 I know for some of you here, this is probably your first time being inside of a youth drop-in center, but just a little recap about what we do here. There's a lot of amazing work. And this is really a front door for young people who are experiencing homelessness to be able to come and obtain the resources they need, whether it's housing, health, mental health, food. And it's open 24 hours, so there's a place for them to rest at night here as well. While we try to work vigorously to get them into their own apartments. And for us at Shelter in Arms, our drop-in centers are the first step in our continuum, where we have crisis shelters as well as transitional independent living as well as rapid rehousing. So we're so excited to have you all here. And we're so thankful to all our city leaders for making this long-term commitment to invest in New York City's youth, and especially in homeless youth. And we look forward to working together throughout this process to make sure that this great plan that we came up with comes to life. So if I start asking for people's cell phone numbers at some point today, don't be shy. I'll be more than happy to take everyone's number, because if we need you, we're going to call on you to help support us as we continue throughout this plan of ending youth homelessness here in New York City. I also want to just say that this has been a long process and a long time coming. And Shelter in Arms is so thankful to be a part of this process and very thankful to Jamie from the Coalition for Homeless Youth and for Cole from the mayor's office. And also Jessica from DYCD, who came on late, but like a storm. All right, so I know I'm short on time, and we don't have that much time to talk and to elaborate and go on and on. But we're just so happy for this opportunity and we're so happy to see the work that's going to take place. We're happy and thankful to our youth who took the lead in this process from the YAB and from youth all over New York City who participated in developing this plan. And we're excited to see what this is going to do and how it's going to impact youth. And it's definitely going to help us here at Shelter in Arms by adding more inventory to our rapid rehousing program, which allows young people to have keys and apartments in their own name. And it starts the process to long-term stability. So with no further ado, I'm going to turn the mic over to our deputy mayor, Ann Williams-Ison. Thank you so much. How's everybody doing? I am deputy mayor Ann Williams-Ison. So I've never been in this shopping center, but I've spent a lot of time on Jamaica Avenue shopping with my mother when I was eight years old. So I was having like all kinds of flashbacks when I came here. It is so nice to be back in my home borough and it's so nice here to be with all of you for this great occasion. I'm so glad to be here and to be part of such a collaborative and groundbreaking effort to support young people who are experiencing homelessness and to put forward a plan that will address these issues now and into the future. We know that the most powerful solutions come from a cross-sector collaboration with input from people with lived experience, directly impacted youth, from nonprofit providers and from city agencies. So I am so happy to start with thanks right now to the commissioners. We got an all-star team here and agencies who are vital to today's announcement. I wanna give a shout out and just wave when I say your name to the DYCD Commissioner, Keith Howard, DCWP Commissioner, Vilda Vera Magura, DSS Commissioner, Gary Jenkins, Office to End Domestic Violence and Gender-Based Violence Commissioner Cecile Noel and ACS Commissioner Jess Danhouser. Thank you to all the providers who have spent hours of times in planning this process while managing your own direct services. And during the pandemic, you've had to do so much on top of that and so much has been on your plate. So we thank you, thank you, and for all of the ideas that you've brought to the table and for making this plan a reality today. Thank you to Covenant House, New York. Covenant House and the House. All right, we can clap them up. Sheltering Arms, The Legal Aid Society, Safe Horizons, Good Shepherd Services, Project Renewal, Jericho Project, Hartsure. I guess we should wait till the end, right? This is like the Oscars. Please wait until the end because I'm trying to get to y'all because you're the most important voices we're gonna hear today, all right? So just give me a, all right? Okay, let me go. Hartshare, St. Vincent, and Hendrick Martin Institute. All right, now we can clap. Special shout out to our advocates, Coalition for Homeless Youth, Homeless Services United. Thank you. And thank you to Chapin Hall for all of your partnership on the resource pieces along the way. Give it up for the researchers. You gotta have the data. Thank you to the NYC Fund to End Youth and Family Homeless for the ways you've coordinated philanthropy to support initiatives that the community thinks will move the needle forward. Let's give it up for them. And a big, big, big round of applause to the members of the New York City Youth Action Board. It is so meaningful. It is so meaningful for us to share space with you and to come together to