(GATEWAY HOUSING) November 15, 2020

Gateway Housing is excited to celebrate two recent victories on issues at the center of our advocacy efforts during the pandemic: last week’s restoration of capital funding for affordable housing development, and the Mayor’s announcement Monday that every family shelter in New York City will be wired for broadband Wi-Fi service.

Restoration of Capital Housing Funds:  In June, as the pandemic upended the City budget, the de Blasio administration cut spending on capital housing development by $1.2 billion – $586 million in CFY2020 and $477 million in CFY2021. While the City’s fiscal pressures are quite real, the cuts to capital housing development did little to balance the budget, while delaying production of much-needed affordable housing, as well as the creation of thousands of jobs associated with that development.  

Gateway Housing was the first to make the case that the cuts were ill-advised in this op-ed in Gotham Gazette. And we were proud to play a key role behind the scenes in the campaign to restore the cuts led by the New York Housing Conference. Former Gateway Housing Associate Director Brendan Cheney authored NYHC’s cogent analysis that showed the cuts would result in the delay of 11,000 affordable units and the loss of 10,000 jobs, while saving the City less than $30 million a year.

The efforts of the New York Housing Conference, Gateway Housing, the Supportive Housing Network of New York, New York State Association For Affordable Housing and others led the de Blasio administration to find a way to restore $466 million to this year’s capital housing budget. While it’s not a complete restoration, these new funds will allow for the creation or preservation of more than 10,000 units of affordable housing, keeping the mayor’s 12-year, 300,000 unit housing production initiative largely on track. A special thanks to Deputy Mayor Vicki Been, HDC President Eric Enderlin, HPD Commissioner Louise Carroll and Councilman Brad Lander for their work achieving this critical restoration during such challenging times. 

WiFi in Family Shelters:  When the pandemic suddenly closed schools in March, staff at the NYC departments of education and homeless services worked with their nonprofit providers to move heaven and earth to help children in homeless shelters quickly make the shift to remote learning.  Their herculean efforts to purchase and distribute tens of thousands of computer tablets with cellphone data hotspots at lightning speed allowed most of these vulnerable children to connect to classes and keep up with their studies in an unprecedented time of crisis.

But many shelters are in cellphone dead zones, and as more children logged on and remote learning activities began including live streams, it quickly became apparent that making broadband Wi-Fi service available to all family shelter residents was the best way to improve homeless children’s ability to connect to school and continue learning.  

Back in April, Gateway Housing led the way wiring family shelters for Wi-Fi. As we entered the homestretch of Attendance Matters, our two-year program pilot to improve homeless children’s school attendance, the pandemic suddenly closed schools, and Gateway pivoted from getting sheltered kids to school to bringing school to the shelters. With funding from the Robin Hood Foundation and JPMorgan Chase, Gateway helped BronxWorks wire its three family shelters for WiFi, and connected its other Attendance Matters partners (HELP USA, CAMBA and Win) to installers and funders like the New York Community Trust, in an effort that led to Wi-Fi connectivity in twelve DHS family shelters.  

We are pleased that Gateway’s example (along with critical pressure from the NYC Comptroller, the Coalition for the Homeless and the Legal Aid Society) has led the City to commit to install Wi-Fi in all 200+ shelters in the DHS family system.  We are already finding many ancillary benefits: Wi-Fi not only helps children connect with school, it improves their parents’ ability to conduct job and housing searches, facilitates telemedicine consultations, and reduces the stigma homeless teens encounter, by allowing them to keep connected with their friends on social media.  

In the 21st century, broadband Wi-Fi has quickly become an essential utility, as important as heat and hot water. We continue to work with our government partners to help fast-track an efficient implementation of this important effort, one that we hope will one day extend its benefits to single adult shelters and low-income neighborhoods, so that we can better bridge the digital divide for all New Yorkers.