Opinion: Securing the Future of New York’s Supportive Housing

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“New York is a national model of supportive housing, which has been proven time and again to be among the most successful methods of ending chronic homelessness. But the system has grown unwieldy, thanks to the vast disparities in available services, funding, and unit maintenance.”

Diane Louard-Michel/Lantern Community Services

A supportive housing building on East 176th Street in the Bronx.

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Members of the New York City-based nonprofit St. Francis Friends of the Poor, who pioneered permanent, affordable housing with on-site voluntary services for formerly unhoused individuals, wouldn’t recognize the expansive, complicated, and multifaceted system that grew from the seeds they sowed 44 years ago.

Today, New York has than 62,000 supportive housing units. They span 18 unique programs, are overseen by nine government entities, and encompass 46 specific population categories, providing homes and support to at-risk populations in every county across our state.

A first-of-its-kind report from the Supportive Housing Network of New York (the Network) revealed the significant funding discrepancies between these programs, which makes it difficult to ensure tenants get the quality housing and services they need and also to pay essential social services workers the competitive and sustainable wages they deserve. 

Of particular concern is the stark contrast between the first state-funded initiative, the New York State Supportive Housing Program (NYSSHP), and the 2016 Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative (ESSHI). The failure of the governor and state lawmakers to address this discrepancy in the recently enacted 2024-25 budget was a significant oversight that could have a devastating impact on vulnerable formerly homeless individuals and families.

NYSSHP began in 1987 and has helped generations of vulnerable individuals–including survivors of domestic violence, seniors, families experiencing homelessness and those facing mental health or substance use challenges, among others. As a resident of the NYSSHP-funded Kathlyn Gardens, quoted in the Network report, said: “This place has given our mom the ability to raise us safely.”

Despite NYSSHP’s undeniable successes, stagnated funding threatens to erode its impact. This is particularly glaring when NYSSHP, which provides $2,964 for an individual and $3,900 for a family per year for services only, is compared to ESSHI, whose residents receive $25,000 per household per year for services.

This year, the Network asked the state to include revenue in the budget to convert 9,000 homes funded solely by NYSSHP to the ESSHI program. These units are most at risk of coming offline at a time when the homelessness and affordability crises are mounting by the day, and the loss of even a single unit is something we simply can’t afford.

The State Senate included $32 million in its budget resolution to pay for the first year of what the Network envisioned as a five-year conversion. But somehow, these critical funds weren’t included in the final budget deal. This is, quite frankly, inexplicable.

Many NYSSHP buildings and other supportive housing programs are in buildings that are decades if not centuries old. The Network’s report found that only 6 percent of congregate buildings over 15 years old have been rehabbed.

This is particularly concerning for NYSSHP’s relationship to the Supportive Housing Preservation Program capital funding under NYS Homes and Community Renewal (HCR), which aims to preserve 3,000 supportive housing units in five years. Without the conversion from NYSSHP to ESSHI rates, the long-term underwriting for these deals very rarely works. Both tenants and staff pay the price of leaky roofs, faulty elevators, and outdated facilities that are not handicapped accessible.

New York is a national model of supportive housing, which has been proven time and again to be among the most successful methods of ending chronic homelessness. But the system has grown unwieldy, thanks to the vast disparities in available services, funding, and unit maintenance. Some buildings boast new, modern amenities while others are in desperate need of repair.

As we approach the 50th anniversary of supportive housing, it is time we reflect on how far the movement has come and chart a course for its continued improvement well into the future.

Albany must do the right thing by NYSSHP tenants and pass a stand-alone bill in the post-budget session to convert those 9,000 units to ESSHI. Now is the time to take the fundamental promise of supportive housing–that all residents deserve equal resources and care–and modernize and improve the model.

By doing so, we can finally help New York end homelessness–and we cannot afford to delay.

Pascale Leone is the executive director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York (the Network).

