NEW YORK, NY – In response to New York City Mayor Eric Adams’ first State of the City address, the Family Homelessness Coalition issued the following statement:

“The Family Homelessness Coalition is disappointed by Mayor Adams’ FY’23 Executive Budget and believes his plan does not go far enough to address the housing crisis facing families with children. As a candidate, Mayor Adams made a bold commitment to invest $4 billion per year to fund a comprehensive housing plan. Sadly, this budget proposes only an additional $500 million annually, far short of what is needed to ensure all New York City families with children can stay in their homes and out of shelter.

While we look forward to learning more about his proposed investments, we commend Mayor Adams for highlighting the need to expand access to public benefits and for acknowledging the vital role of essential workers and the need for a fair and livable wage in his budget address. We are hopeful the adopted budget will meet the needs of the human service workforce and commit to the JustPay campaign.

We are hopeful the Mayor’s upcoming housing and homelessness plan prioritizes the needs of families with children who are experiencing homelessness, eliminates barriers to accessing CityFHEPS and supportive housing, prioritizes upstream solutions, and invests in the

shelter-based and aftercare supports that are essential to child and caregiver well-being and to ensure educational, health and behavioral health, and employment needs are met.

We also applaud Council Members for calling for critical investments in advance of the executive budget release that will help families with children who are experiencing homelessness or at risk of homelessness, including increasing funding for CityFHEPS, improving access to supportive housing, opening up Housing Preservation and Development homeless set-aside to victims of domestic violence in emergency shelter and all shelter residents, and investing in community coordinators at family shelters. We also thank Council Members for raising awareness about the need to protect staffing at City agencies to ensure timely access to supports, including eviction prevention, legal counsel, public housing units, and subsidies.

We look forward to working with the Mayor and his administration and Council Members to ensure the upcoming housing and homelessness plan and the FY ’23 adopted budget take the necessary steps to bring family homelessness to an end once and for all.”