Join the fight to renew, strengthen rent laws
BY DENNIS HANRATTY

Budget cuts hurt tenants group
NOVEMBER 29, 2010
The Journal News

Re “Closing two shelters will not harm efforts to help homeless,” Nov. 20 Community View

Karl Bertrand’s above Community View is correct. He is right that the “progressive agenda…is to move away from shelters…by concentrating resources on 1) preventing evictions, and 2) rapidly rehousing people….” However, when he says that the county has achieved homelessness reduction by investing money in eviction prevention, he is wrong! The county has actually significantly reduced eviction prevention efforts. One such glaring example is Mount Vernon United Tenants, one of, if not the most effective eviction prevention agencies in the county. MVUT was recently completely defunded (after being funded for more than 20 years) due to the county’s austerity budget! The small annual grant MVUT received, $55,000 to $ 60,000, helped stop over 150 evictions every year! You can do the math

Pardon the dust, but we’re setting up the MVUT web site.