Jace Frederick: Seeds of Timberwolves’ current championship culture were planted two years ago

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The Timberwolves played without their top defensive player in Monday’s Game 2 in Denver, yet turned in perhaps their best defensive performance of the season, suffocating the Nuggets to go up 2-0 in the Western Conference semifinals.

How do you explain that? Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said the performance without Rudy Gobert was actually a testament to Gobert’s impact.

“His presence and what he’s infused into the team, how important defense is and how great we can be when we play it,” Finch said. “Rudy’s driven the defensive culture here.”

The culture where everyone takes pride in the defensive end — paying attention to the details of the game plan and winning their individual matchups on a possession-by-possession basis. That’s how you sustain yourself as the top defensive team in the NBA.

“Our identity is defense,” Wolves big man Naz Reid said.

But really, it’s more than that. The Wolves’ identity is bringing a winning-level of effort to the court every game, no matter who is available or not. If you’re going to beat the Timberwolves, you’re going to have to make the plays to win it.

And making those plays is increasingly difficult to do when a defender — or two — is consistently occupying your airspace.

To beat Minnesota in the playoffs, you have to be comfortable being uncomfortable. You have to be willing to drop the gloves and exchange blows. You have to be willing and able to exert yourself to your maximum potential for 48 straight minutes — 48 minutes of hell.

It’s a miserable existence for a basketball team but — as these playoffs and the Timberwolves’ rising popularity have shown — an enticing watch for basketball fans. The Timberwolves are gaining supporters with each passing performance.

This team’s culture is one the sport’s fanatics can rally around.

“It’s always been … gotta learn how to compete, then you gotta learn how to always compete and then you gotta learn how to compete at the high levels,” Finch said. “When you do that, you give yourselves a chance to win no matter who is available on your roster. The goal has always been to put out a team that people like to cheer for. That doesn’t happen unless you play hard and it usually doesn’t happen unless you play defense and share the ball. We’re doing all those things right now.”

Giving yourself a chance to win regardless of the lineup. Putting out a team people like to cheer for. Playing hard every night. Those traits define the 2023-24 Minnesota Timberwolves. But this isn’t the first Timberwolves team that has exhibited those traits.

Those are exactly the characteristics you wouldd use to describe the 2021-22 Minnesota Timberwolves. That was a plucky bunch that first put the Wolves back on the map of the local sports scene.

That season featured a win over Boston with a COVID-depleted roster led by Jaylen Nowell and Greg Monroe. By season’s end, Target Center was the host of numerous basketball parties, including a raucous regular-season finale in which Minnesota played no one of note but still battled to the end with the likes of Nathan Knight in a tight loss to Chicago.

“This is a team a lot of people like to watch play. We play hard, share the ball. It’s pretty exciting,” Finch said that season. “Even our mistakes are interesting. It feels like we’ve got something growing here and we’ve just got to keep building on it. It’s our responsibility to keep giving them performances they can cheer on.”

The mistakes — which, as Finch noted, were interesting — were sometimes frequent, but they were generally made with the best intentions in mind. The 2021-22 Wolves were scrappy, hard-working and resilient. This year’s team hasn’t lost three games in a row all season; the squad from two years ago didn’t lose three in a row over its final 46 games.

That team just wasn’t as veteran and smart as this year’s edition, nor nearly as good. But it wasn’t for a lack of effort.

There was no Mike Conley, nor Rudy Gobert.

The roster was not built to play defense, but managed to survive — and at times thrive — on that end due to shear hustle. Anthony Edwards was 20 years old at the time, and Jaden McDaniels was 21/ Both were still NBA infants. Naz Reid was 22 years old and still in the process of refining his skill and sculpting his body. Karl-Anthony Towns was still learning how to play winning basketball.

But that team similarly bought into playing hard and conforming to an identity. It was also a group of guys who mostly like one another and had fun on the floor. Those players were also held to a certain standard, and strived to reach it.

It all resulted in a wildly overachieving team that won 46 regular-season games.

That season made it clear that Finch was both a motivator and a unifier. If he could get a team with a backcourt of D’Angelo Russell, Malik Beasley and Nowell to buy in, doing so with this year’s collection of talent has likely been a breeze.

