Farías questions Brown on Unity Project guide, outreach, and budget allocation
Farías asks about maintaining the Unity Project's housing resource guide, community outreach campaigns, and the office's budget allocation. Brown commits to keeping the guide updated, notes no active outreach campaigns yet, and describes inherited funding including a $400,000 DOHMH allocation.
The New York City Unity Project has maintained a guide of organizations working to support housing and shelter services for LGBTQ plus individuals in the past.
As the new office is set to absorb the Unity Project, will you keep the guide up to date?
Absolutely.
And not just in the housing space, but across all areas of life.
And are there any thoughts on planning or offering any community outreach or education campaigns around the issue itself?
Right now, in this moment, I cannot say that we have any active.
plans, but I think, again, that is something that we are considering.
I think from my own personal experience and background, when people are informed of their rights and are aware of their rights, that is how they're best enforced and people are best made to abide by them.
So certainly something we will consider.
And just my last question for us as chairs, do you have an allocation for your budget already set?
For the office?
So that terminology is new to me, new to government.
So as I understand it, we do have an allocation for staffing lines.
We do have an allocation for some programmatic work, which was one of the primary functions of the Unity project.
And again, I think that my understanding is those exact amounts are the negotiations are ongoing.
Okay, do you know the previous amount?
If there were any towards the services that are under your bucket now?
So the way that the Unity Project worked primarily was through budget allocations that lied in other agencies.
For example, I'm aware of a $400,000 fund that lies within DOHMH.
And so this would be specifically tied to sort of health care program and funding.
There were some one-time grant opportunities, including the Transgender Emergency Fund, the Unity grants.
But from my general understanding of the 10 years of Unity Project sort of funding model is that none of them were sort of, I think the $400,000 one is the only one that's sort of every year.
Okay.
Yeah.
Got it.
Good for us to know.
Thank you so much for answering my questions.