Whitney Tilson Unveils Plan to End Street Homelessness Once and for All!
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Tilson Unveils Bold and Actionable Plan to End Street Homelessness. Plan will forbid anyone sleeping overnight in our public spaces, expand and improve shelter capacity, build a mental health clinic network, and increase the city's housing supply.
Today, Mayoral candidate Whitney Tilson unveiled his bold and actionable plan to end street homelessness in New York City at the historic Bowery Mission shelter on the Lower East Side. His plan includes forbidding anyone sleeping overnight in our public spaces, expanding and improving shelter capacity, creating a network of mental health walk-in clinics and long-term psychiatric care, and addressing the housing crisis by cutting red tape and increasing the supply of affordable housing.
“Eric Adams and his fellow career politicians have been promising for decades to fix the homelessness crisis – and they have failed. Despite spending $4 billion last year, more than 4,000 New Yorkers continue to sleep in our parks, streets and subways every night. It’s not normal and it’s not acceptable that anyone is sleeping overnight in any public space. It’s dangerous for them and wrecks the quality of life for all New Yorkers, so the city council must repeal its ‘right to sleep outside.’” said Tilson.
While New York City provides shelter to 90 percent of its unhoused population, 10 percent of the homeless population – about 4,000 people – continue sleeping in our public spaces, in dangerous freezing conditions like those we have experienced this week. Just two months ago, an unidentified man died sleeping outside in Tribeca during a particularly cold night.
Unlike every other mayoral candidate, Tilson recognizes that it’s impossible to end street homelessness unless it is forbidden. But we must lead with compassion to help, not criminalize, the street homeless.
Tilson has vowed that within the first 10 months of his mayorship, City government will end street homelessness once and for all.
Tilson’s plan focuses on five key strategies:
1) Expand the capacity of short-term drop-in centers. No one in this city should go to sleep without a safe environment and roof over their head.
2) Improve the quality of shelters, many of which are so unsafe that people experiencing homelessness are choosing to be on the streets.
3) Invest in, expand, and massively improve our mental health system. The City will build new systems, such as creating a network of city-wide walk-in mental health clinics, like how we provide CityMD today for physical care.
4) Work in partnership with the state to expand its facilities for long-term psychiatric care. The state has been closing them for decades, with 72% of the reduction since 2000 occurring in New York City. Many of those kicked out have ended up on our streets.
5) The best thing we can do to reduce homelessness – and ease the affordability crisis that’s plaguing all New Yorkers – is build a lot more housing. With its dense population, 1.4% vacancy rate and high rents, real estate developers would love to invest in building new housing and renovating our existing housing stock, but onerous zoning restrictions and regulations have made it almost impossible. The City of Yes legislation that passed recently is a step in the right direction, but 80,000 new homes in the next 15 years is only 10% of what we need. Tilson will fight for the other 90%.
“Homelessness isn’t a crime—it’s a tragedy, and the real crime is how Adams and our city have failed the thousands of New Yorkers living on the streets. They need our help, and my administration will provide it,” Tilson said.