implement concrete solutions so that people coming up behind you don't have to experience the homelessness that you all did or have the experience that you did. And you did that with compassion in a very human-centered way. So thank you all again. Next, it is my pleasure to bring to the microphone Neely Sony, the division director at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Sony? Thank you so much. I am super, super excited. It's a long coming. We have been waiting for this. So Youth Homeless Demonstration Program is one of the first dedicated federal initiative that is led by the experiences of youth who have experienced homelessness. They are the expertise in this and they've been guiding throughout this process. To date, HUD has actually funded 77 COCs and five rounds have been funded. To date, we have a sixth round that is ongoing right now and hopefully we'll be awarding soon. YSTP supports a permanent supportive housing programs for youth and focuses on building local coordinated system for responding to youth homelessness. This requires bringing new partners to the table and changing how we think about ending homelessness, to center the voices of the most affected and addressing systemic inequities in who is most impacted by homelessness. The success of YSTP primarily is because of the inclusion of people with lived experiences, which has fundamentally changed how HUD works. You have seen the recent Notice of Funding announcement that targets the unsheltered and rural homelessness, which is an example where we promote partnership with healthcare organizations, public housing authorities and mainstream housing providers and people with lived experience and expertise of homelessness. We are excited to support communities as they develop innovative methods and partnership to help the most wonderful community members. We are excited to bring the opportunities with the YSTP designation to NYC. NYC has received the highest allocation of, that is allowed in YSTP, which is $15 million. Very exciting, very exciting. And we know the city has actually leveraged this with public and private partnership. We are very, very excited to see the city has taken actions and are in the process of implementing projects. We just cannot wait to get started for the city. Our hope from the city and other communities is to see the ongoing impacts of involving youth in decision-making process as well as structures. So the most important experiences in my life has been when I worked with street children in India as well as the Youth Homelessness Program in United States. These programs both opened my eyes and I have realized while I was working to make an impact, a positive impact, they made even a more, you know, significant impact on me. These programs have led me to understand myself and the world around me. I'm deeply rooted in the belief that homelessness is a moral issue and we can end homelessness. And I, you know, we just have to do it, right? We, this is our future generation. We, I am so thrilled that youth are here and collaborating with us on this process. So together we can end youth homelessness. And we know this is not gonna be something that we can do alone. So, and or solve the whole problem. So we need everyone together. So congratulations NYC and know that your federal partners are ready and are willing to help you and support you in all process. Congratulations. Thank you so much Ms. Sony. And I love the way that she said we can end youth homelessness. I was with a group of people yesterday and they were talking about, why is this administration talking about ending homelessness? And I was like, if you can't even articulate a bold vision, how are you gonna achieve it? I wanna introduce someone who has a bold vision for this city, our mayor, Mr. Eric Adams. Thank you and this is such an important initiative. Used to take the Q5 bus to walk to the Q31, to go to Bayside High School, leave in South Jamaica, Queens 167th Street and 111th Avenue, that little small house where my mom is located right here at this bus terminal. But what was more significant about it as I walked up the steps is that I remember in addition to my book bag, I had that large garbage bag. It was something that each one of us had at the door with our names on it. Mom wanted to make sure just in case the marshal came and threw us out that night, we would have a change of clothing and won't be humiliated and embarrassed because we did not have a home to come to at the end of our school day. This is not a professional journey for me. This is not the journey of being a mayor of the city of New York. This is a personal journey. A home is more than four walls where you sit inside. It's the precursor that allows you to sleep so you can experience the American dream. And too many people, particularly young people live in the nightmarish reality that that dream is never going to be part of their lives. That's why we're doing this. That's why we're dedicated to us. And to all of these organizations, those of you who are here will commit it to this work. You're not doing this to become a billionaire. You're not doing it because you're going to reach some level of economic stability. In fact, many days is struggling. Many days are