Lauren Schuster testifies for Urban Resource Institute

Good morning.

I am Lauren Schuster, the Chief External Affairs Officer at Urban Resource Institute.

I just want to thank my fellow panelists for sharing, using your voices to uplift survivors that we all serve.

Thank you, Chair Frias, members of the committee and staff for holding this important hearing.

URI is the largest provider of domestic violence shelter services in the country.

Every night we provide safe housing, sadly, to 4,000 individuals, 65% of whom are children.

25 years after its creation, NGBV remains an essential voice for survivors.

That role matters today as much as it did back then.

While other violent crime has dropped, domestic violence rates remain relatively unchanged, particularly in black and Latinx communities in parts of the Bronx and Brooklyn.

The decision to move NGBV into the Office of Community Safety and to change its leadership was announced without consultation.

That has really defined our partnership over the past two plus decades.

And for a field that's built on trauma-informed practice with transparency and partnership at its very core, that absence of consultation was felt acutely by the providers in the survivor community that we all serve.

Decisions of this magnitude should be made in the future with survivors and providers at the center.

I will say that since then,

And Deputy Mayor Francois and Commissioner Delaney Brumsey have engaged with us in an incredibly collaborative manner.

They visited URI's Midtown office and just yesterday did a walkthrough of the Bronx FJC.

URI is the contract holder there.

We're encouraged to hear that they're planning a provider advisory council and that they are engaging in an inclusive strategic planning process.

We believe that NGBV, regardless of where it falls in the org chart, must continue to play a pivotal role in coordinating the services, the supports that survivors

access when they are in crisis and in need of help.

That is the role that they have played and must continue to play.

At the same time, we're grateful for the investments that were made in the budget.

This most recent budget funding was increased to the FJCs, to youth violence prevention, to immigrant legal services.

These are all critical investments for survivors, the families that rely on them and the communities that they live in.

I mean, we're really just looking for increased partnership on these and so many more issues.

I want to highlight just in closing, I know I went way over and I apologize, prevention.

We speak so much about domestic violence after a horrible situation happens that's in the headlines.

There's a story of a family annihilation.

We can and should be investing in prevention because there are ways to stop violence before it starts to identify and interrupt those cycles.

of violence, both with youth intervention and also with people who have caused harm.

And so that is my soapbox, and I appreciate this.

Thank you so much.