Although the western part of the U.S. — California, in particular — draws much of the national attention around the dual crises of housing and homelessness, the east coast also faces its share of struggles. In New York City, homelessness levels have risen to their highest since the Great Depression. According to recent data, a total of over 120,000 people in the city slept in shelters on a given night in January 2025, and more than 200,000 people temporarily slept “doubled-up” or “tripled-up” in the homes of others. (There is no reliable data on how many people were unsheltered.)
Given New York’s centrality for U.S. philanthropy, it’s no surprise that there are a large number of funders that work to address homelessness in the city. One such funder is The New York Community Trust, which oversees more than 2,000 individual funds and runs donor-advised and competitive grantmaking programs in New York City, Long Island and Westchester County. Between 2022 and 2024, the trust awarded more than $3.7 million in grants for advocacy, research and programs aimed at preventing and reducing homelessness.
As is the case across the U.S., the biggest cause of homelessness New York City is a longstanding lack of affordable housing, along with a high cost burden around existing housing that drives housing insecurity.
“A lot of the time… people tend to think of [homelessness] as a personal thing. Maybe that person has something going on with their mental health or something like that, whereas the data in New York City and many expensive cities like New York City really shows that the main barrier to housing for folks who are experiencing homelessness is housing costs,” said Chantella Mitchell, program director for Community Development, Housing, and Human Services at The New York Community Trust.
As is true on the West Coast, community foundations have been important nexuses for philanthropy’s response to homelessness and housing insecurity in New York. Given its prominence and history — it’s now over a century old — the New York Community Trust’s approach to the issues is worth a closer look.
The New York Community Trust’s efforts to address and prevent homelessness
The trust’s work to address homelessness is focused on two major areas, Mitchell said. One involves supporting people who are actively experiencing homelessness and getting them what they need to move into permanent housing. The other centers on preventing people who are housing insecure from becoming homeless in the first place.
Through its Human Services program, the trust has supported research, policy and programs that work to reduce hunger, homelessness and poverty, and on building the capacity of government agencies and nonprofit organizations that serve low-income New Yorkers. For instance, the trust awarded $1 million to train social workers who serve unhoused New Yorkers.
As another example, last year, the youth homelessness organization Point Source Youth worked with two of the trust’s grantees — Henry Street Settlement and The Door — to launch the city’s first direct cash transfer program to prevent youth homelessness. The program provided one-time payments between $645 and $9,900 to 100 young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 to help them pay overdue rent or find new living arrangements to avoid entering the city’s shelter system.
Since 1981, New York City has had a right-to-shelter rule, meaning that anyone in the city who doesn’t have somewhere to live is “guaranteed safe, decent and appropriate shelter so they don’t have to end up on the streets.” As a result, people who are unhoused may not be as visible as they are in places like Los Angeles, which does not have a right to shelter.
“It masks the problem a little bit, and it really requires a different type of thinking about both what’s causing homelessness, as well as what you can do to address it,” Mitchell said.
The trust recently awarded a grant to Women in Need to help protect families’ right to shelter, as well as advocacy for a statewide housing voucher program. Defending the city’s right to shelter is a priority initiative in 2025 for Women in Need, which is particularly important given that both Mayor Eric Adams and Gov. Kathy Hochul have sought to suspend it.
Increasing homeownership among low- and middle-income New Yorkers
In recent years, public opinion around the causes of homelessness has started to shift, if gradually, from the perception of the problem as a consequence of personal failure to understanding the systemic issues that lead to it, including the lack of affordable housing, rising rents and insufficient social safety nets.
“I think the conversation has shifted toward thinking about [housing] affordability. For so much of my early career… the conversation was about individuals and the kinds of social, emotional [or] mental deficits that people may have. Now, I’m hearing really honest and frank conversations about how our city, our country’s housing, is just too expensive,” Mitchell said.
