On Wednesday, December 4 2013, our social justice group met and interviewed Stacey Cedano from the NYC Department of Homeless Services. We got learn about a government controlled organization called Home Base, which directs reaches out to families living in who are living in poverty and can barely pay the rent. Their main goal is to prevent families from ending up in shelters. Their are Home Bases set up across the boroughs, where people can reach out to the people there to receive information and help. Ninety percent of people who reach out to Home Base receive some kind of information or help. A program that we learned about (which in fact is conducted by the NYC Department of Homeless Services), called HOPE (Homeless Outreach Population Estimate), where staff and a group of up to 3,000 volunteers go out at night and count how many homeless people sleeping on the parks, streets,and subways in New York City. The purpose of this is to provide to statistics to leader be used in speeches and articles. The progress that the Hope Count is making does show improvement. Since 2005, the number of homeless people living in public places and on the street have decreased by 28%. Recent borough statistics have also shown that currently, people who are homeless will most likely spend their nights, either in the train stations, or on the streets of Manhattan.
We learned a lot about what the NYC Department of Homeless Service is doing to try and reduce homelessness in New York, and we had a great time interviewing Stacey.