FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Sunday, March 13, 2022
CONTACT
Sara Newman, 646-907-9052, info@openheartsinitiative.org
Advocates and Directly Impacted Hold Vigil for Fatally Shot Homeless New Yorker, Call on Mayor Adams to Provide Safe Haven for Unsheltered Individuals
NEW YORK - Tonight, homeless New Yorkers and advocates gathered at the site at 148 Lafayette Street in Manhattan where a homeless individual was fatally shot yesterday. Activists called on Mayor Adams to provide safe, dignified, and private accommodations for homeless New Yorkers in the form of Safe Haven beds, stabilization beds, and single-occupancy hotel rooms, which unsheltered individuals are more likely to accept than congregate shelters. During the vigil, another homeless New Yorker was found dead in Lower Manhattan after being shot–the third such attack and second such death in the area this weekend.
The vigil and rally was organized by a coalition of homeless New Yorkers and advocates, including the Open Hearts Initiative, VOCAL-NY, Shams DaBaron a.k.a. Da Homeless Hero, Housing Works, and Home is a Human Right.
“We are absolutely heartbroken by this senseless loss of life. Homeless New Yorkers have been made vulnerable by the city’s policies. When the COVID hotels closed, many people returned to the streets, because they did not feel safe in the city’s congregate shelters with an airborne virus circulating. We know what works to get people indoors: offering private, dignified, and safe accommodations. The city needs to immediately scale up access to Safe Haven and stabilization beds, where we know people will accept shelter. Until it does that, it should stop chasing people around and sweeping them off of streets and subways, forcing them into ever less safe locations. That’s not outreach, that’s harassment. We demand the city offer homeless New Yorkers safe haven now,” said Corinne Low, co-founder and executive director of Open Hearts Initiative.
“The best way to end violence against homeless people living on our streets is to provide them with safe and secure housing that offers them privacy, dignity and the health care, behavioral health services and case management that supports them in living their lives whole,” said Charles King, CEO of Housing Works.
“To be clear, this tragedy is the direct result of a growing reckless and hateful anti-homeless culture that has been allowed to exist by the current mayoral administration and the media. It’s one that praises the criminalization and stigmatization of people experiencing homelessness. It is this very same rhetoric that has emboldened and self-deputized others to inflict harm on community members who already have to endure state harm and failed policies. We do not need new iterations of previously failed outreach experiments and the criminalization of our biological need to sleep. We have said it before and we will say louder, the answer to homelessness is permanent, safe and humane housing and care. That is what justice looks like for people experiencing homelessness,” said Celina Trowell, Homelessness Union Organizer at VOCAL-NY.
“I’m deeply disturbed by these horrible attacks on homeless New Yorkers. When I was homeless, my biggest fear was dying. No one wants to be on the streets or in the subways--people end up there because the only other option they are given is to enter a congregate shelter that dehumanizes them. I'm asking Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul to immediately open more Safe Havens and stabilization beds to offer single-occupancy rooms to homeless New Yorkers,” said Shams DaBaron, a.k.a Da Homeless Hero.
Background:
On Saturday, March 12, two homeless individuals were shot (one fatally) while sleeping on the streets in Lower Manhattan. Police believe that the same individual is responsible for both shootings. The shootings follow the deadliest year on record for homeless New Yorkers, and they come less than one month after the Mayor’s Subway Safety Plan was implemented with the goal of getting homeless New Yorkers off the subways. As of March 2, just 22 individuals out of hundreds contacted by outreach teams accepted placement at a shelter.
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