David Miranda (Legal Services NYC): HASA barriers and housing failures
David Miranda of Manhattan Legal Services describes a client who waited five years for a HASA voucher because nobody told her the rent was too low, forcing her and her autistic daughter into shelters. He calls for fixing administrative delays and transparency failures within HASA.
Good afternoon, everybody.
My name is David Miranda, and I'm an attorney with the LGBTQ Plus and HIV Advocacy Project at Manhattan Legal Services, which is part of Legal Services NYC.
We have offices in all five boroughs, a dedicated team of advocates providing services specific to LGBTQIA folks.
Many of whom experience housing instability, poverty, and discrimination.
New York City's housing affordability crisis affects residents across the city, but LGBTQIA plus New Yorkers often face additional barriers that exacerbate housing insecurity, including pervasive discrimination,
limited access to affirming housing and shelter environments, and administrative obstacles within public benefits.
Today, I will discuss the HIV AIDS Services Administration, known as HASA, for case management and rental assistance, the homeless
crisis among LGBTQIA plus youth, and the failure of demographic data to capture the severity of this crisis.
I'm going to start by talking about HASA, and I do think that there are several issues within the HASA program, which is operated by HRA.
We have seen that housing opportunities are often lost due to administrative delays within the HASA program.
There is also a
a severe lack of transparency, which means that clients either lose housing or are unable to get the housing that they deserve.
And by way of example, I'm going to talk about a client who we shall call Ms.
W.
Ms.
W is from the Bronx.
And she had been trying to get a HASA housing voucher for five years.
She identifies as a lesbian, and she reached out to us because she could not handle another denial.
During those five years from the time of her application to the time when we finally were able to resolve the issue, she and her daughter, who suffers from severe autism, were forced into the shelter system.
Nobody ever told Ms.
W at HASA that the issue was that the rent was too low, even though she had found three apartments within New York City NYC Connect.
And every time she would get rejected because the rent was too low.
So her and her daughter would go from shelter to shelter and couch to couch.
And that is a fundamental failure within a system that we can actually fix.