uncertainties. But nothing is more profitable than finding your passion and commitment and you can look over the investments you made in our young people as they fight towards the future of our city. This is what this initiative is about. And I'm proud of the young people who came together. We didn't do this from our voices. We heard them. They sat down. We used the $15 million that the federal government put in the grant that we received. And we said, you come. Those of you who have experienced homelessness tell us the best way to fix this problem. And that's how this administration exists and live. We have for the first time, a group of homeless, formerly homeless and current homeless men and women that came to City Hall and sat down and met with us and dealing with these very real conversations of these problems we have. Generational problems, generational problems. The problems of youth homelessness did not start on January 1st, 2022. For far too long, we've ignored what we believe has been a crucial issue for us. And when you look at the numbers, there's almost over 3,700 young people who are homeless. Many of them are part of the LGBTQ plus community and many of them are young people of color. When you talk about juvenile homelessness, you're talking about young people of color. No one wants to talk about that. They wanna ignore it and just brush over and say, well, all the juveniles are having a problem. No, there's a disproportionate number of them are people of color. And we see it every day in Israel and it puts them in dangerous environments. It feeds the sex trafficking industry. It feeds some of the victims of violence and it feeds some of the violence we're seeing in our city. And that's why we must go upstream to solve this problem. And so as the mayor of the city of New York, I'm saying I see you and I'm here to help you because I am you that I was able to survive and now I'm coming back to make sure I bring young people along with me. So today we're making big changes and it starts with our report, a powerful report. Opportunity starts with a home. Opportunity starts with a home. Our bold plan to end homelessness and you're right, Deputy Mayor, you have to put this stuff in the universe. If you don't put it into the universe, it's not going to materialize. And we have to be bold and out front about reaching our destination. Eight month, eight month of planning to get to where we are right now, developed by partners and listening to New Yorkers, community-based organization, advocacy groups, philanthropic and research partners, just looking at the data and having data bring us in the right direction. And we're committed to this in a real way. This report contains over 60 individual actions that will collectively move New York City towards preventing and ending youth homelessness. And some of the actions that we're taking, they may have gone over already, but increasing supply of permanent housing because shelter is not a home. That's not the ending place. That's the beginning place of analyzing how do we get you to where you ought to be and deal with the holistic approach to this from healthcare to education to mental health as I walk through many of my shelters, what I'm seeing. And so it's placing people in permanent housing, 102 new units of rapid rehousing for youth and young adults, creating the city first ever host home and shelter diversion programs, primarily serving the LGBTQ plus community, expanding and supportive services, including financial literacy. We are just leaning into this financial literacy because if you get a home and then you don't have the skill set to maintain that home, you're on that treadmill, you're back out into the street, learning how to manage your money, use your money in the correct way is important to this administration and creating new paid full-time roles for homeless youth and strengthen our street outreach and harm reductions to youth living on the streets with a new outreach program. So it's a complete combination. It's a complete holistic approach. It's something that we should be proud of. This opportunity starts with the home. This is our plan. When we put it in writing, we want a blueprint moving towards it together. And so to the young people who are here and to many of you, we're not gonna always get it right. You know, I say all the time, I'm perfectly imperfect, but I'm dedicated, I'm committed. I'm blessed to be the mayor of this city and work hard for New Yorkers. We're not gonna stop trying. And when you look at my administration, my administration is made up of people who have experienced the lives that people are living right now. Gary Jenkins, who deals with homeless, he lived in homeless shelter. He brings that to the game every day. You dig into the crevices of my senior management and you're going to find the stories that people are experiencing. I don't need people who are just go through the motion. I need people that's gonna have the right motion to move out, sit in the right direction. We have betrayed New Yorkers and we have abandoned them, we have thrown up our hands. You can't have a 101 billion dollar budget and still have these pre-existence problems. Not gonna win everything, but damn it, we're not gonna stop trying. Thank you. Thank you so much, Mayor Adams. What do you always say to us? Well said, well said. Okay, now we're moving to, I think the most important voices in the room. I'd like to bring to the microphones members of the Youth Action Board, members Liz Shutter, Lyndon Hernandez, and let me hope I get this right, Zacana, say it again. Zacuana Stevens. