Home+ is a citywide program of the Mayor’s Office to End Domestic and Gender-Based Violence (ENDGBV) focused on enhancing housing safety and stability for survivors of domestic and gender-based violence living in New York City. ENDGBV launched Home+ in 2021 by absorbing and expanding the Human Resources Administration (HRA)’s Alternative to Shelter Program to provide survivors who want to stay in their homes with alarm systems, locksmith services, and case management services. Given research highlighting the positive impact of flexible funding on survivors’ housing stability, ENDGBV has further expanded Home+ in alignment with the priorities outlined in the Mayoral Blueprint “Housing Our Neighbors ” released in June 2022. As a result, Home+ provides survivors with security resources (i.e., alarm systems and locksmith services), flexible funding, and robust case management services and referrals to help them address various safety and economic factors that would otherwise impede their ability to remain or become stably housed. In addition, Home+ also centers survivor autonomy, including by offering customized protocols through which Home+ clients with alarm systems can choose who they want to be alerted of alarm activations. and thusClients can opt-in or out of police notification, deferring to survivors requesting flexible funds to determine which costs are priorities, and not requiring survivors to have engaged with any systems or obtained any formal documentation of victimization. Given that domestic violence is the leading driver of homelessness among women and families in New York City and forces many survivors of all genders into shelter systems or street homelessness, Home+ is one of several other City initiatives that together aim to reduce overall housing instability and displacement in New York City. ENDGBV, in partnership with the New York City Department of Social Services/Human Resources Administration (DSS/HRA), is seeking proposals from up to five (5) organizations to operate the Home+ program in each of the five (5) boroughs of New York City (i.e., the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens, and Staten Island). Individual organizations are permitted to apply for multiple boroughs but are required to submit separate solicitations for each borough of interest. Each borough-based Home+ program provider must have the knowledge, capacity, and/or experience to execute all the specific responsibilities. Additionally, ENDGBV is seeking providers that foster cultural responsiveness (i.e., attitudes, practices and policies that enable an organization to work effectively with staff and clients from different cultural backgrounds and identities), and value diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) principles and practices, including but not limited to hiring staff with lived experience and ensuring they are supported within the organization.
