Restoring Dignity to NYC Shelters: VOA-GNY Testimony on Shelter Safety

 October 28, 2026—VOA-GNY testimony to the New York City Council Committee on General Welfare Oversight Hearing on Shelter Safety:

Introduction and Thanks: My name is Eric Lee, and I am the Director of Public Policy for Volunteers of America- Greater New York (VOA-GNY). We are a local affiliate of the national organization, Volunteers of America, Inc (VOA). I would like to thank Chair Hudson and members of the General Welfare Committee for the opportunity to submit written testimony. 

About Us: VOA-GNY is a 130-year-old anti-poverty organization that aims to end homelessness in Greater New York through housing, health and wealth building services. We are one of the region’s largest human service providers, impacting more than 12,000 adults and children annually through 70+ programs in New York City, Northern New Jersey, and Westchester. 

We are also an active nonprofit developer of supportive and affordable housing. VOA-GNY as a robust portfolio of permanent supportive housing, affordable and senior housing properties totaling over 2,100 beds—with over 2,700 more homes actively in the pipeline, the vast majority of which will be for low or extremely low-income individuals and families. 

Background: 

VOA-GNY has been providing shelter services to homeless families since 1991 when DHS first began contracting with nonprofits to do so. We operate 5 shelters for singles adults, 1 low threshold safe haven for individuals experiencing street homelessness, 7 shelters for families with children, and 7 HRA domestic violence shelters serving families and individuals fleeing domestic violence. VOA-GNY also operates a DHS Street to Home program which moves individuals experiencing unsheltered street homelessness directly into permanent supportive housing within 1 to 2 weeks of referral. Volunteers of America – Greater New York is a member of Homeless Services United, the Family Homelessness Coalition, and the Homes Can’t Wait Coalition. 

Thank you, Chair Hudson, and Members of the Committee, for your steadfast leadership and support for people experiencing homelessness and for today’s hearing examining shelter conditions. A well-supported trauma-informed workforce in dignified spaces is the most effective way to make shelters safer and more dignified. To achieve this, DHS must revamp model budgets, including decent wages for staff, cover actual costs to preserve PS funding and provide funding to repair and maintain facilities. 

Shelter spaces should feel safe, dignified, and welcoming to the people coming through their doors, but unfortunately this is not the current reality for every site. Harsh lighting and noisy congregate dorms can mirror environmental triggers associated with heightened stress responses and emotional dysregulation. 

VOA-GNY took a critical lens to the buildings we operate, to see where we could do better. Our recently released Restoring Dignity Report offers practical ways to redesign existing shelters sector wide to incorporate trauma-informed design elements to reduce. We welcome the Council and administration’s leadership and support to utilize the recommendations included in the report to address existing shelter conditions caused by decades of disinvestment from prior administrations. 

People experiencing homelessness have diverse experiences prior to entering shelter, and effective design must be responsive to population-specific needs.1 Veterans may need calming spaces to counteract PTSD and other mental health challenges, while chronically homeless individuals do well in spaces that convey respect and control and a sense of place.3 Survivors of domestic violence can benefit from enclosed outdoor spaces which offer a place to relax and let their children play while avoiding the chance of being spotted by their abuser.4 

Specialized spaces can have improved outcomes for shelter residents. Study spaces in family shelters can improve educational outcomes for students who tend to achieve lower than their stably housed peers.5 

New York City must undertake financial and structural interventions to create a smaller, more efficient and humane shelter system, that treats people with dignity, promotes stability, and enables more rapid pathways to permanent housing. 

To facilitate this vision, VOA-GNY recommends: 

