Luz Katari testifies as survivor on system failures and housing

Good afternoon, Council.

My name is Luz Qatari.

I am chairwoman of Boricua Power.

I am a 40-year-old Boricua mother, survivor, and advocate from Spanish Harbor.

I come to you today as a mother and a survivor and a leader of families who depend on the very office you are reorganizing and moving.

You are making the decision about survivors without survivors in the room.

On paper, you call moving NGBV into the larger office of community safety coordination.

To us, it feels like erasure.

When you move a program, you don't just move an org chart, you move someone's lifeline.

And that erasure is already happening.

All the programs that were put in place to keep survivors and our families alive, flexible grants for rent, housing help, legal advocacy, food, clothing, and supplies for our children, on paper they exist.

But when you actually need them, they feel non-existent.

They are being slowly removed, defunded, or shuffled into other offices where no one is accountable.

No one is asking what happens to a mother and her children when that lifeline disappears.

This is what that failure looks like in my life.

I did everything we were told to do.

I have photos of the abuse, police reports, real-time voicemails threatening my life.

My lawyer wouldn't present that evidence.

The judge did not ask for it.

Orders of protection were issued and they were not enforced.

There were no consequences and now four of my five children live with the person who hurt us.

Fully.

When I saw emergency housing, I was told I was a low priority because he was no longer in the home on paper.

When I said I was still being threatened, I was told he seemed like he calmed down now.

I stood in a precinct playing death threats of real time out loud for officers and was told to go home and call if he showed up.

He did show up and nothing was done to him.

When I turned to the Family Justice Center, the revolving door continued.

For almost a year, I have been assigned and reassigned to multiple case managers.

Each one promised help with the basics, food and security, clothing, supplies for my child, and most importantly, housing stability.

My emergency housing voucher is being removed from the Section 8 program.

I need to transition to a new voucher to keep a roof over me and my 20-month-old daughter's head.

For months, I have asked for help applying.

It took forever for someone to finally sit with me.

Then at the last minute, I was told there were steps I personally had to take.

Steps that could have cost me my eligibility and my spot.

Steps no one told me about until it was almost too late.

At the same time this is happening, Section 8 placed multiple rent abatements on my apartment.

Management left that balance as my responsibility.

I am now facing eviction for arrears that are not my fault.

I beg to access the grants for family justice advertisers for exactly this.

I emailed, texted, and called every case manager they ever assigned me and their supervisors, and it was silent.

When someone finally called back, I was told the grants were gone and that I should have reached out for an update.

I have the receipts, the emails, the texts, the call logs, providing I did, and proving everything.

The system did not answer.

I am counted in those 67,733 visits that Family Justice Center says they get.

But my daughter and I are one missed grant away from losing our home.

A referral slip is not a service.

We all know how bad it is out there.

NYPD writes up a quarter million domestic incidents a year.

We lose more than 60 New Yorkers a year to domestic violence, half killed by a partner.

The hotline rings nearly 100,000 times, and on any given day across this state, over 1,000 survivors are turned away because there is no capacity.

But those numbers, which I've included on page, for the record, don't show whether a mother actually got help or how long she waited.

So I'm asking the committee to do what survivors need you to do.

Protect the programs we depend on.

Stop quietly removing them.

Track real outcomes, not just visits.

How long to a lawyer, to therapy, to funds, to stable housing.

Audit what you call a service.

Preserve NGB's independent and its own director, budget, and trauma-informed staff who understand coercive control and family court.

And fund consistent, accountable case management and enforce the court orders you issue.

I am not a case number.

I am Luz Qatari, a mother.

The system failed me and my children.

Don't let it fail the next family.

Thank you.