Council Member Aviles asks about MOIA hotline usage and outreach

In terms of the hotline, obviously with the public charge change and just the constant surges of ice, well, potentially not

surges, but a consistent presence of ice across New York City.

What has been your experience of the use of the hotline?

Are you seeing any evidence of increases, positive engagement as a result of also the campaign to get information out?

Just would like to hear some more about that.

Yeah.

Before I turn it over to my colleague who is equipped with numbers, I do want to just say that our partnership with our legal service providers, with our hotline providers has been really strong.

We've put a tremendous amount of strain on them as well.

Given the climate that we are living in now, whether it's the expiration of TPS or an increase in ICE activity in our neighborhoods that we are also seeing and they are

fielding questions from the public on or public charge, there has been an increase in the number of calls.

And that is also due to the fact that there's been significant outreach.

And it's through partnerships with you all, frankly, and partnerships with council members when we are out in the community distributing our hotline information, people know that they can call and get some trusted, confidential legal support.

So I'm going to turn it over to Lorena to share some top line numbers on who's calling and for what.

I also knew you were going to ask about the hotline, Council Member.

But just to sort of say, we also have pivoted some of the work that the hotline is doing.

So it's a bit more targeted.

We had very targeted outreach for TPS, for example, clinics that were upcoming, as well as public charge.

So there is a direct loop back to some of these providers so folks don't have to go in circles and they're getting direct service.

I can tell you that with the launch of our targeted outreach for TPS for Haiti, at least 154 individuals were contacted for the hotline.

On the weekend when our team was out canvassing in Little Haiti, we saw a very direct increase.

I don't have that number in front of me, but I will get it to you.

And that's what we've noticed.

more that not only the mayor, who also shared the hotline, but also the direct touch point with community members has helped as well as some of our weekend hours.

As you know, we're available and open one Saturday a month, and we have seen an increase, again, with the collaboration of some of the outreach that we're doing as well.

Great, thank you.