Renewable energy for New York City (photo: Governor's Office)
Climate extremes in New York are on the rise, from flooding to excessive heat. The city is experiencing frequent heat waves, including three last year, when temperatures soared to 90 degrees Fahrenheit or higher for three consecutive days. Five of the hottest Julys on record occurred between 2010 and 2020.
Part of how we tackle climate change is by implementing and supporting wise energy policy that brings on more non-carbon-emitting energy. We need to prioritize how we sustain energy security and avert deadly power outages like what Texas experienced almost one year ago. Mitigating against climate change requires a deep energy transition, and for New York, that means looking up to Quebec for hydropower.
The hard reality is decarbonizing the electric grid will require supporting economically viable and socially acceptable clean energy and transmission projects. And to that point, there's a project many in New York may not have heard of but is a critical one for the city's future energy security. The Champlain-Hudson Power Express (CHPE) is a 339-mile permitted and buried transmission line that will bring clean, renewable, and abundant hydropower from Canada into the New York metro area by 2025.
Construction of the transmission line will create 1,400 construction jobs and go a long way in helping New York City and State achieve their clean energy and carbon emissions reduction targets by 2030 and 2050; without this project, the math doesn’t add up.
As of today, New York State only has 28% clean energy in its mix. And shockingly 90% of the electricity powering New York City currently comes from the burning of fossil fuels that has direct negative impacts on people’s health in frontline and disadvantaged communities.
Hydropower is a viable clean alternative to fossil fuel plants and already plays an important role in the state’s energy mix. New York has the opportunity through CHPE to build in more resilience and reliability at a time when energy insecurity is a problem for other states.
The CHPE line represents a vital interconnected and mutually beneficial economic energy relationship between Canada and the United States; an example of cross-border clean electricity transmission with our oldest ally.
Find an energy project, whether fossil-focused or clean, that requires building infrastructure, and there will be pushback and criticism; there's no project that garners 100 percent consensus. But if you want to find a project that has strong political and stakeholder support, the CHPE does it thanks to a decade of extensive community and stakeholder outreach. The process has been long and successfully inclusive. A powerful example is an indigenous leader, Grand Chief Sky-Deer of the Mohawk of Kahnawake, co-owners of the Quebec portion of the line. She calls the project a "game-changer" for her people.
What should be a slam dunk win for New York is like most energy infrastructure projects these days still a target for incumbent energy producers and a small minority of environmentalists who have been actively seeking to derail and slow down clean energy projects in the Northeast. It’s critically important for our collective good and public interest that shovel-ready projects like CHPE move forward if we are ever going to hope to address the existential threat of climate change.
Other parts of the country have successfully launched similar projects like the Great Northern Transmission Line, a 224-mile line running from Canada to the U.S. that delivers hydropower from Manitoba, Canada to Grand Rapids, Minnesota to help balance the healthy wind resources in the northern Midwest.
We are almost to the February 7 deadline of the New York State Public Service Commission public comment period to review the CHPE contract with the state. Governor Hochul announced this project as vital to the state reaching its goals and getting people back to work in our economic recovery from covid. CHPE is one of the largest clean energy transmission line projects in New York history and is critical for the city's energy security.
And let's be grateful we are getting this hydropower from friendly Canada, the United States' largest and most reliable trading partner. Look across the Atlantic to Europe and watch the cautionary tale of what happens when energy security is put at risk due to an over-reliance on Russia for natural gas; the residential energy consumer is paying a 4-5 times higher price for gas this year than a year ago. We have clean and abundant hydro from our (friendly and democratic) neighbor to the north; it's a no-brainer.
Without CHPE, we increase our window of vulnerability: offshore wind is projected to come online mid-decade at the earliest, and as important a source and the contribution it will be for New York's power mix, it remains intermittent, so we'll need to make sure we have reliable hydropower to back it up. Moving forward with this critical transmission line for New York is not really optional; yes, this is about moving to clean energy, but it is also about keeping the lights on and ensuring New York's energy resilient future.
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Carolyn Kissane is the academic director of the graduate programs in Global Affairs and Global Security, Conflict and Cyber at the Center for Global Affairs and a clinical professor, as well as the director of the SPS NYU Energy, Climate Justice and Sustainability Lab. On Twitter @carolynkissane.
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Mayor Adams discussing hotel conversions in Brooklyn (photo: @ericadamsfornyc)
Mayor Adams recently unveiled an ambitious plan to help New Yorkers living on the streets and subways by expanding access to critical social services. In the 32 years Breaking Ground has worked with this population, it has become plainly clear that our homelessness crisis is a complex public health concern that requires multiple points of service delivery to be cohesive and collaborative.
But, in order to produce the outcome we need to help the city’s most vulnerable, we must match these services with more transitional and permanent supportive housing.
There are many barriers to attaining stability for homeless individuals living on the street, including severe persistent mental illness, chronic physical health conditions, and substance use disorders. A holistic 360-degree model – which includes housing and robust social services – that meets people where they are, both physically and mentally, is time-proven to enable large numbers of homeless individuals to attain permanent stability in housing.
There is a relatively quick, smart, and affordable solution to realize Mayor Adams’ plan: convert closed hotels into transitional housing (AKA safe havens), and permanent affordable and supportive housing in as close proximity as possible to where unsheltered men and women choose to make their lives out on the streets.
Midtown Manhattan, the city’s office and tourism center, is bearing the brunt of the city’s lack of housing to address the needs of unsheltered New Yorkers. As a result, concerns over homelessness and public safety are likely preventing other New Yorkers and tourists alike from visiting these areas.
