Graham Horn, staff attorney in NYLAG’s Shelter and Economic Stability Project, testified before the New York City Council’s Committee on General Welfare about our recommendations around expanding the CityFHEPS Rental Assistance Program:
NYLAG urges this committee to be cognizant of the ways in which the
expansion of case management services can be overseen and further resourced to
ensure that these services are helpful to our clients. Providing more case
management to homeless clients is another step in ensuring that shelter is an
accessible and helpful resource on the path towards permanent housing. Increased
staffing at all levels of the bureaucratic chain will bring internal and external relief:
allowing DSS to be more responsive to issues and more communicative to their
clients and community partners. Similarly, a digitized document system, which
provides voucher-holder access to information about which documents have been
accepted and rejected, would work to simplify the communication morass that
currently plagues the CityFHEPS approval system.
