Morano asks Dalton about dedicated shelter for women veterans
Morano notes 55 women veterans in shelter and asks if DSS assessed a dedicated facility for military sexual trauma; Dalton says it has not been assessed but is open to looking, and Russell says numbers have historically been low but may be revisited.
Commissioner Dalton, hearing from two distinguished female veterans brings me back to your conversation earlier about women veterans in the shelter system.
Your testimony said that.
55 women veterans were in shelter as of last week.
Currently, New York City doesn't have a shelter exclusively for women veterans.
I'm wondering if DSS has assessed whether women veterans would benefit from a dedicated facility or some sort of specialized.
programming, particularly people that might be dealing with military sexual trauma and everything that comes with that.
In my time here, we have not assessed that, or at least that I'm unaware if we had.
But I think it's an excellent point, and we can take a look at that issue as we think about the system and system capacity going forward.
It's a relatively small number, but I understand the perspective for sure that...
That veterans and female veterans may also have special sets of circumstances and needs that could be served well in one facility.
We do, as we testified, have two facilities that have set aside spaces for female veterans where we do consolidate services.
It is run by the same provider that has veteran expertise on the single adult male side.
Deputy Commissioner, do you have anything to add to that?
So I just want to speak to historically we've always had
relatively low women veterans in shelter.
So we saw an uptick as recent as maybe 12, 18 months ago, but the number of female veterans in shelter has been between 30 or below, hence why there's never been a dedicated shelter specifically for them.
But as Commissioner Dalton pointed out, and as you pointed out as well, perhaps this is something that we should definitely revisit as we start to see the numbers of women coming into
the system.
I would venture to guess that the number of transgender veterans is also relatively low, but that still was enough to have us opt out of $1.4 million of federal grant money.
So even if there are only 30 or 40 or 58 female homeless veterans, if we could find facilities to make sure that they're accommodated and getting the services they need, I think that's an investment that taxpayers should certainly be interested in making.