Evaluating Community Advocacy in Response to Mayor de Blasio’s Homeless Shelter Development

In the United States, cities like New York, San Francisco, and Washington, D.C., the three metropolitans that are wealthy and have excessive cost, all share one common struggle: homelessness. With a policymaking effort regarding homelessness that were experimented within a highly dependent system of mayoral administration, hence my paper primarily focuses on new homeless shelter policy under NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio’s second term that started in 2017 until 2022. Under his 2017 plan ‘Turning the Tide on Homelessness’, the City has targeted to open new ninety shelters across the City by 2022. Under his 2017 plan ‘Turning the Tide on Homelessness’, the City has targeted to open new ninety shelters across the City by 2022. This target has drawn different responses from local neighborhood community level that has forced the City to engage in complex situations, such as opposition and protest that require clear communication to push the goal to happen. Community advocacy and the way local residents negotiate has been central in influencing the City to open a new homeless shelter, with the notion that the local will always challenge any siting if its within their neighborhood area, activating their ‘not in my back yard’ (NIMBY) response that arises by simply selfish or uninformed beliefs and responses by residents. This paper uses single case study (n=1) on West 58th St. Coalition in Manhattan to support detail examination based on the hypotheses that community advocacy that takes place in an affluent neighborhood (higher median income, higher educational attainment, higher median gross rent than the City’s average) is more likely to be powerful to oppose the City’s plan on developing new homeless shelter in their neighborhood. This community is chosen as a case because it has more accessible resources, therefore, it can provide more support to this research. To provide a fair comparison, West 58th St. will be supported by the other cases of community advocacy from different place such as Crown Heights shelters in Brooklyn and Maspeth shelters in Queens.