Chair Hudson questions DHS on Rikers closure and shelter planning
Hudson asks about projections for people leaving Rikers. Dalton says the administration is convening partners to provide direct shelter access and avoid traditional intake, and to connect people to benefits and behavioral health care.
I'd like to ask a few questions related to Riker's closure.
And planning for that.
As the city moves toward closing Rikers Island, what projections has the administration developed regarding the number of individuals who will require transitional housing or shelter placements upon release, and what specific housing capacity is being developed to meet that demand?
Yeah.
I don't know if I can answer that question specifically, but the administration is convening all government partners to think about how we are executing on the closed Rikers plan, including looking at
efforts to ensure that people who are coming out of Rikers who don't have any other place to stay have more direct access to our shelter system so that they need not go
through intake and assessment after they've been in essentially an intake and assessment facility for some time, that we can do that directly.
And looking at the kinds of programming that people need to be successful, whether that be access, as much as we can do to get people's access to benefits.
Restarted as they exit.
Anything from that to making sure they have proper behavioral health care.
And again, to obviously the key component with us is making sure that they can get into the housing system that will work for them.
Speaking my language, that sounds as close to auto-enrollment as one could perhaps get.
So I support that.