Maritza Rico of New Destiny Housing testifies on domestic violence survivors and EHV risk

Thank you, Chair and Councilmember Brewer and Murano for staying.

My name is Maritza Rico, and I am the Policy and Advocacy Manager at New Destiny Housing.

New Destiny is the only organization in New York focused entirely on permanent housing for survivors of domestic violence, which is the leading cause of family homelessness.

We operate the city's first and largest federally funded rapid rehousing program for survivors, and we are the biggest developer and provider of supportive housing for New Yorkers impacted by domestic violence.

As a co-convener of the Family Homelessness Coalition, we support the testimony of the members with lived experience who spoke during the previous panel, their experience and former policy requests.

We will submit written testimony with our full comments, so I will highlight our main points today.

I must begin by raising the alarm about NYCHA-administered emergency housing vouchers and the thousands of households at risk of losing their homes when funding runs out in November.

Thank you, Councilmember Brewer, for meeting with us on this yesterday, and Chair Hudson for your advocacy, your joint letters, and everything else.

We urge the administration to create a dedicated city FEPS carve-out for NYCHA EHV households, an administrative step that DSS can take now to prevent homelessness and preserve the communities and support networks families have rebuilt.

We deeply appreciate the council's efforts to address CityFEP's administrative burdens through

Today's legislation, as we've all said, City of Epsom is critical for the more than 60,000 households, including those survivors with children, especially as the federal funding dwindles.

Our housing navigators work with voucher holders every day and have seen administrative breakdowns cause month-long delays, returns to shelter, and at times return to unsafe housing.

We support the intent of the bills, including improvements to inspections, response times, data reporting, and payments.

May I please wrap?

Yes.

Our recommendations are informed by our work inside the system and by survivors'lived experiences.

For instance, response time should account for both DHS and HRA review, and faster processing must not result in more denials.

We support allowing quick fixes during inspections, but any portal-based improvements will only work if the platform itself is functional and can handle increased volume.

And while we support faster payments, we are concerned that if lease reviews remain slow, more packages could stall past their leasing dates and require new ones.

We're happy to be a resource to the council and the committee staff as the bills move forward.

Thank you so much.

Thank you so much.