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12.18.2025
The Supportive Housing Network of New York, Care For the Homeless and Urban Pathways released the following statement on the day of the NYC Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day Observance,
“Today, we honor the lives of people who died while experiencing, or due to the stressors of, homelessness. We speak their names, we hold their stories, and we refuse to let their deaths be forgotten or dismissed as inevitable.
Every life lost to homelessness was preventable. People do not die because they lack resilience or will. They die because of policy choices – because safe and affordable housing was treated as a privilege rather than a right; because health care access is fragmented; because our safety net systems failed to catch them in time; and because our collective response failed to match the scale of the need.
Homelessness is not a personal failing. It is the predictable outcome of decisions that deprioritize permanent housing, health care, and community-based supports. No one should have to die for those choices.
Supportive housing is a proven solution—created here in New York—to reduce chronic homelessness. Supportive housing combines deeply affordable housing with support services so people can live with dignity, autonomy and stability. It saves lives. But only if it’s appropriately funded.
Instead of strengthening these life-saving solutions in the face of a clear and growing need, we are moving in the opposite direction. Looming cuts to federal funding threaten to undo years of progress and deepen the homelessness crisis.
Funding reductions and eligibility changes proposed by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to the Continuum of Care (CoC) program threaten to return nearly 14,000 New Yorkers to homelessness. Although the recent Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) that outlined this new approach was temporarily rescinded, HUD has made clear its intention to continue down this harmful path.
On this Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day, we grieve and we recommit. We recommit to policies rooted in dignity, to investments that save lives, and to the simple truth that housing is an essential intervention to ending homelessness. Remembrance must move us into action, because honoring those we lost means ensuring fewer names are added to this list in the years ahead.
We urge everyone to learn more about the latest CoC funding restriction and how it can be stopped by visiting the Network’s website here. We also encourage those who are able to join Urban Pathways and Care For the Homeless this evening for their annual Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day Observance. Memorial details can be found here.”