Lee asks MOPD about DRIE outreach and enrollment process

Thank you so much.

I like to start with MOPD.

And give our Deputy Commissioner Shearer a bit of a break.

Commissioner Agarwal, could you share how MOPD participates in the outreach and enrollment process for DRE eligible New Yorkers?

Sure.

First of all, thank you to everyone to invite me here.

Broad picture, this is an affordability issue, and New Yorkers with disabilities face the highest true cost of living against other populations in New York City.

They also face the greatest

resource gap between actual income and true cost of living, nearly double the citywide average.

So with that in context,

of the outreach we have done so far, and then I'll talk about what we want to do further.

We have information on DRI in our website.

As New Yorkers can reach out, see that in the website.

We also, MOPD refers constituents seeking housing services, including DRI information.

And there's two ways we do that.

One, MOPD proactively shares information about DRI programs through

tabling, presentations, or just talking to folks.

So this morning I just got a constituent who met me in the Deaf Town Hall on Wednesday, and she wanted to talk about history.

So that's like a way that we engage.

We also have calling and emails, and we receive many emails about housing resources, and we share that to constituents as well.

MOPD includes DRI in our housing resource guidelines, which is provided at outreach events to community partners.

And

Like other people have said, if people need assistance and applications, we refer them to the Disability Service

Facilitator in Department of Finance and the Front Read.

Brent Rees out in PAU.

So those are all of the things we've currently been doing.

Moving ahead, I think MOPD is seeking to enhance our DRE outreach and information dissemination efforts because this is the

mayor's affordability agenda, and so we want to expand that.

And the most, the biggest barrier we've noticed is that people with disabilities face

tend to not have access to information.

And we are committed to providing that information to the communities that we serve.

For example, we are doing a home

access community engagement, disseminating information and answering questions about a range of housing resources, but that includes DREAM.

And we are also going to work with our city partners here, like

example, working with aging department.

And, you know, we are, we're very overlapped between the communities that we serve.

And so working with aging, we can maybe move that ball forward.

So that's just a little bit about what we want to do for the future.