Policy and Advocacy Committee
The Policy and Advocacy Committee is a group of active OHI members who work with OHI staff to shape the organization’s citywide and statewide policy advocacy and build other members’ participation in that advocacy.
What the Committee Does
Leads annual process for setting policy priorities
Coordinates OHI members’ participation in issue campaigns to enact those priorities, including identifying and developing specific opportunities for members to take action (focused on our unique vantage point as a group of mostly housed neighbors)
Learns about policy priorities and advocacy and legislative strategy together, and helps disseminate that information to educate other OHI members
Creates and disseminates resources to help OHI members participate in policy advocacy
Works with chapters to integrate opportunities for city and state advocacy into existing events
Creates and convenes opportunities for community among OHI members who are taking part in policy advocacy
What We Advocate For
We envision and advocate for a city where every person has access to permanent housing that they can afford, and where shelters serve only as an emergency backstop. To help us get there, OHI advocates for policies that would help prevent homelessness and policies that would make it easier for folks to exit homelessness. And as we work to welcome and support neighbors experiencing homelessness in our communities, we also advocate alongside them for policies that would improve their lives right now wherever they’re living. Learn more about the values that guide all of OHI’s work here.
Get Involved
Interested in getting involved? Reach out to Sara at sara@openheartsinitiative.org, or see below for our upcoming meetings. The Policy and Advocacy Committee currently meets twice a month and will begin meeting on a monthly basis in 2025.
Upcoming Meetings
Our History
OHI’s Policy and Advocacy Committee began in 2020 on the Upper West Side, and has since grown to include OHI members from across the city. We’re proud of our policy advocacy efforts since 2020–including fighting for housing vouchers with the Homes Can’t Wait coalition, lobbying dozens of city and state legislators about key bills, and organizing a powerful forum for mayoral candidates that put questions from folks experiencing homelessness front and center.
We’re excited to be deepening our advocacy work in the coming year and making some structural changes to how the committee functions.
Our Approach
OHI’s approach is grounded in the belief that building connections between housed and unhoused neighbors and advocating for policy change go hand-in-hand. Homelessness is a policy issue, not a personal flaw, and ending it requires changing the systems that got us here in the first place. Housed New Yorkers have an essential role to play in pushing for those policy changes. At the same time, our power is in doing this work in our own “backyard.” Our voices hold the most weight in our own communities, and we are most effective when our advocacy is grounded in real, person-to-person connections with neighbors experiencing homelessness. Our policy advocacy is informed by and informs our chapters’ neighborhood-level work.