Aristoteles Karassavidis, lived as a homeless and suffered paralysis in 2016, unable to return to work. He says that he was tough because he became homeless and started using a wheelchair.
“I couldn’t move much because I didn’t have an electric wheelchair,” Karassavidis tells us.
After a year of searching with the help of a social worker, she contacted the non-profit organization Breaking Ground who found her an apartment in Manhattan and also an electric wheelchair.
“It is a blessing to have a place where you can cook where you can go out independently. It’s wonderful,” she says.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced Monday the distribution of $60 million to help connect the more than 60,000 homeless New Yorkers to permanent housing.
In addition, 612 Section 8 housing vouchers will be provided to the NYCHA Housing Authority and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development.
Olga Álvarez, Spokesperson for the New York and New Jersey Department of Housing and Urban Development says:
“These funds come to really relieve and ultimately we always want this to go away.”
The funds will be distributed to nine non-profit organizations in the city that work to help homeless people find a home and health services.
“It will allow us to serve thousands with care for their general and psychological health, said the president of the Breaking Ground organization, Brenda Rosen, who will receive 11 million dollars.
Even with these funds, the participants say that it is necessary to work on access to build more housing.
“Housing for low-income people. These organizations have a lot of difficulty creating, it’s not that it doesn’t happen but we need more”, adds Ávarez.
