The mayor of Newark (New Jersey), filed a complaint against that of New York, Bill de Blasio. In question, a one-year rehousing program, paid for by the New York administration and which would have pushed the homeless to occupy unsanitary homes outside the city.
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Since 2017, new York City has made it a point of honor to put an end to the phenomenon of homelessness. Its Special One-Time Assistance (SOTA) program consists of paying rent to homeless families for a year, in New York or elsewhere. Ras Baraka, the mayor of Newark, has filed a complaint against that of New York, Bill de Blasio, to put an end to this situation of “forced migration”, reports the Reuters news agency.
Since the start of the program, the city of Newark has welcomed more than 1,000 families. The mayor denounces a situation where these families have been offered “an offer they could not refuse”. While they were thinking of staying in New York, they were quickly offered apartments away from the Big Apple, often in less expensive towns in neighboring New Jersey. New York would thus have got rid of nearly 3,000 families, of which 2,200 were placed in New Jersey, several American media reported.
According to Ras Baraka, the city of New York has violated federal trade laws. The homeless were reportedly pressured by the administration to move quickly to housing outside the city, paid for one year by SOTA. They were driven to look for housing in New Jersey, in cities like Newark or Patterson, because that is where housing was accessible the fastest.
For the New York administration, this lawsuit will do more harm than good to families seeking housing.
“This is unfair, hypocritical and amounts to nothing less than discrimination on the basis of income. We will continue to fight to ensure that families have the right to seek stable and secure housing, ”said Avery Cohen, Bill de Blasio’s deputy press secretary, quoted by Reuters.
Unsanitary housing
The SOTA program had it all: getting families out of the New York shelter system to housing them in real homes and giving them a year to get back on their feet. However, testimonials appeared in the New York media, as WNYC and CBS New York: many families were housed in dilapidated apartments, sometimes without electricity, water or heating.
As relates un journal local, some owners have taken advantage of the program. Paid for the coming year by the SOTA, they could afford to leave the accommodation as it is and do no repairs. Housed free of charge, the new tenants had no way of putting pressure on them. New York City was supposed to carry out inspections, but these never took place. After a year, some families returned to a shelter to give themselves time to find “whatever else”.
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