Henry Love: Targeted Housing Assistance Program (TAP) proposal

So why TAP?

Why the Targeting Housing Instances Program?

LGBT youth, as we earlier mentioned, are 40% of the homeless youth and only 9% of the homeless youth.

of the population.

Housing instability raises suicide attempts by 3.7 times, and up to 20% of homeless youth in NYC are living with HIV.

They can't maintain HIV treatment, they can't stay connected to care, and TAP creates the stability that makes survival possible.

TAP is simple.

98% of those who participate in the TAP program, which on average gives about $3,700 in direct cash to young people within 48 hours to stabilize them,

98% of them, of recipients at Henry Street and at the door, had no shelter contact in six months, per our evaluation at Johns Hopkins University.

So, in the time, I asked that Cordell and Devon's obituaries are here on the table as just proof of what happens to young people who don't make it.

Neither of them made it past 30.

$4.7 million is being asked by the city council to fund TAP, the Targeted Housing Assistance Program.

It's imperative that we do this now and to show that we are fully human.

And in the end of that, I want to show you just this tattoo.

As I was doing this, I thought about it.

Devon had this same tattoo here, and it says empathy, and that's what his dissertation was about.

And I ask that as you are in these final conversations on the budget, that you think about all the young people, and you think about Devon, you think about Cordell, who didn't make it past 30 because they didn't have someone to intervene.

They didn't have policy to intervene for them in time.

I stopped there.