Facing potential cuts while tackling New York’s affordable housing crisis

While 1 in 5 of the nation’s homeless individuals currently live in New York, shelter providers and nonprofits continue to be targeted by federal budget cuts and unexpected searches by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials – discouraging those in need from seeking help.

According to Project Renewal, one of New York City’s veteran social services nonprofits, these federal changes are cornering supportive housing providers, threatening both employees and patients. In order to weather this unpredictability, nonprofits are strengthening coalitions to protect the sector at large.

For 58 years, Project Renewal has provided shelter and substance use treatment to over 100,000 people, helping build pipelines toward stable livelihoods through its comprehensive housing, employment and medical service model. Of the 900 Project Renewal employees, 130 are current graduates of the nonprofit’s services, imbuing their lived experience to strengthen its suite of programs. As members of the communities they serve, many providers have reported an increase in encounters with ICE officials.

Eric Rosenbaum, president and CEO of Project Renewal spoke to City & State’s New York Nonprofit Media on how the organization plans to regroup amid potential federal cuts, is building coalitions and how it is confronting the fears that have arisen from ICE’s enforcement. This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

As nonprofits across the city are going through a lot, how are you feeling?

I’ve never experienced more uncertainty than at this moment. We’re coming toward the end of the fiscal year. The city owes us an enormous amount of money, and not just for Project Renewal, but most nonprofits in our sector. So we’re trying to run scenarios of how we would respond to specific cuts in specific areas. But there’s this larger question of what could really happen that no one can plan for. We have to rely on coalitions and partners that are more national or larger in scale to navigate whatever actually happens. Because we can’t deal with this independently.

Has there been an increase in nonprofit coalitions? Whether it be sharing resources or just offering support?

Certainly. We’re talking to each other more and sharing experiences. When I realized how much money the city owed us, I reached out to my peers. Sure enough, there are patterns. On one hand, that’s pretty frightening, because that means the whole system is not functioning well. But it’s also reassuring, because it means that it’s not something uniquely happening to us. 

As one of the largest social service providers in the city, Project Renewal could absorb a big blow from the changes at the federal level. How are you setting an example of resilience for other nonprofits?

The question I’m asking myself is – what does smart courage look like? Courage could be dangerous or damaging. But what is savvy? What is strategic courage in confronting both the problems that we exist to solve? We can’t put ourselves at existential risk, and that’s why the uncertainty of this moment is so challenging. What I’m noticing is that our staff and our clients have a much higher degree of anxiety. Many of our staff come from the communities that we serve and have lived experience. So the generalized anxiety is at both levels.

So how are you planning to weather this uncertainty?

We’re being very, very cognizant of collecting the money that we’re owed. The city owes us a lot and we’re working very, very hard to collect it, to build up cash reserves so that we can be financially resilient. We are offering a lot of support to our staff, to help our employees deal with the anxiety. We’re also a little bit more careful about hiring, as we’re anticipating some budget cuts. The last thing is reminding everybody of the significance of our mission and the role that we play. We’re not just helping the people we serve. We’re helping all New Yorkers be safer because of what we do.

Has there been an increase in people experiencing homelessness since the beginning of the Trump administration?

No, we haven’t experienced an increase in numbers. In fact, there’s a little bit of a counter trend, probably because some people are actually afraid to come out and ask for help. Even if they’re citizens and legally here, they’re worried about being picked up. One of my senior vice presidents was stopped by ICE just from coming out of the subway and was asked for citizenship. So there is fear that is making people hold back on asking for help.

So are the people on your staff also being threatened by ICE?

Yes. And if not them directly, then they all have friends and family. So it’s not just a theoretical situation, for a lot of people, it’s quite real.

Another elephant in the room is the status of the “City of Yes” housing plan. What are your thoughts on pushback against it?

I’m a big supporter of the City of Yes. And I wish it had been more ambitious. My understanding of the program is that it was designed to be a little bit more housing in a way that reflects the unique characteristics of each neighborhood, so no neighborhood is overwhelmed or disproportionately burdened. I’m disappointed that neighborhoods are trying to reject it because they don’t really have an alternative. New York City, we are in a genuine housing crisis. It’s estimated that the gap in affordable housing is half a million apartments, and the “City of Yes” only incrementally adds 80,000 units over a decade, so it doesn’t even come close to the full scope of need. The alternative is more people on the streets or in shelter, or simply leaving New York because it’s so unaffordable.

Do you feel like this opposition is a bit misguided?

I think there’s generalized fear, and some of that fear is based on beliefs that are just not supported by facts. For instance, there’s a belief that shelters or supportive housing lowers property value. But that’s not really borne out by research. There’s a fear that it’s going to overwhelm services like transit, parks or schools. A resistance to change is kind of instinctive. And some of it is a misunderstanding of the program.

Earlier on you mentioned that this recent instability across the sector is revealing a few system inefficiencies. As someone who has been in this field for a while, what’s still not working?

One thing that’s not working is on-the-ground coordination. Often there are a lot of services that are available, but they’re not working together effectively. People do, in fact, fall between the cracks. There can be a lot of services available in a neighborhood, but the service providers aren’t directly connected. So there might be an outreach worker who starts building a relationship with someone on the street, but that outreach worker doesn’t know that there is a substance use treatment facility three blocks away. So I think on-the-ground coordination could be a lot better.

So how could we improve coordination?

I think neighborhoods like community boards could be more directly involved, allowing connections to be more local so neighborhood residents have greater visibility into what services are actually happening. I think part of NIMBYism is a feeling of being disempowered by decisions that are made at a higher level without local awareness or input. And there’s an unhelpful dynamic in which the more people feel disempowered locally, the more they just fight anything.

You mentioned that you weren’t cutting back any programming just yet. Do you anticipate pulling back on some programming in the near future?

We have programs that we are supposed to open in the next year, and we will probably scale back if we’re not confident that we have the budget. We have not seen yet any direct cuts of any significance to our programs. But like I said, we have to imagine or anticipate that there are going to be cuts in funding or executive orders that restrict what we do, and we’re anticipating that.