Maritza Rico (New Destiny Housing) on supportive housing gaps and CHAP exclusions

Good afternoon, Chair Sanchez, Council Member Nurse, Council staff, and namely Ben.

Good to see you.

My name is Maritza.

I am the Policy and Advocacy Manager at New Destiny Housing.

Chair, you know us, but for the record, we are the only organization in New York focused entirely on permanent housing for survivors of domestic violence, the leading cause of family homelessness.

And we also operate the first and largest federally funded rapid rehousing program for survivors in our city.

We will submit a full written testimony, but I'll highlight the main points.

In regards to the housing plan, block by block, we want to talk about supportive housing, of course, particularly the supportive preservation program.

One fix that would let that commitment reach survivors now would be the accompanying NYC 1515 Rental Assistance RFP.

Currently is open only to owners with city-administered service contracts, and that excludes every domestic violence supportive housing project because no city service funding existed for this population until NYC 1515 opened.

into survivors in 2024.

So we urged HPD to expand eligibility in the next round to projects with state administered contracts and we asked that survivors be named a priority population as these resources are allocated.

Regarding speed, we were thankful to be participants of the roundtables.

We're committing to helping

the administration implement those recommendations.

We have a platform called Fixing City FEPS on our website with our additional recommendations.

And namely, we want to name the Match Pilot Program.

We would like for this...

To be made permanent and extended beyond targeted developments and partner with population-specific providers.

Thank you for CHAP.

It's great progress, and especially it's reached beyond the DHS shelter system.

Chair, may I wrap?

Please.

Thank you.

But there's an important gap.

The eviction prevention category exclude rent-stabilized units, as you mentioned earlier, with regulatory agreements like us, New Destiny.

So we continue to advocate for survivors living in community to be eligible regardless of the type of housing they're in.

And then one more thing I want to say.

I know this is not a general welfare or public housing hearing, but we have to ring the alarm on NYCHA EHVs.

Thank you so much, yourself and Lincoln Ressler, for doing that earlier.

And finally, we hope that everyone's committed to passing COPA once and for all today.

Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Good afternoon, Chair Sanchez, the committee, and the other council members out there.