At the end of that season, Patrick Beverley was asked what Minnesota needed to do to take the next step defensively. He responded with one word: “personnel.”

That has been upgraded in a big way over the past two seasons, via both transactions and development.

Minnesota’s current roster is elite — both from talent and depth perspectives. But that doesn’t always guarantee success. Better talent doesn’t necessarily equal better results.

The players, no matter how good and experienced they are, still must work together toward a common goal and supply the necessary sweat equity to reach the desired results.

When you can do that with championship-caliber players, you compete for titles, as the Timberwolves are primed to do this postseason.

When you can do that with two very different rosters in terms of quality and personality, you’ve achieved a sustained culture — one Finch and his coaching staff have cultivated for years now — that currently is producing a bountiful harvest.

“When I first got here, it wasn’t the best, it wasn’t perfect. But obviously we’re all humans, (and) over that time we gradually got better. We got more cultured,” Reid said. “Time (came) to where we kind of became a unit, a team where we trust each other. We’re selling out for each other. Even Rudy not being here (for Monday’s game), we love that he had his child, so just the trust and the love we have for each other is on another level.”

A championship level.

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Trudy Rubin: 2024 isn’t 1968: University protesters need more clarity about their goals

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As someone who remembers when Columbia University students took over Hamilton Hall 56 years ago, let me say that 2024 is not 1968.

Back then, our whole country was engaged in debate over the justice of a Vietnam War that involved tens of thousands of American troops. Today, students are setting up tent encampments to protest a war that is not ours, but where U.S. weaponry is being used to kill thousands of Palestinian women and children — after Hamas murdered and kidnapped about 1,200 Israeli civilians.

Today’s cause is far murkier, since some of the demonstrators are “anti-Zionist,” which can be seen as wanting an end to the Jewish state. Some are also pro-Hamas, ignoring that terrorist group’s murderous pledge to kill all Israeli Jews.

But many other protesters — understandably aroused by videos of starving, maimed, or dying Gazan children — aren’t thinking that far ahead. They want their universities’ endowment funds to divest from U.S. companies involved in sales of weapons to Israel that accelerate civilian deaths.

So are the universities justified in calling in the cops? Are the demonstrators current or future antisemites? Or have they opened a debate that even strong supporters of Israel ignore at their peril?

Here are four points that lay out my thinking. Feel free to email me your thoughts.

Why only Gaza?

It stuns, but does not surprise me, that student concern over civilian deaths and starvation does not extend to Vladimir Putin’s relentless and deliberate bombing of Ukraine’s schools, hospitals, markets, churches, and apartment complexes. This Russian terrorist campaign has turned dozens of Ukrainian villages, towns, and cities into ash and surpassed Israel’s destruction in Gaza many times over. The student outrage also ignores the massive and terrible civilian slaughter ongoing in Sudan, especially in Darfur.

I’ve concluded, after much reading, online videos, and talking with friends’ children and grandchildren at various universities, that the draw of the Israel-Hamas conflict is not necessarily antisemitic. It attracts many students who view it as the last white colonial project, where white people kill brown people.

Never mind that half of Israelis are brown or Black, having fled discrimination in Arab or African countries, and many of the rest are descendants of Holocaust survivors. And never mind that pre-1967 Israel was recognized by the United Nations. To undo its statehood by force (as Putin is trying to do to Ukraine) would delegitimize the borders of countless other post-World War II states.

But leaving those inconvenient realities aside, the colonial analogy has gained traction after negotiations failed over establishing a Palestinian state in the occupied West Bank and Gaza (virtually all of whose borders and economy are still controlled by Israel). Now that peace talks are dead, the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is dominated by right wingers who want Israel to annex the West Bank and Gaza, so the colonial analogy becomes more attractive to many students.

Out of that analogy comes the slogan, “from the river to the sea,” which has been projected onto buildings and shouted by many students on and off campus. This means one Palestinian Arab state that would include Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza, from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea.

