City Living Ny

In fy2023, clny served 131 youth in our home goods advocacy (hga) program. All youth originally enter clny via the hga program. A City Living social worker does an initial consultation to determine the youth's housing status and home goods needs. During this intake, we also discuss the youth's long-term goals and objectives, such as employment, education and counseling needs to assess if the youth would like assistance working on these goals in the next three months. If the youth is not interested in pursuing goals beyond housing stability, he/she remains in hga and receives housing support from our social workers. Clny provides hga clients with furniture and household goods, calls quarterly to assure we detect any concerns that could lead to housing stability, and invites the youth to our workshops and trainings where they benefit from the peer community and interactions that occur there.

Clny additionally has an emergency grants program to assist our youth in navigating a variety of crises. The emergency grants program assists with issues such as: rental arrears and move-in expenses such as broker fees or security deposits to secure housing; food emergencies; parenting emergencies such as formula or diapers; payment for utilities such as heat, wifi, phone bills, and electric; expenses related to securing employment such as uniforms, metrocards, or vocational program fees; and expenses related to starting, or maintaining, educational goals such as tuition arrears, laptops, and books/school supplies.

In fy2023, clny served 69 youth in our more intensive comprehensive services program (csp). Social workers contact these young people weekly to check in and help strengthen their physical and emotional stability. For youth with an employment goal, clny assists youth with resume writing and job searches, career counseling, interview readiness, and referrals to vocational programs to further their employment prospects. For youth with an educational goal, we assist with a variety of education challenges helping college youth with tuition issues, internship guidance, re-enrollment challenges, scholarship searches, and referrals for tutoring and academic advisement. For our non-college enrolled youth, we make referrals to appropriate high school equivalency or vocational programs and help them plan for their future. Clny provides youth with mental health referrals, financial literacy training, parenting items and nutritional workshops. Most importantly, social workers assure housing stability. While the overall statistics on former foster youth rates of homelessness are staggering, as of today, 100% of our clients currently remain in their apartments once secured.