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Daily News Op-ed: Restoring Dignity to NYC Shelters

Jeff Ginsburg urges the city to invest in the spaces where New Yorkers experiencing homelessness seek safety in an op-ed for The Daily News.

Large congregate dorm rooms
At Schwartz Men’s Shelter, large congregate dorm rooms with little to no personal privacy can amplify stressors such as crowding, noise, and lack of security.

Water dripping through a leaky roof, constant noise, and little privacy are just a few examples of why many New Yorkers experiencing homelessness avoid the shelter system. Living conditions like these can make an already difficult moment much harder, writes Dr. Jeffrey Ginsburg, President and CEO of VOA-GNY, in The Daily News.

VOA-GNY operates shelters for individuals and families across New York City and has a challenging time making simple repairs to improve living conditions for people experiencing homelessness. Many shelters are operated by nonprofits like VOA-GNY but are owned by the city or private entities, limiting our ability to make improvements. City rules and lengthy approval processes for renovations can take years to address.

VOA-GNY’s new report “Restoring Dignity” draws from our own work at like Schwartz Men’s Shelter on Wards Island and other shelters to show how these barriers play out in practice and what it would take to remove them.

Ginsburg urges the city to invest in spaces for homeless New Yorkers:

“New York City must assess the infrastructure needs of every shelter, as we did at Schwartz, and develop a capital plan to bring them up to a real standard of quality: quieter places to sleep, private spaces to decompress, furniture that doesn’t feel institutional, choice over things like lighting, and places for children to play or do homework. It should also create a dedicated renovation and preservation fund so operators can move beyond one-off repairs to lasting improvements.”

Read the full article at The Daily News.