NYC Council General Welfare Committee Hearing on Shelter Safety and Reporting Bills

The New York City Council Committee on General Welfare, chaired by Crystal Hudson, met at 1:00 PM on Wednesday, October 28, 2026, in Hearing Room 3 at 250 Broadway for an oversight hearing on shelter safety and to consider two transparency bills. Members present included Hudson, Avilés, Morano, Nurse, Ung, and Wilson; Councilmember Brewer and Public Advocate Williams also attended. The committee heard from a formerly homeless panel, public witnesses, and Department of Social Services and Department of Homeless Services leadership, then laid over both proposed bills.

Oversight Overview

• Chair Hudson said more than 83,000 people slept in New York City shelters the prior Sunday, across more than 500 shelters serving single adults, adult families, and families with children, mostly operated by contracted nonprofits. She framed safety as including physical security, facility conditions, trauma, and dignity, citing the multi-year repair delay at the Borden Avenue veterans residence as an example of administrative barriers.
• Public Advocate Williams said 83,000 people resided in shelters as of October 2026, including 51,000 families with children. He cited a women's shelter where priority-one incidents rose from 123 in 2019 to 208 in 2024 and said its FY25 priority-one rate was more than double the citywide average for single adult shelters. He urged passage of Intro 387 and supported Intro 99.
• Councilmember Brewer, sponsor of Intro 99, said the bill would require the Department of Homeless Services to report annually on how often families with children are placed in shelters in the same or an adjoining zip code as their last address, broken down by borough and whether the family has children under age three. She emphasized keeping children near their schools to reduce absenteeism.

Public Comments & Testimony

• Former shelter residents with the Coalition for the Homeless Community Leadership Collective described staff disrespect, ignored medical emergencies, forced exposure to cold, mice and flooding, lack of privacy, unsafe commutes, and grievances going unanswered. Francisco Insfran recounted staff failing to intervene in a fight and ignoring requests, and said he often had to translate for Spanish-speaking residents. A panelist suggested an independent grievance lockbox.
• Coalition for the Homeless government affairs director Alison Milke said DHS oversight is failing and that residents file twice as many complaints to the coalition hotline about staff mistreatment as about safety concerns. She said DHS's roughly 31,000 complaint count is a vast undercount because evening and weekend non-urgent complaints are routed to 311 and are not reported to the ombudsman's office.
• WIN vice president Chris Mann, whose organization shelters nearly 7,000 people including 3,800 children each night, said about 40% of families were placed in a different borough from their youngest child's school. He strongly supported Intro 99 and also urged the council to address PATH intake delays and pass Intros 816 and 232.
• NYLAG director Deb Berkman said safety transfers usually require legal intervention and that some clients are forced into street homelessness rather than remain in unsafe shelters. She supported Intro 99 and stronger provider accountability.
• Richard Flores, a shelter resident, alleged unreported crimes at shelters and called for federal investigations.
• Additional witnesses included Viviana de Jesus, Jorge Jimenez, Lauren Napier, Clifton Williams, Calvin Michael, Wendy Bruno, Hannah Mercurious, Helen Strom, and Grace Busser. Their testimony described abusive or retaliatory staff, unresponsive grievance processes, theft, unsafe physical conditions, lack of on-site medical personnel, absence of air conditioning, stalking victims being unable to access domestic violence shelters, and police or ACS involvement deterring residents from seeking help. Several witnesses supported Intro 99 and housing-first approaches. Bronx Defenders attorney Grace Busser raised concerns that Intro 387 as written would emphasize policing; she said the organization could support it if reporting distinguished allegations from substantiated findings, separated resident-vs-staff incidents, and identified which incidents led to police response.

Agency Testimony and Discussion

• DSS Commissioner Aaron Dalton, joined by DHS First Deputy Commissioner Christine Fellini and Deputy Commissioner for Shelter Security Bavante Priester, outlined safety operations: around-the-clock security, risk-based assessments, cameras and access controls, 352 DHS peace officers, provider assistance unit training, and trauma-informed customer service training for over 15,000 staff under Local Law 49. Dalton cited 2,654 safety transfers in FY26, up from 2,625 in FY25.
• Agency data: serious violent incidents in single-adult shelters fell to 2.8 per 1,000 residents in FY25 from 4.8 in FY22, and family shelter rates remained below 1 per 1,000. Complaints about discrimination, assault, and harassment rose 19%, and complaints about staff-client interactions rose 46%. The shelter death rate fell from about 11 per 1,000 in FY22 to 3.5 in FY25; deaths fell from 512 to 305 while the shelter population nearly doubled. Overdoses accounted for 40% of all deaths and 42 of 73 shelter deaths in FY25.
• Facilities: 365 standard shelters averaged fewer than four open violations each, with only one in ten high-priority. Approximately 169 flexible-capacity sites, mostly commercial hotels, averaged about 42 open violations each; DHS said that number partly reflects residential code standards applied to non-residential buildings and does not always indicate an active safety hazard. DHS has 55 city- and state-owned buildings, with a FY27 capital budget of $106 million for 102 projects across 38 shelters; eight projects were complete and 31 were in active construction.
• On Intro 99, DHS said it already tracks borough-level school continuity: 62.9% of families were initially placed in the borough of their youngest school-age child, and over 80% were in that borough over the duration of their stay. DHS said it would work with the council on zip-code-level reporting and noted that domestic violence cases may require placement away from a prior address.
• On Intro 387, DHS said it shares the goal of transparency and already reports to state oversight bodies and through the Mayor's Management Report, but it cannot publish some security information disaggregated by individual shelter because of confidentiality concerns.
• Member questions covered flexible-capacity shelter violations, Tillery Street Women's Shelter improvements under its new operator BRC, grievance and ombudsman procedures, training compliance, staffing ratios, mental health staffing, housing specialist ratios, air conditioning reporting, peace officer retention, and Rikers release planning.

Key Outcomes

• Oversight hearing T2026-2629 on shelter safety was held and filed by the committee.
• Intro 0099-2026, requiring DHS to report on family shelter placements by zip code, was heard and laid over by the committee.
• Intro 0387-2026, requiring annual critical incident and security reporting, was heard and laid over by the committee.
• DHS committed to follow up in writing on multiple data requests, including shelter demographics, older adult and substance-use population data, grievance and incident breakdowns, training compliance, language-capability tracking, and FY26 security budget figures.
• Written testimony was accepted for 72 hours after the hearing by email to testimony@council.nyc.gov.