(photo: dnj_Brian via flickr)
I never thought I could get HIV. From the little I learned about HIV in high school in Far Rockaway, Queens, I thought that anyone who has it looks really sick. At school, they only showed us photos of people who looked thin and like they were dying.
In November 2012, the unthinkable happened. I was diagnosed with HIV. My heart stopped, and all I could think about was death. How could my boyfriend have had HIV? He looked so healthy. Unfortunately, my school didn't teach us the whole story about HIV - or about anything involving sexual health for that matter.
I didn't even learn about using condoms or tips for negotiating condom use with a partner. And we only learned about straight sex and didn't learn anything about LGBTQ health and sexuality. I began to feel attracted to boys at a young age, but since straight relationships were the only ones discussed in school, I felt like my feelings were not counted. I also didn't connect with the small amount of information I received about HIV since in school they only focused on straight relationships. If I had learned more, maybe I would not be HIV-positive today.
Unfortunately, many schools across New York City are still failing students when it comes to sex education. The City requires a semester of sex ed in middle school and one in high school, but that's not enough, and a lot of students still aren't receiving even that minimum amount. Connect 2 Protect (C2P) Bronx Coalition recently conducted a survey of high school students in the Bronx, and just 37 percent of them said that at school they had learned communication skills when it comes to sex. Only 47 percent had learned about condom negotiation. And only 26 percent learned about support for LGBTQ students.
This is unacceptable. If more students learned skills such as condom negotiation or protecting themselves from sexually transmitted infections, young people in New York City would be healthier. It's also important that young people learn about healthy relationships and consent. Sex ed should be comprehensive, and it should start early, in elementary school, with content that's appropriate for younger kids, and then continue through high school.
It's so important that young people learn about sexual health and relationships at school, because many kids aren't learning about this at home. My family never talked about sex, so I never brought it up with them. Plus, when I came out to my family in 10th grade, it was clear that my parents didn't want to accept that I'm gay. So I never brought up sexuality or sex again. There are many young people who can't safely or comfortably talk to their families about sex for a variety of reasons. Even if kids do learn about sex at home, it's important that it's reinforced with accurate sex ed in school.
I feel like society failed me by not making sure that every student receives honest, accurate information on sexual health and preventing sexually transmitted infections and HIV. It hurts to know that there are still young people like me in schools across the city who are not getting the information they need to protect themselves and make healthy decisions.
I talk to my friends to share the real facts about HIV. I make it clear that someone doesn't have to look sick to have HIV. In fact, HIV often has few or no symptoms for up to 10 years or more before symptoms develop. I also tell people how HIV is not spread. People who have HIV are still discriminated against, because many people still don't know the facts about HIV.
New York City schools must do more to educate students about sexual health. Every young person in the city has a right to know how to protect themselves from HIV, sexually transmitted infections, and unintended pregnancies. They also deserve to learn about consent and what constitutes a healthy relationship. Improving sex ed in city schools must be a priority, and there's no time to waste.
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by Ernesto
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DHS Commissioner Taylor during HOPE 2015 (photo: @JennsLenz)
Last Monday night, thousands of volunteers spanned across New York City to conduct Homeless Outreach Prevention Estimate (HOPE) 2015. HOPE is the annual point-in-time count of the New York City street homeless. It enables the City to gauge the extent of street homeless in New York City – an estimated 3,357 individuals last year. HOPE also helps the City to evaluate the ongoing street homelessness work it and its nonprofit partners are doing, including outreach.
Outreach work has two components. First, workers attempt to engage the street homeless individual, who is often living with a mental illness, substance abuse issue, or severe health problem.
"You introduce yourself, give them your card and ask them if there's anything they need," says Hilton Douglas, an Urban Pathways outreach worker. "Sometimes they tell us to get out of their face, but you just have to keep engaging with them day in and day out. Other times you catch them at the right time and with the right tone, and they open up."
On day one of Port Authority Bus Terminal outreach work this past September, Urban Pathways staff engaged Mark H. His body was covered with open sores, including some on his left leg infested with maggots. When outreach approached him, he insisted he did not need help. After outreach workers found him 24 hours later, he agreed to go to the Olivieri Drop-In Center where he got a shower and new clothes and met with a nurse. He also agreed to go to the hospital where he was diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.
The second important component of outreach work is placement. For Mark H, placement was a return home to his family. After initial assessment, Olivieri staff discovered he was the subject of a six-month, Ohio missing person report. Once staff contacted the local Ohio sheriff office and Mark H was stabilized, his brother came and took him home.
The placement that occurred for Mark H is infrequent though. More often, street homeless individuals are placed in drop-in centers or city single adult shelters. There, with the invaluable assistance of case managers, they stabilize and work to become housing-ready and move along the path to self-sufficiency and permanent housing.
