Legal Aid's Chief Attorney Says Homeless Families Languish in Expensive Emergency Housing While NYC Suffers Affordable Housing Famine

FRIDAY, MARCH 20, 2009

In the midst of what he described as "an affordable housing famine," Steven Banks, the Attorney-in-Chief of The Legal Aid Society. told the Village Voice that homeless families languish in expensive emergency housing because the City offers them no priority for federal Sectional 8 rental assistance or federally subsidized housing.

Banks, who has been representing homeless families with children for 25 years, said that it is far more costly to house families in apartments as shelter than to house them in permanent housing. One of the solutions often mentioned by advocates is the federal subsidized Section 8 housing vouchers.