Mayor Eric Adams set to open ‘tent city’ for asylum seekers
Gothamist
Kathleen Cash at Safety Net Project [at the Urban Justice Center] called the photos of the new shelters “devastating,” describing them as “short-term municipal refugee camps.”Why New York Is Resorting to Tents to House Surge of Migrants
New York Times
Kathleen Cash, an advocate at the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center, called the pictures of what the centers might look like “devastating.” “Opening short-term municipal refugee camps through a separate city bureaucracy — while the mayor has repeatedly failed to honor the right to shelter, and has announced plans to ‘reassess’ it — is the kind of approach many feared this administration would take,” she said.The NYPD Now Decides What Homeless Encampments Get Swept
City Limits
“This decision is directly in line with his belief in widely discredited broken windows theories of public safety, which have hit poor and working-class Black and Latinx New Yorkers hardest,” said Karim Walker, an organizer and outreach worker with the Safety Net Project [of the Urban Justice Center]. “These sweeps are designed to break spirits and get people out of sight.
Intentional Investment in the Social Fabric of Neighborhoods Can Lift Families
The Imprint
“In places where structural disinvestment has depleted networks, parents are on their own. That has consequences. In its Community Health Survey, the New York City Health Department asks whether people in a community get together to discuss political and social issues, trust a neighbor with the key to their home, or would say something to a person who didn’t clean up after their dog. Neighborhoods lower on measures of social trust and control are higher on child welfare involvement.” - FPP Co-Director, Nora McCarthyWhat Would NYC Look Like Without Right to Shelter? Bleak, Say the People Who’ve Needed It
City Limits
Given the persistent crisis, what New York City really needs is a right to housing, said Karim Walker, an organizer [with the Safety Net Project] who spent years staying in public spaces, in DHS men’s shelters and in SafeHavens—facilities with fewer restrictions than the broader shelter network—before getting an apartment through a housing lottery.
There’s No Way FOSTA Isn’t a First Amendment Violation, Says Lawsuit
Reason
“There's no way the Allow States and Victims Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA) doesn't violate the First Amendment, argues a federal lawsuit challenging the law. Among other things, it criminalizes web platforms that facilitate prostitution...Briefs supporting the plaintiffs have been filed by the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center and more than 20 other groups.”NYC ‘nearing its breaking point’ amid influx of migrants, reassessing longstanding procedures
ABC News 7
“Challenging the right to shelter is dangerous,’ the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center wrote on Twitter. ‘Without this right, tens of thousands of people will be on the street.”Bill to Require Mental Health Staff at Family Shelters Spurs Worry Over ‘Unintended Effects’
City Limits
“But other advocates argued the resources the legislation looks to provide, while well-intended, would be better used to shore up mental healthcare options for families in shelter outside the facilities they’re staying in. ‘We think a better option for the city is to fund dedicated lines for additional mental health support off-site,’ said Helen Strom, homeless and benefits director at the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project.”
Yet another Rikers Island inmate dies in custody – the third since August
AM NY
"It’s now been just over a year since my son’s death in that place, and three more people have taken their own lives in the past month alone. I don’t know what the Mayor is waiting for to do something. Does he even care?" - Freedom Agenda Member Tamara CarterDetainee hangs himself on Rikers Island, marking 14th in-custody death
NY Post
“What are we going to have to do? Do they want us to film each funeral to see the families’ pain up close and personal? Doing nothing equals more death. The humans on Rikers are screaming for help. Is anybody going to help them?" - Freedom Agenda member Tamara Carter