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‘It’s Like a Slum’: Supportive Housing Tenants Cope with Violation-Filled Homes. Provider Blames Underfunding
Postgraduate Center for Mental Health has $130 million in two cash reserves and steady funding from the state, but conditions inside the apartments it rents for low-income tenants continue to deteriorate. The organization says it is forced to rent substandard units because state contracts are too low to cover better housing.
As City Limits has previously reported, egregious, unsafe conditions plague New York City’s network of scattered-site supportive housing, where nonprofit providers with government contracts rent units in privately-owned buildings and sublease them to formerly homeless New Yorkers with mental illness, HIV/AIDS and other special needs.
“It’s like a slum,” one mother of two told City Limits of her unit, where she spent months without gas service and dealt with mouse and roach infestations. “And I didn’t feel safe.”
