Morano questions Dalton on unannounced visit policy

Let me also follow up on one of the issues.

that several of my colleagues raised, which is this issue of was our visit there atypical, right?

A lot of us remember Hogan's Heroes when the Geneva Convention would come to town.

The POW camp was a very different place than on a typical day.

There was a flyer distributed, which was shown on the news and elsewhere, essentially warning folks to clean up containers of urine and things like that.

When I visited, ICL told me that, one, it's not atypical to have these sorts of flyers to encourage people to clean up their space.

And they also said that they would welcome unannounced visits from me or any of my colleagues.

There seemed to be a little confusion about what the policy in terms of unannounced visits is.

What exactly is the policy when it comes to unannounced visits?

Am I able to go to Borden Avenue today, tomorrow, next week without telling anybody?

As long as I sign that form that you referenced earlier.

I will start and I'll see if the Deputy Commissioner has anything to add there.

So as I mentioned before, and you probably don't want me to go through the whole thing again,

we have a policy and a set of procedures for entrance into our shelter system that are our way of complying with both state and local laws.

As DHS and the deputy commissioner can speak to that and a number of other people can make unannounced visits to check in on the conditions as part of our oversight responsibility.

And I think you would count this as an unannounced visit.

Last night, Chair Hudson and I

We coordinated, right?

So she coordinated with our office.

She signed the appropriate agreement.

And without telling the provider, which is the important part, and I can assure you I did not tell the provider that we were coming, we showed up at Borden Avenue Shelter around 8 p.m.

Last night.

And so that is an unannounced.

Right.

So I don't want to belabor the point because, but we do have a very cynical public, as you know, especially New Yorkers, right?

And it's a cynical public that I'm sure already thinks I'm being way too nice to you guys.

But a lot of folks will say that if you're telling the DSS commissioner,

Hey, you know, we're coming to this shelter today.

That's not exactly the same as just a regular unannounced visit of me going without telling you.

Yeah, so that is not currently in our allowed procedure.

And again, which is routed in state and local law.

There are some circumstances and, you know, it's written in those procedures, like the Coalition for the Homeless under court order.

We've protocolized ways that they can...

Do visits of that kind.

And it is, I think, possible to get to that kind of an understanding, but it is not our current approach.

We must follow the current and DHS, and certainly our providers must follow the current procedure that is laid out and allows us to comply with the current state and local laws.

Thank you.

Councilmember Wan.