However, many homeless adults living on the streets are unwilling to enter the city shelter system. They fear they will be victimized. Or, they may be seriously impaired due to mental illness or substance abuse and unable to commit to treatment or recovery as a condition to accessing shelter. For this chronically homeless population, the City offers safe havens, which operate using the housing first model – an approach that centers on providing the homeless with housing as quickly as possible and then providing services as needed.
Safe havens constitute a particularly viable placement option. Beside providing shelter and services, they allow for a transitional period to begin the rehabilitative process and recovery from the harshness of the streets. New York City has recognized the utility of safe havens. There are ten in four boroughs - three in the Bronx, four in Manhattan, two in Brooklyn, and one on Staten Island.
Another key service model in addressing street homelessness is supportive housing - affordable housing combined with support services tailored to individual needs. Supportive housing has proved effective. In the first five years of the most recent New York City/State supportive housing agreement, New York City chronic homelessness decreased by almost half. The utility of supportive housing, in part, stems from the stabilization it provides to those who have lived extremely unstable lives. However, there is a dearth of supportive housing in New York City. Only one supportive housing unit is available for every six eligible individuals. At least two-thirds of New York City street homeless are in need of permanent supportive housing.
As the City and State move forward in budget season, let's make HOPE truly count by adequately investing in these placement options. It is encouraging that the City will devote more resources to unsheltered homeless people this year, allocating more than $45 million in City and State funds, up from $35.5 million the year before. It is less than encouraging that the City and State have not adopted a new City/State supportive housing agreement. In particular, we call on the State, notably Governor Cuomo, to amend the proposed state budget and fully fund the State's share of a New York City/State supportive housing agreement. The time is now to account for and support all those counted during this year's HOPE and those before.
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by Nicole Bramstedt and Erik Ipsen
Bramstedt is the Policy Analyst at Urban Pathways.
Ipsen is a member of the Board of Urban Pathways, where he has served since 2002.
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CMs Garodnick, left, and Menchaca visit the site in question (photo: William Alatriste)
Mayor Bill de Blasio's mantra around addressing the "Tale of Two Cities" that is New York particularly resonates in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. It is one of the city's few remaining industrial waterfront neighborhoods with a high concentration of working-class and poor residents, mostly immigrants from Asia and Latin America. However, the growing presence of the creative class including fashion designers and artisanal manufacturers has stirred concerns of gentrification and displacement among long-time residents and community stakeholders.
Make no mistake, Sunset Park is at a crossroads. The industrial waterfront is changing through private and public investment after long years of neglect. But if the tale of two cities is to be truly tackled, the waterfront's renaissance needs to be inclusive.
Measures must be taken to ensure that long-time residents and businesses are not forced out due to rising property values triggered by the introduction of affluent millennials as Sunset Park entrepreneurs and residents. The de Blasio Administration must recognize that creating jobs with living wages is as essential as affordable housing.
Toward that end, it might be instructive for the administration to revisit the de Blasio mayoral campaign's ideas. Mayor de Blasio was one of the few candidates to specifically articulate an industrial attraction and retention policy, doing so in a paper titled, "A Progressive Vision for Industrial Development in New York City."
Recognizing the need for blue-collar jobs and manufacturing's high annual wages in comparison to the retail or food service industries (two of the city's fastest growing job sectors), candidate de Blasio pointed to the Brooklyn Navy Yard and the Greenpoint Manufacturing Design Center as "models for non-profit industrial development" that create good jobs. In the same paper, he specifically proposed that Sunset Park's Brooklyn Army Terminal and Bush Terminal - two massive industrial sites managed by the New York City Economic Development Corporation (EDC) - "would benefit from an independent non-profit manager dedicated to strategic investment, workforce development, and reinvestment into the target area." [italics added]
Sunset Park City Council Member Carlos Menchaca seems to have read the same policy paper when he proposed the formation of such a non-profit entity to act as a steward for the South Brooklyn Marine Terminal (SBMT) rather than signing away control of the 70-plus-acre site to the EDC for the next half-century.
EDC's chief, a mayoral appointee, called off the deal claiming "it's not good public policy" in the New York Daily News and described the proposal as "confounding" in Crain's New York.
We're puzzled by the EDC's actions. We grew up in Sunset Park and our father continues to live in the same house he's called home since 1974. Both of our parents labored in industrial, manufacturing jobs. We wholeheartedly support Mayor de Blasio's commitment to ensuring that the same opportunities our family had remain available for all New Yorkers.
In his State of the City speech, Mayor de Blasio stated that "[c]reating more affordable housing; raising wages and benefits; strengthening our neighborhoods by better connecting them to jobs and opportunity—that is how we'll take on the Tale of Two Cities." Now is the time to move this vision forward and candidate de Blasio proposed a way to do so in Sunset Park.
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by Tarry and Carl Hum
Tarry Hum is a professor at the City University of New York and author of Making a Global Immigrant Neighborhood: Brooklyn's Sunset Park
Carl Hum is a civil rights attorney in Washington D.C. and former director of the New York City Mayor's Office of Industrial and Manufacturing Businesses
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