Carl Wilson questions Dalton on street outreach coordination

Thank you, Chair.

Hello, Commissioner.

I want to turn back to street homelessness and outreach.

The other honorable chair brought up.

You know, I know you have a very difficult job.

And, you know, when we have these conversations,

Passions run high, but I would like to acknowledge how difficult of a task that you have.

And I know from interactions on issues in my district, I appreciate how hands-on you've been personally coming to walkthroughs, et cetera.

So there was a report in Gothamist that highlighted the exorbitant amounts of money that are being spent on outreach, yet the results seem to be going in the other direction, in a negative direction.

What yet it compares to under the Bloomberg administration when there was outreach that was individualized for each borough that a decrease had happened, a 40 percent decrease in street homelessness.

Yet now I'm hearing from meetings that I'm having in district.

One of the problems is about the amount of outreach workers.

Not being able to coordinate, not being able to share information, leading to individuals on the street having like four, five different agencies approach them, ask them for shelter, but there's not a coordination or like individual strategy.

Who's the front, you know, who's leading that?

So how do we, how do we fix that?

How do we get the coordination together so that these people doing this really difficult work

are getting a result.

Thank you so much for the question and for raising the issue that I agree is a very important component of the way we engage and serve our unhoused neighbors.

And this, too, is an area that I'm taking close look at.

We've been holding meetings across city government and with state partners as well, looking at those very issues, and we'll be very pleased to share more in the homelessness plan.