Sweeping Homelessness Plan Released By NYC Speaker

NEW YORK CITY — City Council Speaker Corey Johnson released a sweeping new plan to combat an ongoing humanitarian crisis in New York City: homelessness.

"These are human beings and we have failed them over and over and over again," Johnson said on the steps of City Hall Thursday morning. "This is, without exaggeration, a humanitarian crisis."

Johnson's new plan, "Our Humanitarian Crisis: The Case For Change," comes as the city faces high homelessness rates, with 80,000 New Yorkers are homeless, and 20,000 are under the age of 18.

After 18 months of research, Johnson's team came up with a plan that calls for increasing the value of rental vouchers, creating a dedicated team to work with homeless people who live on the street, and the creation of a deputy mayor position whose purview covers both homelessness and housing.

"This is both a better way and a smarter way," Johnson said. "Blind spending will not solve the homelessness problem."

Current rental vouchers demand homeless people find two-bedroom apartments that cost $1,580 a month, a feat Johnson said was "quite literally impossible."

Johnson also called for redirecting housing efforts away from hotels and cluster sites and toward long-term affordable housing he argued would save the city money in the future, as it costs $5,900-a-month to house a family of four in a shelter for a month.

Johnson was joined by Nathylin Flowers, the homeless woman and advocate who tried to ask de Blasio for help at the Park Slope YMCA and was told by the mayor, "I'm doing my workout."

De Blasio released his own homelessness plan — to bring 1,000 new apartments reserved for homeless people and 1,000 beds into city houses of worship — in December.

The Mayor put the emphasis on street homelessness, which he vowed to end by 2025, and asked the city's 18,000 city employees to report people on the streets to 311.

That initiative came under fire in recent weeks when the city published photos of a cop-run command center, which homeless advocates feared would lead to the criminalization of poverty.

These fears were echoed by an NYPD whistleblower who reported pressure from the top to punish homeless people found sleeping on city subways.

Johnson told reporters his plan was inspired by his mother, who works with homeless people in Salem, Massachusetts.

Whenever his mom matches a person with a home, she fits it with furniture, decorations and engage in one final ritual, Johnson said.

"She does the happy dance with every single one of them," Johnson said. "Because of a lot of them don't have anyone to do the happy dance with."

Twitter embed used with permission from Breeana Mulligan, who shot and posted the video.