Many demonstrators and key student organizing groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine, along with Jewish Voices for Peace, call themselves “anti-Zionist,” meaning they oppose the existence of the Jewish state. This cannot help but unnerve Jewish students, whether or not they have relatives in Israel.

What does anti-Zionism mean?

I’ve heard students insist that theirs is only a search for justice, with equal rights for Palestinians and Israelis within one state. But no one has yet explained to me how 7 million Jews would be convinced, short of destruction, to dismantle a prosperous modern country.

I doubt that many campus demonstrators have thought through what the term anti-Zionist means or how to establish one Arab state from the river to the sea. The big question: Do those students who fly the Hamas flag even know how Hamas envisions that project? The terror group’s conception makes clear why Hamas can have no future role in ruling Gaza or negotiating over a Palestinian state. It also lays bare why student endorsements of Hamas are so ugly — even if they are protected speech.

The Hamas charter calls for killing all Jews in Palestine, with a later version merely calling for a temporary truce if a Palestinian state is established alongside Israel. In late 2021, at a Hamas-funded conference in Gaza, participants discussed how Israeli spoils would be distributed after Palestine was fully liberated “from the sea to the river,” and a new state established on the ruins. Jewish fighters would be killed, others might be given time to flee. But, said the concluding document, educated Jews and experts would be “retained” for some time to pay back for “the knowledge they had acquired while living in our land.”

It is time for pro-Palestinian demonstrators who call themselves anti-Zionists to clarify what they mean by that term, and how the concept differs (if it does) from the death and destruction that Hamas has in mind.

Protests, not encampments

However, and I stress this, students have every right to speak freely and to demonstrate for a Gaza cease-fire, for more humanitarian aid, and for divestment. I have written on conditioning U.S. support on Israel permitting more humanitarian aid to flow into Gaza and on its safe distribution.

Of course, free speech — including speech some may find offensive — does not extend to blocking or threatening others, whether intimidating Jewish students at Columbia, or attacking pro-Palestinians at UCLA. Nor does it confer the right to disrupt the functioning or safety of the university, including the taking of finals and graduation ceremonies.

Permanent encampments, or occupations of buildings, provide magnets for outsiders and encourage radicalization. Mark Rudd, president of the Students for a Democratic Society who led the 1968 Hamilton Hall occupation, recalled to NPR in 2010 how another SDS student leader burned 10 years of research papers in the Hamilton Hall office of a faculty member who had annoyed him by trying to mediate with students.

Better if university leaders can negotiate a student exodus, as happened at Brown University, and avoid the viciousness of law enforcement at the University of Texas at Austin. But if repeated and final warnings are rejected, along with compromise proposals, the only option for administrators is to call in law enforcement.

Extremists on both sides

Where the student mantra against occupation has legs is in the West Bank. While all eyes are on the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s far right ministers are encouraging settler violence against Palestinians on the West Bank and pushing for massive new Jewish settlements there.

The Israeli far right’s openly expressed goal is to make life untenable for Palestinians in both the West Bank and Gaza, and it hopes to drive many Palestinians into Egypt or Jordan. Enabled by Netanyahu, the far right’s written objective is a reverse parallel to the Hamas charter: one Jewish state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, where reduced numbers of Palestinians can either submit to Israeli rule, leave, or die.

If the right wing succeeds, then future student demonstrations will be protesting against a true apartheid state.

The only way to block Hamas and Israel’s far right is to reach a humanitarian cease-fire, as the White House is urging. That opens the door for new Palestinian leadership in Gaza, rebuilding the strip, and a possible path to a two-state solution.

But (as of this writing) neither Netanyahu nor Hamas appear eager for such a U.S.-backed cease-fire because it could lead to the political demise of both. Hamas leader Yehya Sinwar says he would be willing to sacrifice 100,000 Palestinians for his goals. Meanwhile, Netanyahu’s prime goal is clinging to power.

Each will use the scenes of student demonstrations on American campuses to encourage his followers to hew to his destructive hard line. Students, beware.

