Name: Alexander Donadic

Social Justice Group: Homelessness in NYC (A)

Date of Fieldwork: February 14, 2025

Name of Organization and person (people) with whom you met and their title(s):Molly Park, Commissioner of Department of Homeless Services

What I did and what I learned about my topic, activism, social justice work or civil and human rights work from this fieldwork:

My partners and I were lucky enough to get an interview with the commissioner of the DHS (Department of Homeless Services). We got to interview Molly Park, about what she wanted to do for the city and what she has already done for the city. When we asked her what she wanted to accomplish this year she said she has a whole list. One of the main things was reducing the numbers of homeless people and connecting people to permanent housing. Since she was appointed for this position she has already increased the number of people connected to permanent housing by a lot. She then talked about how covid had a big impact. During Covid 19 everyone had more services and more help, and when that all stopped people started having nothing to eat and nowhere to live, which has caused a massive increase in homelessness in the past few years.

We asked Molly what was one thing she would change about homelessness in NYC, and she said having more housing availability. She said that NYC doesn’t have enough housing to have everyone with a roof over their heads. If it was possible she would want to make more housing available and build more places for people to live. We then asked our last question about where she thought homelessness will be in 10 years. She said that New York City will try their best to make more housing space and get as many people housed as possible. But on the other hand she said that rent will definitely keep increasing, causing homelessness to get worse and worse. Rent is already too high in NYC, so if it gets worse and worse homelessness will become an insanely big problem.