16 The Courier sun • OCTOBER 27, 2016 for breaking news visit www.qns.com City’s homeless services commissioner gives update on shelter plans across Queens By Angela Matua [email protected]/@AngelaMatua After growing concerns that the number of homeless shelters in Queens was rising, Human Resources Administration/ Department of Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks paid a visit to the borough on Wednesday night to address the state of homelessness. Banks attended a Queens Borough Board meeting in Kew Gardens on Oct. 19 to provide an overview of the shelter system and new changes in policy and to answer questions from community board members and elected officials. The number of homeless people in the New York City shelter system has now reached about 60,000 men, women and children, according to Banks. This number represents a 115 percent increase since 1994. About 8,500 homeless people occupy 3,000 units in Queens. Banks said he attributes this rise to the lack of rental assistance programs in the city between 2011 and 2014. When he took over HRA and DHS, the administration reinstated these programs and increased funding for legal assistance and rent arrears from $6.4 million to $62 million. As a result, marshal evictions in the city are down 24 percent. “For many years the city didn’t have effective and robust prevention programs in place,” Banks said. “The most significant growth occurred when New York City had no rental assistance program to help move New Yorkers out of a shelter or to keep them from shelters.” The increasingly expensive housing market is also partly to blame, he said. About 500,000 New Yorkers fall into debt and cannot pay their rent, and three in 10 residents are spending more than 50 percent of their income on rent. Banks announced that DHS and Photo by Angela Matua/THE COURIER Commissioner for DHS/HRA Steve Banks visited Queens to talk about homelessness in the borough. HRA are in the process of implementing 46 reforms to change the way the city deals with homelessness. One of the changes involves a “borough-wide approach” to homelessness. Queens residents who go homeless will be placed in shelters in Queens rather than being bused to other boroughs. This change will help shorten students’ commutes to school and allow families to get medical care and jobs in the borough they live in, he said. Mayor Bill de Blasio said his administration will prioritize phasing out the use of hotels as shelters. Banks reiterated the claim but said that first, the city will look to eliminate cluster sites by 2018. Cluster sites are apartments that the city has been renting for 16 years as shelters. Located mostly in the Bronx, the city will look to negotiate with landlords to give leases to 12,000 homeless people who currently live in these 3,000 units. “If we’re not going to keep renting apartments and take them off the market that means if a family with children comes in on any given night we need to find some place to put them,” Banks said. “And that’s when we get to the increased use of commercial hotels.” Banks said the city cannot phase out cluster sites and hotels at the same time. He drew a distinction between shelters and commercial hotels, saying that the city is giving neighborhoods at least 30 days’ notice when a new shelter opens but does not have to give notice when hotel units become occupied overnight. This policy will change, he said, and new reforms will be released in the coming weeks. “It’s clear to me and people in this administration that the fact that hotel rooms had been rented for many years without any notification process has to be changed,” Banks said. Advertorial Legally Speaking By: Scott Baron, Attorney at Law HIT BY A WHAT Q: I was working on a construction project for a six-floor building. On the top of the building, workers would pour cement into two-by-four wooden frames. When the cement was almost dry, the workers would pluck the wooden form out of the cement and lower the frame to me on ropes. My job was to clean the forms, on the ground, six feet away from the building. I would untie the frames and wash off any cement that remained stuck to them. All of a sudden, I was struck on the head by something falling. I did not see the object, how it fell, or where it fell from. However, I believe that I was hit by cement that had fallen either from the top of the building or from a two-by-four frame being lowered to me. After I was struck by the object, I saw pieces of cement on the ground. I am sure they had not been there before. A: It seems clear that you were hit by a piece of concrete, so that the owner and general contractor are subject to liability under section 240(1) of the Labor Law. Your attorney will argue that, no matter whether it fell from the floor or from a frame, the object was a ‘load that required securing’. Accordingly, the owner and general contractor are subject to falling-object liability, under section 240(1) of the Labor Law. The defendants also appear to be subject to liability under section 241(6) of the Labor Law, premised upon section 23-1.7(a)(1) of the Industrial Code. This is because the defendants failed to use appropriate safety devices to protect you from overhead hazards in an area where you were required to work that was normally exposed to falling material or objects. The law responds to changed conditions; exceptions and variations abound. Here, the information is general; always seek out competent counsel. This article shall not be construed as legal advice. Copyright © 2014 Scott Baron & Associates, P.C. All rights reserved. 159-49 Cross Bay Boulevard, Howard Beach, New York 11414 • 718-738-9800 1750 Central Park Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10710 • 914-337-9800 1-866-927-4878 The law responds to changed conditions; exceptions and variations abound. Here, the information is general; always seek out competent counsel This article shall not be construed as legal advice. Copyright © 2016 Scott Baron & Associates, P.C. All rights reserved. 159-45 Cross Bay Boulevard, Howard Beach, New York 11414 1750 Central Park Avenue, Yonkers, NY 10710 (718) 738-9800, (914) 337-9800, 1-866-927-4878 Call Now & End Your Tax Nightmare! • Owe the IRS more than $10,000? • Being Audited? • Unfi led Tax Returns? • Wage & Bank Levies? Co-Author of the best selling book “Breaking the Tax Code” (T) 877-TAX-1040 (F) 718-894-4476 Salvatore P. Candela, EA, ATA, ABA Enrolled Agent - Tax Advisor [email protected] www.thetaxadvocategroup.com
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