Trudy Rubin is a columnist and editorial-board member for The Philadelphia Inquirer, P.O. Box 8263, Philadelphia, Pa. 19101. Her email address is trubin@phillynews.com

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‘Blended Harmony: The Kim Loo Sisters’ points spotlight on overlooked story

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Two sets of sisters, both raised in Minneapolis in the early 20th century. Each family forms a swing-centered nightclub act full of tight harmonies and lavish choreography. Both sets of siblings end up in Hollywood movies and entertaining American troops during World War II.

One group was the Andrews Sisters, the other the Kim Loo Sisters. And it says something that History Theatre — which specializes in spinning stories about Minnesota history — has created two musicals about the Andrews Sisters and none about the Kim Loo Sisters.

Until now. The story of this quite popular but largely forgotten sister act from Minneapolis is at last being told in a co-production from History Theatre and Theater Mu called “Blended Harmony: The Kim Loo Sisters.” With a book and lyrics by Jessica Huang and a swinging score by Jacinth Greywoode, it’s a production with a lot of promise and much to recommend it.

But Huang seems so intent on cutting into the historical deficit of information about the Kim Loo Sisters that she tells us a lot more than we need to know.

The result is a two-hour-and-45-minute musical that features 24 songs, but would probably be more entertaining if it were trimmed down to two hours and 14 songs. By show’s end, I felt that I didn’t know enough about half of this sister act, but way more than I needed to about sometime collaborator Ann Miller, their mother, the producer of their shows, the husband of one and a Chinese general.

Audrey Parker, from left, Audrey Mojica, Morgan Kempton and Suzie Juul in the History Theatre’s world premiere production of “Blended Harmony: The Kim Loo Sisters,” a musical by Jacinth Graywoode and Jessica Huang about four sisters from Minnesota who became a very popular nightclub act in the first half of the 20th century before anti-Asian sentiment during World War II sabotaged their career. Co-produced with Theater Mu, the show runs through May 26, 2024 at the History Theatre in St. Paul. (Rich Ryan / History Theatre)

In short, it’s an overstuffed musical that takes the audience off on unnecessary tangents. As the powers-that-be at Theater Mu and History Theatre discussed what to leave in and what to take out, it seems the answer was invariably, “Leave it in.”

Perhaps “Blended Harmony” would be a stronger show if the focus remained more squarely on the sister act at its center. The musical is most interesting when exploring their relationships with one another and how they were shaped by their Minneapolis upbringing, their father a Chinese-American chef at downtown Minneapolis restaurant Nankin and their Polish-American mother escaping life as a laundress to become the sister act’s crafty, deal-cutting (and dress-making) manager.

Alas, the story veers off into that long-distance marriage and how it got started, negotiating contracts, Mom’s upbringing in Poland, life on a Chinese military base, and whatever is on Ann Miller’s mind. While Audrey Parker does some impressive dancing as that great Hollywood tapper, her soliloquies do nothing to drive the story forward.

That said, there’s a whole lot of talent onstage. Among the sisters, the conflicted Jenee is the one we get to know best, and Kelsey Angel Baehrens makes her invariably intriguing, while Audrey Mojica is magnetic as the flirtatious youngest sister, Bubbles. Meanwhile, Ann Michels makes the most of her turn as their enterprising mother, while J.C. Cutler is an eminently convincing head honcho of their musical revues.

Kudos are also due choreographer Rush Benson, the costumes of Mathew J. LeFebvre and the inventive use of projections by Mina Kinukawa and Miko Simmons. Here’s hoping that this story that richly deserves to be told re-emerges in a more svelte rendition.

Rob Hubbard can be reached at wordhub@yahoo.com.

‘Blended Harmony: The Kim Loo Sisters’

When: Through May 26

Where: History Theatre, 30 E. 10th St., St. Paul

Tickets: $74-$15, available at 651-292-4323 or historytheatre.com

Capsule: A story worth telling, but with fewer digressions.

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