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. My name is Lyndon Hernandez. I am the New York City Youth Action Board co-chair coordinator. How has youth collaboration in the youth homelessness sector of New York City played an instrumental part in the production of Opportunity Start With a Home, New York City's plan to end youth homelessness, our coordinated community plan? The New York City Youth Action Board played a leadership role in ensuring that this plan is supported by those with lived expertise and individual expertise. Throughout the process of developing the Coordinated Community Plan, now called Opportunity Start With a Home, the YAB remained intentional in their role as key collaborators in developing a plan that is intersectional in its approach to meet the needs of youth experiencing homelessness throughout the city in 2016. The New York City Continuum of Care established the New York City Youth Action Board based on it being a requirement to apply for the HUD Youth Homelessness Demonstration Project. However, since that time, we have made great strides in advocacy and have had the honor of stepping into greater roles and collaboration with the YHDP. With our unique expertise in navigating systems and operations designed for youth homelessness, the YAB worked diligently to ensure that Opportunity Start With a Home is in alignment with the specific needs of youth experiencing or at the risk of experiencing homelessness. Throughout the production of the CCP, the New York City YAB's number one priority was to advocate for unhoused youth throughout all five boroughs and the NYC Youth Action Board is proud to have a plan that we can stand by. Thank you. Good afternoon, everyone. Good afternoon. My name is Elizabeth, I'm still Liz. I'm the other New York City Youth Action Board co-chair coordinator. We believe that the OHS includes both proactive and reactive policies to address and improve the needs of all youth and young adults experiencing homelessness. This is reflected in action steps centered around data, housing vouchers, street outreach, pure navigation services, post homes, and connection between all of the systems that serve youth experiencing housing and stability. New York City YAB made our mission to think intersectionally, inclusively and broadly to stay true to our identity as the YAB. To ensure the OHS is in alignment with YAB core values, three of the lab members, including ourselves, the co-chairs at the SYHDP leads, the leads on the YSDP core team, planning committee, RFP committee, and will be on the management team and the steering committee throughout the implementation opportunities start with a home plan. All YAB members participated in prioritizing the objectives, action steps, and principles in the CCP, including the requirement that allow new YSDP projects will hire at least one person with lived experience of homelessness and more. What came out of the youth and young adults collaboration with government and service providers throughout the YSDP planning process. The YAB uplifted the need to transform the quality of care provided to the youth homelessness community while building and sustaining trust between those receiving care and those providing it. We helped develop the innovative programs like the peer navigator program and the street outreach program. Though the peer navigators and the YAB hosts to directly transform the experience of youth and homelessness programs by providing necessary resources that we have found to not be accessible enough. The street outreach program will provide direct services to the chronically homeless population by providing harm reduction resources, case management, and resource into housing stability. The street outreach will staff five full-time peer outreach workers with lived expertise as well. The YAB also advocated for funding the black and brown LGBTQ plus community by offering our first ever boardroom host home program using traditional hosting home model in a new innovative way. Thank you so much. As the living costs in NYC are unparalleled to most other states, we found a unique responsibility to address this issue in various ways. Lastly, we wanted to ensure provider staff are making a living wage and that young people with lived expertise have opportunities to work in those positions. This serves multiple purposes as it creates jobs for youth who have experienced homelessness and this also helps to foster an inclusive and safe environment. Ultimately, we hope that opportunities start with the home, takes micro steps to change the culture surrounding homelessness systems of youth and young adults. While this plan is in motion, the NYC Youth Action Board will continue communication as well as collaborating with Adam's administration and DYCD to ensure that the youth and young adult voices are being heard as well as the allies are held accountable for their commitments to ending