Picture the Homeless

Homelessness in New York cannot be separated from the issue of housing. The city’s best hope for reducing and preventing homelessness is a commitment to addressing the skyrocketing rents and general housing shortage that plagues New York and drives New Yorkers by the thousands into homelessness.

Through our Housing Campaign, homeless people developed a comprehensive housing platform to address the policy and program changes that would need to be enacted to really create housing, on a large scale, for the poorest New Yorkers—while at the same time challenging underlying causes of the housing crisis, developing communities, and building jobs.

The Housing & Jobs Platform calls on DHS and HPD and other city agencies to start taking active steps to force landlords to develop self-managed, tenant-owned housing for homeless people out of these buildings. Given the magnitude of the current crisis, the rights of landlords to keep tens of thousands of units off the market indefinitely must be weighed against the human rights of homeless people forced to live on the streets and in shelter and on the floors of family and friends, as well as the rights of communities to develop economically without the blight and devaluation that boarded-up buildings bring.

In order to build the political will necessary to move elected and appointed officials to back this agenda, we are focusing on grassroots organizing and mobilizing, as well as political education, to build a critical mass of concerned citizens who will join us in demanding real change around the issue of residential properties being kept empty.

We need help! To endorse our platform, or invite us to address your group, or to find out how else you can work with us to develop our communities and create housing and jobs for homeless people, email Sam or call us at 646-314-6423.


“The Housing Committee is trying to open up abandoned buildings, thus creating homes for homeless people; rather than putting good money after bad into a most wasteful shelter system—i.e. $704 million per year! Most of us are trying to regain control of our lives via a more normal living mode sans harassment; and, to be self-sufficient rather than rely on a paper-inundated system.”

—Jackie Pratt, Housing Campaign Leader

Picture the Homeless