1. Wider and more direct access to rental assistance: VOA-GNY appreciates the Council’s steadfast commitment to expanding rental assistance to more households experiencing homelessness and housing instability. Households should not need to enter shelter just to access a rental assistance voucher. And more permanent housing resources are needed to help households in shelter who do not qualify for any other housing assistance. In doing so, the City can reduce the number of households entering shelter while hastening more shelter exits to permanent housing. 
   1. Remove punitive standards for CHAP eligibility and termination from HPD’s proposed rules. The Council and the Mayor came together to establish CHAP to help more New Yorkers exit and avoid homelessness, and these rules should honor that shared commitment to safeguard tenants instead of implementing a discriminatory higher standard, putting them at risk of further housing instability, discrimination, or intimidation. 
   2. Budget for continued growth of CityFHEPS and CHAP. CityFHEPS is the most effective tool for helping households exit shelter, and CHAP was envisioned to help otherwise ineligible households qualify for rental assistance. Forthcoming city budgets must maintain continued growth of both programs to continue to enroll new households. 
2. Conduct a capital needs assessment of DHS/HRA shelters. While the administration testified that it uses submitted “New Needs” to gauge the physical conditions of shelters, the reactive nature of new needs would be akin to using emergency rooms to track someone’s health. Like ER visits, new needs are a way to address urgent needs like a boiler breaking or roof leaking, but the City’s aging shelter portfolio is overdue for a check-up to see what other undiscovered conditions need to be addressed. A comprehensive shelter assessment of DHS and HRA sites would help the city understand which could benefit from reinvestment, and what is needed to make them dignified, trauma-informed spaces. These assessments can review the status of electrical grids for environmental compliance and load capacity for air conditioning, ADA accessibility, major building systems (i.e., plumbing, boiler, roof), and additional trauma-informed design modifications, in line with standard tri-annual practices at NYCHA. 
3. Update the DHS model budget and fund building maintenance. DHS undertook model budget exercises in 2018 to lift the lowest reimbursed shelter programs, however budgets were not indexed to inflation, resulting in budget gaps over time as fixed rates did not keep pace with rising costs like electricity and insurance. Due to non-indexing, 30-year nonprofit term sheets will run deficits by year 10, and these budget variances are not insignificant. One of our small family shelter’s actual costs is off by as much as 231% due to non-indexed rates.  Additionally, successive PEGS and unfunded mandates like Local Law 35 of 2023 resulted in other vacant positions being cannibalized and staff lines consolidated to achieve budget targets and compliance. DHS must revisit model budgets, both to index budgets to inflation, as well as restore and enhance staffing levels within programs to increase services to better support shelter residents. Model budgets must also include adequate funding for building maintenance, to ensure that small problems do not grow into larger ones which can negatively impact clients. 
4. Establish a dedicated renovation and preservation fund. The City should dedicate funding for major Capital repairs and trauma-informed redesigns of City-owned shelters. Funding could be realized from reinvested savings from converting or taking offline the worst shelter environments or shedding costly excess emergency capacity in hotels with short-term contracts. Providers are currently forced to spend down all funding by budget year, which limits how they can repurpose accruals from underspending. Allowing providers to deposit accruals into a fund for multi-year capital projects would allow owner/operators to move away from one-off “new needs” requests and enable long-term planning and lasting renovations. 
5. Transfer ownership to nonprofit operators. Nonprofits as owners and operators can invest and leverage independent funding to renovate, repair, and convert aging shelter facilities. Transferring ownership is a win-win for the City and providers, as it unlocks capacity for providers, reduces delays, and improves accountability, while saving the City money and protects it from risk. 
6. Empower nonprofit operators in the capital process. Providers are uniquely situated to best understand challenges and needs of programs they operate and should be more involved in the planning and execution of capital repairs. Improvements can be made in DHS’ communications to providers regarding projects in their capital designs, allowing for provider input on design, and sharing project timelines with providers to facilitate smoother implementation preparing clients and staff to accommodate on-site work, adjust temporary relocations or changes to facility operations, and ensuring efficient progress. 
7. Embed trauma-informed design standards systemwide. The City should build upon prior efforts of its Shelter Repair Squad (SRS) initiative to improve conditions in shelter, by establishing design guidelines for all shelters paired with funding for retrofitting. Design guidelines could focus on meeting six human needs: dignity and self-esteem; empowerment and personal control; security, privacy, and personal space; stress management and coping; sense of community; and beauty and meaning.8 
8. Invest in purpose-built, population-specific shelters. Utilizing demand projections, the City can avoid overbuilding and ensure the pipeline is aligned with the need, reducing long-term shelter costs. 

Related Legislation VOA-GNY Supports: 

VOA-GNY appreciates the Council’s continued leadership and support for non-profit homeless service providers. To achieve a trauma-informed shelter system, the City must first restore the fiscal health of non-profit providers by resolving chronic contract action and invoicing delays. Thanks to the leadership of the Council and passage of Local Law 156 of 2025, establishing 50% advances for non-profit contracts, all VOA-GNY’s contracts received their advances for FY26. Thank you. This gave our programs much needed relief at the start of the fiscal year, but a good number of our contracts still do not have approved budgets which prevents them from invoicing, as we creep closer to recoupment of advances. 

