New York City Council Committee on Veterans Complicit
New York City - A new year is often described as a reset, a chance to recommit to values that matter. For New York City, that reset must include an honest accounting of how honorably discharged veterans are treated once they fall into homelessness, released from incarceration, or discharge from active service. What has emerged is not a system designed to heal or transition veterans, but one that disciplines, confines, and delays—while claiming the moral high ground of “stabilization.”
At the center of this failure is the NYC Council Committee on Veterans, which continued to meaningfully confront evidence that veterans are being punished for their homelessness, denied transitional services, and warehoused in violent, secluded environments under false pretenses.
Department of Oversight and Investigation Report
In 2024, the New York City Department of Investigation released a report documenting serious deficiencies in oversight, safety, and accountability within city-funded shelter operations overseen by the New York City Department of Homeless Services. Rather than sustained hearings or enforceable reforms, the Committee largely accepted agency explanations. For veterans inside the system, this meant continued isolation, exposure to violence, and denial of pathways out of homelessness.
The human cost is most visible in MICA shelters, where honorably discharged veterans are placed under the claim of mental health stabilization. In reality, many experience these placements as incarceration. Veterans are isolated, subjected to unsafe environments, denied veteran-specific services, and stripped of autonomy.
Compounding this harm are non-veteran caseworkers who withhold transitional services under a philosophy they call “tough love.” In practice, this approach punishes veterans for symptoms of trauma and homelessness, imposing sanctions and discipline instead of care.
Veterans Suffer Blame
Despite this reality, the Committee continues to blame veterans for failing to self-identify. Veterans do not self-identify because identification does not protect them—it exposes them to confinement, discrimination, and punishment.
This is not a technical failure. It is a moral one. Honorably discharged veterans fulfilled their obligations. New York City must fulfill its own and not continue to delay addressing this crisis as the former Committee on Veterans Chairman Robert Holden had done for the previous three years.
The new year must bring accountability: hearings with teeth, independent oversight, guaranteed access to VA services outside DHS control, funding reform, and real consequences when veterans are harmed.
Oversight is not optional. The incoming Committee on Veterans must do better to address veterans’ treatment and rectify this continued embarrassment that is the Veterans Affairs Grant and Per Diem transitional program.
To read more about the conditions facing Veterans in the Veterans Affairs Grant & Per Diem transitional program and the report to the New York City Council and Committee on Veterans, click on:
REPORT TO THE NEW YORK CITY COUNCIL
BORDEN AVENUE VETERANS TRANSITIONAL PROGRAM
Printable pdf. NewYearReckoning_20260102
