The Brooklyn Democratic Party has gotten a great deal of criticism from the 1.4 million or so Democrats it serves throughout the borough. Brooklyn, like the rest of New York City, is impacted by our humanitarian problem of the flood of migrants in New York.
The Party maintains constant communication with decision-makers at all levels of government, including looking into the prospect of equally distributing access to migrant housing throughout Brooklyn, from Fort Hamilton to Brooklyn Heights and beyond.
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According to Chair, Rodneyse Bichotte Hermelyn, there are obvious large-scale disparities in shelter placements servicing homeless new neighborhoods that are all too accustomed to disproportionately shouldering the obligation of supporting people in need.
Brooklyn residents are urging areas without shelters including Bay Ridge, the Fort Hamilton Army Base, Brooklyn Heights, and Marine Park to welcome refugees into their communities.
Bichotte Hermelyn noted, “While everyone deserves fair, equitable, and humane housing, this is a national, unprecedented crisis; requiring federal aid and collaboration at all levels.”
Bichotte Hermelyn, a descendant of Haitian immigrants, defended Mayor Eric Adams’ response to the issue and said that she has been actively pressing for federal help with local political officials:
The Brooklyn Democratic Party has applauded the Biden Administration’s recent moves to provide temporary housing and work permits to nearly 500,000 Venezuelan asylum seekers, but this still leaves 75% of the 60,000 migrants in NYC who are being cared for without the ability to legally work and support themselves, according to a statement from the party leadership.
With approximately 70,000 homeless children and adults already residing in shelters citywide as of January 2023, the inflow worsens New York’s already dire housing situation. Furthermore, statistics demonstrates that an area in New York City has more homeless shelters per square mile the poorer it is.
For instance, the poverty percentage of Brooklyn’s Community District i6, which includes a portion of Bedford-Stuyvesant, is 33%. The most of any community board in the entire city, it also contains 23 shelters.
Furthermore, 17 of the 20 community districts with the highest shelter load are at least 75% minority, according to Bichotte Hermelyn.
Six of seven community districts, including Tottenville and South Beach in Staten Island, Bay Ridge in Brooklyn, and Forest Hills in Queens, have poverty rates that are lower than the national average.
Bichotte Hermelyn continued, “With dwindling resources being rapidly depleted, the Brooklyn Democratic Party recognizes that this situation is unsustainable without our entire borough banding together and helping together; as we have to overcome the pandemic and other crises,” The Assembly member of the 42 District added, “Let’s spread the love the Brooklyn way.”