If we’re serious about both helping our most vulnerable fellow New Yorkers and also recovering economically from the pandemic, we must focus on adding more transitional and permanent housing in tandem with robust services to this area of the city. During his campaign and since, Mayor Adams has expressed support for converting closed hotels into affordable housing, but it is important that he begins to implement that plan and makes Midtown a focus area.
We’ve been here before, and we have a proven model that works to effectively address the public health and safety situation the city is experiencing today.
In the early ‘90s, Midtown was riddled with the same issues of violence and homelessness. In 1990, Breaking Ground bought and converted as-of-right the former Times Square Hotel into 652 units of affordable and supportive housing for homeless and low-income men and women.
We anchored this building with a robust on-site social services program, which has consistently delivered crucial assistance to meet each resident’s needs -- from treating their chronic issues to getting access to healthcare and helping with job placement – and that has resulted in 98% of its residents remaining housed year after year.
The result of that conversion, which is the largest and most successful of its kind to date in the nation, was a catalyst to helping large numbers of people off the streets and into safe, permanent homes. The impact of this extraordinary deal helped lead to a resurgence of the Times Square neighborhood as a global center of tourism and business.
We can replicate that model today. Right now, the opportunity to buy closed hotels in the Midtown area is ripe but will soon slip away as these assets transfer to other private for-profit owners. The Paramount Hotel and the Hudson River Hotel are just two examples of existing, vacant Midtown buildings that could quickly result in several hundred homes for those living unsheltered on the streets of Midtown and others in need of stable housing with services.
These hotels already have the existing infrastructure, such as extensive plumbing lines, needed for residential development. They represent a rare and elusive opportunity to create affordable housing at a much lower cost and 50% of the timeframe for brand new construction.
Mental health and other social services are essential to treating individuals living on city streets, but without the housing where it’s needed most, we will be missing the piece of the puzzle that brings people off the streets and inside for the long-term.
Other communities across the United States are making headway with use of shuttered hotels to address their homelessness crises. Let’s reprise New York’s leadership in the use of the invaluable, outstanding real estate opportunity to again convert closed, empty hotels so that our city and its most vulnerable residents can not only recover from the devastation of these past years, but thrive.
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Brenda Rosen is President & CEO of Breaking Ground, New York’s largest supportive and affordable housing operator and homeless street outreach provider in New York City. On Twitter @BrGround.
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Supportive housing (photo: @newdestinyorg)
As Mayor Adams wraps up his first month on the job, one of the most daunting issues he’ll have to address is the city’s homelessness crisis. Within this larger crisis, an often-unseen demographic is particularly in need of urgent action – families with children, the largest segment of people experiencing homelessness.
While there has been a dip during the pandemic in the number of families experiencing homelessness, New York City still leads the nation in family homelessness with an estimated 30,000 women, men, and children staying in a homeless or domestic violence shelter on any given night. Mayor Adams has inherited this crisis, but also a number of successful programs to tackle it head on, including a local rental subsidy, homeless housing requirements on affordable housing construction, and the right to counsel in housing court. One resource which is in drastically insufficient supply, and which Mayor Adams has specifically noted an ongoing need for, supportive housing, is needed to reach the most vulnerable of homeless families.
For decades, supportive housing - permanent, affordable housing with onsite supportive services, has consistently proven to be the most effective way to address homelessness among some of our most vulnerable populations, including people living with mental illness, substance use history, and HIV/AIDS. However, the model has been slow to expand to homeless families, not recognizing the various social services that families need to remain stably housed.
Supportive housing is not only significantly cheaper than shelter, but it also reduces tenants’ use of costly emergency care like inpatient psychiatric treatment and emergency rooms. In New York City, a landmark study found that, on average, supportive housing reduced tenants’ use of these services and others by more than $16,000.
Supportive housing also boasts high retention rates. Only 5% of residents housed in the New York/New York III Supportive Housing Agreement returned to shelter.
Further, communities benefit from supportive housing developments, and vice versa. Tenants can become fully integrated into their new communities, contributing their talents and gaining greater stability. In fact, a 2008 NYU study showed that property values of homes near supportive housing developments actually rose at higher rates than average.
While New York City has the most supportive housing in the United States, only 11% of what the city has funded is dedicated to families and none are dedicated to domestic violence survivors.
Domestic violence is consistently cited as the number one reason for families entering shelter, with evictions the second leading cause. And while rental subsidies and other supports help many families fleeing abuse to find stability, victims of domestic violence have a higher incidence of PTSD, depression, and anxiety, leaving many with a need for support services in addition to housing. Despite this, the city’s supportive housing initiative’s eligibility requirements effectively exclude homeless domestic violence survivors.
Currently, the supportive housing program is restricted to individuals or families that are considered “chronically homeless” – defined as having spent at least a year in a Department of Homeless Services shelter, and that have a documented disability, e.g., mental illness or substance abuse. Both of these eligibility criteria are problematic for DV survivors. First, the city only counts time homeless as time spent in the primary shelter system run by the Department of Homeless Services, not the months families spend in the separate domestic violence shelters run by the Human Resources Administration. Secondly, since most survivors fear that obtaining a diagnosis would negatively impact custody proceedings, leaving their children with their abuser, supportive housing is effectively closed off as an option. As a result, there is currently less than a 1 in 1,000 chance for a family leaving an emergency domestic violence shelter to enter supportive housing.
Mayor Adams can make an immediate impact on this vulnerable population by building more supportive housing units for families and by revising these eligibility requirements. Family homelessness in New York City is a crisis requiring an emergency response. That starts with making a renewed investment in supportive housing and making it accessible to the thousands of families that become homeless each year due to domestic violence.
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Nicole Branca is Executive Director at New Destiny Housing, a New York City nonprofit that provides housing and services to victims of domestic violence and their children. On Twitter @nbranca13 & @newdestinyorg.
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