Help The Homeless Newsletter
Welcome to the Spring 2023 semester! It was lovely seeing new (and familiar) faces at our Club Fair this week. We have 1o new members joining our team. We hope you are all having a great start to this year. This semester our amazing E-Board will find more volunteer opportunities and helpful resources which will be updated regularly through our social media channels and this monthly newsletter.
These monthly newsletter will be resources for all our members and anyone who needs them. Please share with friends, peers, and community members if necessary. We welcome any additions on any resources/events we should highlight in these newsletters.
Important Reminders:
- For our members who haven't already joined our Whatsapp groupchat, here is the link.
- Join our club on CampusGroups through this link.
- Follow Help The Homeless on Instagram where we post helpful city resources, relevant news, and club updates on meetings and events.
Our Monthly Meetings
Join us at our monthly meetings where we hold discussions on homelessless in the city and actions we can take as college students to mitigate the issue. So far in our past meetings we've discussed the impact of COVID-19 and politics on homeless communities. We will send out more information on future monthly meetings and keep you all posted on our social media channels.
Knowledge is Wealth:
An article you might find interesting. 
New York City is lacking public restrooms, but officials hope to offer some relief. Read more here: https://www.npr.org/2022/07/03/1108890230/public-restroom-in-new-york-city
Highlighted Resources:
If you know anyone who needs these resources, please share these with them.
- Food Help NYC (formerly Emergency Food Assitance Program (EFAP)) - ACCESS NYC Here is a resource to find local community kitchens or information about food stamps: https://access.nyc.gov/programs/emergency-food-assistance/
- CCNY Counseling Center The Counseling Center provides free and confidential services to all undergraduate and graduate students who are currently enrolled at City College. Services provided include screening and assessment, crisis intervention, individual short-term counseling, group counseling, referral and case management, and workshops.
More Resources
- CUNY Brooklyn College Student Center Room 524
Email: civicengagement@brooklyn.cuny.edu
- CUNY City College Hoffman Student Center
Email: bennysfoodpantry@ccny.cuny.edu
- GrowNYC
- Farmers Market Map 2022
- City Harvest
HTH Monthly Article Write Up
Title: Nearly 2,600 Apartments for Mentally Ill and Homeless People Sit Vacant
By Tanvir Rahman
With over 3,400 people living in the streets and subways as of January this year, it is clear that there is a strong demand for supportive housing apartments. While mayor Eric Adams is opening more of these housing settlements, filling them has proved to be a challenge — almost 2,600 supportive housing apartments remain despite the large homeless population.
The city has begun matching and placing prospective tenants into supportive housing at an expedited rate — between March and October this year, as many tenants were placed into supportive housing arrangements as in all of 2021. Furthermore, plans for opening two more supportive housing apartments have recently been announced (one in Dumbo and one at the Queens Hospital Center).
Despite this, a staggering number of these apartments remain empty. There are even more vacant apartments now than in March, and this number has grown by over 1,000 since July. While there are many supportive housing apartments available for use, they remain unutilized because of an intensive application process.
While over 7,400 people applied for supportive housing for themselves and their families in the past year, only 1,200 of them actually received an apartment. This can likely be attributed to the demanding application process.
The application requires extensive documentation that the majority of the homeless population has great difficulty obtaining. There are also multiple required mental health evaluations. Furthermore, matching an applicant to a housing program is difficult because there are different housing varieties, each of which can support a specific kind of tenant. Applicants must go through many interviews with housing providers to determine where they can be matched, which can take months based on their specific needs. Furthermore, many landlords simply refuse to accept people with criminal histories, which makes it much more difficult for many in the homeless population to obtain an apartment.
Obtaining safe and supportive housing is life-changing for those who do not have a home of their own. As one resident of the Queens project, Jesus Cerda, said: “It is truly a fantastic feeling to have tranquillity, the ability to cook my meals and focus on my next steps in life.” We possess housing that can definitively provide safety and stability for the homeless population, but we need to address the bureaucratic issues in the application process to make full use of them
(Source: NYT Article)
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Accesible 
Here is a presentation made by Yashaswi Manneru (City College '25) on the effects of weather on the homeless. 
. Volunteer with us at the Bowery Mission. Volunteers will help serve dinner to the bowery Mission's Tribeca Emergency shelter residents. Tasks may include serving food, preparing drinnks, meal prep, clearing tables, cleaning up, and helping with washing dishes.