youth homelessness. Additionally, the New York City YAB are helping nonprofits better connect with one another along with shaping the peer movement. More than that, we hope that HUD will consider supporting direct cash transfers in a way that will remove certain barriers but allow them to put money in the hands of young people which will lead them towards independence. The homeless youth population is often hidden in plain sight and because of our experiences, we show up and advocate for change in our community. True youth collaboration relies on the support of adult allies and we are beyond excited to have had the opportunity to do so with this project. We will continue to use our platform and outreach to create more healing-centered spaces for us and our peers. To keep us from harm and to help us recover from what we've been through, we are especially grateful that the YHDP has helped and will continue to help sustain youth collaboration in our city and we believe that in this vision, we are here to collaborate and make it happen. We would also like to express our gratitude to Cole Gianni from the deputies mayor's office, Jessica Rathal from DYCD, Lauren Leonardis from TACC as well as Tiffany Rivera and Jamie Polovich from the Coalition of Homeless Youth for their ongoing support of the YAB throughout this process. Thank you. Thank you, you're very welcome. And so you must be key king. Okay, I want to make sure to say your name out loud. I love the way y'all collaborated and did that, that was fantastic. And you had all these people blushing out here, you can't see with their mask, but thank you so much for that gratitude. Continuing with centering the voices of the most important people in the room, I'd like to bring forth representatives from the Coalition of Homeless Youth Members, Skye Adrian and Maddox Guerrero. Hi everyone, my name is Skye Adrian and I am the program manager for the Homeless Youth Peer Navigation Program at the Coalition for Homeless Youth. I now hold this position because it was created based on the Youth Action Board's feedback and advocacy during my time as the YAB Co-Chair in 2016 to 2019. During that time, the YAB highlighted several barriers that negatively influenced and arch-wise ability to work or to sustain housing, which I later was able to include in the development of the first ever Homeless Youth Peer Navigation Program in NYC. Throughout the execution of the Peer Navigation Program pilot, we were able to develop programming, such as a 12 day intensive training which covered several focus area topics to further the Peer Navigation's professional development. Although folks who are access to mid and application and a screening process, the main requirement to be enrolled in the program was their formal experience of homelessness and dedication to supporting their peers throughout the similar situations that they themselves had endured. Fast forward to today, and with joy and excitement, I am able to say that the pilot program was successful as myself and the YAB believed it could be. Thanks to an investment in the physical year 2023 budget, NYC is funding 16 full-time salaried positions across the eight DYCD drop-in center states. And that is inclusive of the one that we're standing in today. Throughout this investment, the city has turned a need and idea that the youth had into a reality by providing a career path for peer navigators to use their own personal experience to positively impact their peers and currently homeless or unstable housed youth and help them navigate services to find them their own identified stability and success. As someone with lived experience of homelessness, it was an honor to design and execute this program and I am grateful for all the support that was received throughout the process. I am most grateful for and proud of the peer navigators themselves that participated in the pilot program and who have all demonstrated why it is important that the city invest in real career opportunities for youth and I'm excited to see how these newly funded full-time positions continue to improve the services and support that youth receive the minute they walk in the door for drop-in center. Thank you. What's going on, everybody? I'm Matt Ox. I'm gonna make a quick, brief and powerful because you already know the people already told y'all to the power that is happening. And I just wanna emphasize six years ago, we did not have the infrastructure, any of which, what we see, what we're hearing today, that did not exist and I have to say that to really hone in the power of choice and the power of showing up and really working authentically with you, collaborating authentically across the city. When I first started this work in 2016, I was just invited to a seat at the table and because I'm a visionary, I never felt comfortable with that. I said, be on the seat at the table, let's help young people build their own homes, both metaphorically and figuratively and we are doing just that by investing in resources and not just services. I am so proud to say and we can't clap it up enough for partnering with the Barham community, the LGBTQ community where it started in New York City and now we are working with them, investing in that community directly who has