"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379222"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379222"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}