To permanently resolve cashflow delays for non-profit homeless service providers, we welcome the Council’s continued attention in urging the administration to standup processes to implement Local Law 11 of 2026 in advance of July 1st, 2027. Quarterly advances will mitigate recoupment negative cashflow and contracting delays. 

Int 900 (CM Lee): VOA-GNY supports this legislation to require payments of undisputed amounts under city contracts. Reimbursements for tens of thousands of dollars should not be delayed for weeks or longer because the invoice is off by literal cents. By paying the undisputed amount while still taking time for items which require further review, the city can maintain cashflow for city-contracted services while ensuring responsible use of public dollars. 

Int 901 (CM Lee): VOA-GNY supports this legislation to enable payment of invoices during pending budget modifications. Currently, providers must weigh whether they have sufficient cash on hand to pause invoicing, in order to submit a budget modification, as we cannot invoice while the budget modification is active. Given the complexity of programs, the city should not force providers to shut off cash flow for the entire budget to process a budget modification not directly impacted by the invoice request. Int 901 will require the City to more efficiently administer City contract actions and disbursement of public funds for city-contracted services. 

Int 1053-2026 (Restler): VOA-GNY supports this legislation to develop model procurement staffing plans for human services agencies. DHS fiscal staff headcount has not kept up with the exponential number of contracts and contract actions which their department oversees. This legislation would require city agencies to develop staffing plans which reflect the workload 

they are overseeing, to ensure that government is responsively administering public dollars for city-contracted services. 

Int 1047-2026 (Lee): VOA-GNY supports the intent of this legislation to establish “Budget readiness” standards for city contacts. We note that to achieve these timelines, it is critical that city agencies must have sufficient procurement staffing as outlined by Int. 1053 to eliminate processing delays for new needs and other cost escalations. It is critical that DHS eliminate these delays so that providers have updated approved base budgets within the current contract year, to resubmit for the next contract year. 

Int 452-2026 (Stevens): VOA-GNY supports passage of the Human Services Wage Equity Legislation to establish wage parity between City and nonprofit human services workers. While COLAs can help workers keep up rising inflation, they are not a long-term solution to addressing chronic underpayment of government contracted human services workers. Our nonprofit workforce is paid a fraction of what City workers earn doing equivalent work. This legislation would seek to close the gap, lifting wages of our workforce to be more competitive with other social services fields. 

Closing 

VOA-GNY is grateful to Chair Hudson and Members of the Committee for your continued leadership and support of people experiencing homelessness. We look forward to your continued partnership to improve standards and services in shelter for New Yorkers. 

Testimony respectfully submitted by Eric Lee. 

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to email me at [email protected]. 

References

2 Kessler, R. C., Aguilar-Gaxiola, S., Alonso, J., Benjet, C., Bromet, E. J., Cardoso, G., … Koenen, K. C. (2017). Trauma and PTSD in the WHO World Mental Health Surveys. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 8(sup5). https://doi. org/10.1080/20008198.2017.1353383

3 Light, P., Selcer, L., Sargent, K., & Sperry, D. (2022). Trauma-Informed Design for Homeless Populations. In Hok (p. 02). https://www.hok.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/trauma-informed-design-for-homeless-populations-hok.pdf

4 Refuerzo, B., & Verderber, S. (1990). DIMENSIONS OF PERSON-ENVIRONMENT RELATIONSHIPS IN SHELTERS FOR VICTIMS OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. The Journal of Architectural and Planning Research, 7(1). https://www.jstor. org/stable/43028944 

5 Advocates for Children of New York. (2026). Educational Indicators for Students Experiencing Homelessness, 2024 25. https://advocatesforchildren.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/sth_educational_indicators_2025.pdf

6 Pable, J., & Ellis, A. (2010). Trauma-Informed Design: Definitions and Strategies for Architectural Implementation. In Design Resources for Homelessness [Report]. https://www.designresourcesforhomelessness.org/_files/ ugd/48961a_6fc2baee2a724f7c9b1360450786c35e.pdf

7 Berens, M. J. (n.d.). Designing the Built Environment for Recovery from Homelessness: A Review of Research. https:// healingattention.org/wp-content/uploads/Designing-the-Built-Environment-for-Recovery-from-Homelessness.pdf 

8 Pable, J., & Ellis, A. (2010). Trauma-Informed Design: Definitions and Strategies for Architectural Implementation. In Design Resources for Homelessness [Report]. https://www.designresourcesforhomelessness.org/_files/ ugd/48961a_6fc2baee2a724f7c9b1360450786c35e.pdf