BROOKLYN COLLEGE–Members of the Street Homeless Advocacy Project visited Brooklyn College last Tuesday, Sept. 26, to recruit student volunteers for its project geared towards helping homeless New Yorkers off the streets. The project, which received the green light last year on Aug. 11, is a partnership between Mayor Eric Adams’ administration, the Department of Homeless Services, CUNY, and other city agencies.
The partnership includes five CUNY colleges, one from each borough. The schools are the College of Staten Island, Hostos Community College, York College, Hunter College, and Brooklyn College. In conceptualizing the project, founder and former executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, Norman Siegel, highlighted that the project’s goal is to focus on building a connection with homeless people and directing them towards options for getting off of the streets.
“There are four to five thousand homeless people on the streets. We start with the premise that they don’t want to be on the streets. We don’t want them to be on the streets,” Siegel told The Vanguard. “And if we can begin to talk to them (find out who they are, why they are on the streets, do they want to be on the streets), 70% of them tell us they don’t want to be on the streets, but they don’t have viable options.”