The trust is also aiming to take lessons about what worked during the pandemic, which saw homelessness levels remain relatively stable, and support organizations that are working to make those temporary protections permanent. These include critical things like the moratoriums on evictions and foreclosures.
One example is the trust’s support for the Center for NYC Neighborhoods, which works to promote and protect affordable homeownership in the city. In 2023, The New York Community Trust awarded a grant so that the center could use what it learned during the pandemic — including infrastructure data and information about low- and moderate-income homeowners in the city — to advocate for a permanent mortgage assistance program.
“A lot of the time, these low-and-moderate-income homeowners need one kind of quick influx of cash because of some specific life event, and that’s what they were getting through the [Homeowner Assistance Fund] program during the pandemic. Everyone acknowledged that there were a lot of really crucial, one-time events, but those situations haven’t stopped since the pandemic. The difference is that the funding and the support has stopped,” Mitchell said.
The trust has also invested in New York’s community land trusts (CLTs), which have grown significantly in recent years, and aim to lock in affordability through collective ownership. The trust has provided recent funding to Brooklyn Level Up to create a CLT in Southern Central Brooklyn. It has also supported a number of other CLTs through the Change Capital Fund, including the Interboro Community Land Trust.
“This is, I think, a big success for those individual families who will actually be able to purchase affordable homes on the CLT, but also a big public policy shift in thinking about how we might actually make homeownership attainable,” Mitchell said.
In addition, the trust is also working with the Pratt Center for Community Development on research and advocacy around prospective homebuyers forced to compete with corporations and speculative investors to purchase homes, Mitchell said.
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How the New York Community Trust is seeking to support tenants
The trust has a long history of supporting tenants’ and renters’ rights organizations, which is a strategy that has seen increased support among funders in recent years.
The trust, for instance, has backed Tenants & Neighbors, which works to empower and educate tenants, preserve affordable housing and strengthen tenant protections in New York. According to Mitchell, the organization’s work includes ensuring people who live in rent-stabilized housing are aware of their rights, are able to access their information from the state’s database on rental regulations, and, should their landlord attempt to illegally evict them, preparing them for housing court.
The trust is also part of the Neighborhoods First Fund, a multi-year funding initiative that works to strengthen the capacity of community-based organizations so that they can help shape neighborhood planning, land use and community development decisions. The fund is especially focused on low-income, low-wealth communities of color. Other funders include Altman Foundation, Kornfeld Foundation, New York Foundation, Oak Foundation, Scherman Foundation and Surdna Foundation.
As part of its work to build tenant power, the Neighborhoods First Fund has provided funding for the Upstate/Downstate Housing Alliance and its members. In 2019, tenants successfully advocated for legislation that strengthened and expanded tenant protections across the state. And in 2020, tenants were able to organize and expand protections such as good cause eviction, which protects tenants of market rate homes from being evicted without “a good cause reason.” Good causes include unpaid rent (unless nonpayment is due to unreasonable rent increase), broken terms of a lease, using a home for illegal activity or damaging the property, among others.
Another area the trust has worked on is increasing the efficacy of rental assistance. One of the big issues there is that families exiting shelters are often unable to access rental assistance in a timely manner. One of the projects the trust funded to address the issue is Anthos Home, which works alongside local government, nonprofits, housing providers and private funders to allow voucher holders to move into affordable housing more quickly.
According to Mitchell, one of the barriers to families being able to use rental assistance in a timely manner is that apartments must first be inspected by the city. When it comes to minor issues that can cause the unit to fail the housing quality inspection, such as lights or outlets not working correctly, Anthos Home uses philanthropic dollars to pay for rapid repairs so the entire process doesn’t have to start anew and families can move in sooner.
Despite the homelessness and housing crises, Mitchell is hopeful about the city’s future. “I feel optimistic because the conversation is shifting to the systemic barriers to ending homelessness. I’m hopeful that the solutions will shift, as well,” she said. “I have the pleasure of being able to see the work that people have been doing and that has been working in the city, and so I think we are at an opportunity where solutions exist.”
