Jean Stevens of Volunteers of Legal Service testifies on Homebase bottleneck

Good morning, Council Members.

My name is Jean Stevens.

I'm the Director of the Benefits Law Project at Volunteers of Legal Service.

Thank you so much for the opportunity to testify.

Vols strongly supports Introductions 101 because we know that a rapid decision on a CityFAPS application would assist in shielding our clients from eviction.

We also urge the Council to explore other legislation to expedite and streamline, with similar time limitations, the process for applicants applying through Homebase.

The Benefits Law Project assists New Yorkers who rely on public assistance programs, including CityFAPS, to survive.

With regard to CityFAPS, we work with pro se tenants facing eviction in Manhattan Housing Court to help them resolve their court case and avoid eviction by essentially obtaining rent benefits to pay their arrears so the case is over.

Generally, there are two types of CityFEP's applications.

Those who are obtaining CityFEP's to help them move, so they're in shelter or they're being evicted and they need to move and they need CityFEP's to move, and many of my colleagues in testimony today was about that.

Our office, we primarily assist with CityFEP's to stay, so they're getting CityFEP's to help them stay in their current apartment, and that'll get the arrears paid and help them pay their future rent.

We work with veterans, former city shelter residents, and APS recipients.

They are the people eligible for city FEPS to stay.

In other words, they're very vulnerable.

So what we do is...

Our office is not able to submit CityFEP's applications itself, so we have to work through Homebase.

We send our clients to Homebase with incredibly specific instructions of how to seek services.

We then follow up with their Homebase workers by email and phone.

We shepherd them through the intake process, the assessment, the application.

We check in weekly for updates.

What documents do you need?

We're working with landlord attorneys in the background to obtain the required landlord documents, and we're having our clients assign their required documents.

Throughout this process, our clients are running against the very short clock in their eviction case.

While we know that Introduction 101 will give a time limit on HRA's application process, we see the major bottleneck is with Homebase.

It's not uncommon for them to take up to 10 months to put together an application.

It loses documents, makes repeat Patrick requests, fails to communicate even to us what exactly is needed, doesn't keep tenants sufficiently updated as to what's going on, there's no portal.

They often pivot our clients away from city FEPS into different types of benefits, which will not help them in their court case and will not prevent eviction.

And also, we need to get involved ourselves as attorneys to be like, no, no, no, I'll process them for city FEPS.

To ensure that applicants are approved for city FEPS at a time that would actually prevent their eviction and avoid going into shelter, the council should pass 101 and implement other legislative efforts to streamline the process at the home-based stage.

Thank you so much.

Thank you for your testimony.

I was going to say there were many, many nods in agreement.

We'll have to look into that separately.

Okay.

Thank you.