CCC testimony: Oversight: Homelessness and the Implementation on the Living in Communities (LINC) Program

Published January, 2015

CCC testified about increasing family homelessness and the City’s attempt to reduce it with the LINC rental assistance program at a City Council General Welfare Hearing on January 21, 2015.

With record numbers of children living in homeless shelters for increasingly longer lengths of time, CCC is grateful that the de Blasio administration has created a new rental assistance program aimed at helping homeless families and adults.

The new program is called Living in Communities (LINC) and has includes five different types, three of which serve families:  LINC 1 for working families; LINC 2 for families with multiple shelter stays who have earned or unearned income; and LINC 3 is for domestic violence survivors.  The program began in September 2014 and the City has added incentives and increased the rent to Section 8 levels to encourage landlords to participate.

CCC’s testimony included several recommendations to safely reduce the number of children in the shelter system:

• Secure additional LINC funding to accommodate annual rent increases;
• Secure additional funding to ensure increasing capacity over time;
• Create an additional program to help families not eligible for LINC;
• Ensure access to services that keep children safe after families transition to permanent housing.