been leading the work of homelessness without government, without city. And now we got to say, we recognize that work and we will invest in that community and we are pioneering the narrative forward nationally and federally when we ask HUD to invest in direct cash transfers. Although we did not get approved, we are not discouraged. We know that that began the conversation and that we will continue because we know that direct cash transfers is the only intervention that is evidence-based and proven globally, the most in like, research anti-poverty tool globally, not just in America, so we must invest in it and we must continue to invest in solutions that are scalable, invest in working with people with lived experiences because we need to, we will end youth homelessness, but we have to make sure that we are working to evolve youth homelessness, not revolve youth through homelessness. Thank you. What did he say? We already know, nothing more to say. I guess we are over. Can we give everybody a round of applause? And Mayor Adams? I think it's a real reflection of why we were successful by hearing the voices of those who were impacted. Some more topics that folks can answer and then we'll do a few other topics, okay. Funding through the federal, I think it's 15 million federal dollars. And what form will the street outreach be? You want to touch that? 3.1 million is coming from the city funding and that's in collaboration with the Department of Consumer Affairs and Workers Protection. I'm sorry, that's an addition in terms of federal funding, yes. Okay, all right. Thank you. He nice sitting by the day. Do you want to respond to Governor Abbott on Fox News this morning, challenging you to make my day by sending New Yorkers to campaign against his reelection while also vowing to keep sending buses full of migrants so New York City can get a taste of what the Texas governor is dealing with on the Southern border? Well, first of all, I know he thinks he's Clint Eastwood, but he's not. He is a anti-American governor that is really going against everything we stand for. And I am going to do everything feasible to make sure people of Texas realize how harmful he is to us globally. He's a global embarrassment because this is not what we do as Americans, all of us. And I'm sure if he goes into his lineage, he came from somewhere. And if his ancestors were treated the way he's treating these asylum seekers and migrants, then he would not be where he is right now. No, we don't know the count. And again, as I stated over the weekend, there were some who were disembarking before they got inside their last stop because rumors were out there that if they would get over at the last stop, they could be apprehended by ICE or that the other agencies were apprehended. So without the proper coordination, we're unable to receive people at one location and give them the support they deserve. So we're not sure of the exact count, but often they end up at our intake centers. And if anyone in the city sees someone that they believe needs their assistance, we were asking them to point them and direct them to the intake centers. And I think that if I go to Texas is not being cooperative or helpful in taking kind of an antagonistic pose, but has the city, and he tells us that anything in the city has done to reach out to them in order to have an administration where any officials in Texas have provided any data information? It's clear that he would rather craft his policies through soundbites and not sound decisions. What we have been doing is communicating to those local community-based organizations on the ground. The Port Authority has been amazing because in order for the buses to stop at the particular locations, they must receive permission from the Port Authority so they have been extremely helpful. And so we've been coordinating as much as possible with those who are on the ground, with the Port Authority, and those officials who are responsible elected officials to get this done. On the Texas issue, have you spoken to federal workers campaign that is the elected member? And then separately, I want to see if you had a reaction to Donald Trump and you've been acting today, saying that he was pleading with a different call to question the state of Texas, and that's the reason that the Port Authority is having a run-in. First of all, I have not communicated or coordinated with the Iraq campaign or him. And we're gonna continue to focus on giving the services. We took him on homeless youth today. When I was at the shelter on Beffett in Atlanta, Atlantic Avenue, the number of young people from El Salvador that was there, it was a large number. If we don't get it right, these young people are going to turn into the homeless youth that we're talking about today. And when it comes down to Donald Trump, let those that are responsible carry out their review, and they're gonna come to the determination. We have so much we have to do to deal with the damage that was created during that administration from Supreme Court decisions to how we tarnished our image across the globe. We need to focus on doing that. I think the final analysis is going to determine if there was anything improper done, improperly done. All right, thank you. Thanks all.