Disability Beat: How Will NYS Budget Affect Housing, Employment, Transportation?

For many people with disabilities, laws and funding have been important in ensuring equal access to housing, transportation and employment. On this week’s Disability Beat, we feature a portion of a recently aired hour-long special on the New York State Budget, which you can listen to in full by clicking here. Two experts from our panel explain what we know about how the budget will affect housing, transportation and employment for New Yorkers with disabilities.

PLAIN LANGUAGE DESCRIPTION:
In this episode, we share part of a longer interview with experts from the disability community. WBFO’s Emyle Watkins talks with Todd Vaarwerk and Stephanie Orlando of Western New York Independent Living about how the New York State budget will affect people with disabilities.

They discuss how the NYS budget includes funding for housing specifically for people with mental health conditions. $43 million will go to supportive housing units, according to the Budget Division, Stephanie and Todd emphasize the importance of affordable, accessible and integrated housing for people with mental health conditions. Todd and Stephanie also explain that finding housing for people with disabilities is still difficult, especially if you don’t qualify for certain programs, or if you have multiple disabilities and are assisted by multiple state agencies.

Emyle, Todd and Stephanie also discuss New York’s plans to fund Employment First policies. The Governor will prioritize an “Employment First” approach to the disability community with a $6.7 million budget. Todd said, “Employment First is meant at the state level to prioritize the ability of people with disabilities to obtain competitive integrated employment. It’s the first time it’s been mentioned in the budget, in terms of a line budget and a major government initiative.” Todd explains that more work needs to be done to ensure that people with disabilities still have as many choices as non-disabled people about where they work.Todd explains that we still don’t know how these will be used money for employment initiatives The state must now decide and plan it fully.

Emyle and Todd also discuss why there are no big changes in this budget for paratransit. Elevated transit systems will receive $323 million, but we saw no major changes in paratransit funding. Todd explains that advocates expect changes to paratransit funding in next year’s budget after a study on the cost of the expansion is completed.

TRANSCRIPT

Emily Watkins: Hi, I’m Emyle Watkins, and this is WBFO’s Disability Beat. This month, we’re sharing highlights from the recently passed 2024-2025 New York State budget. This week we show how parts of the budget will affect housing, transport and employment for people with disabilities. This interview has been edited for length and clarity. However, we have the entire roundtable discussion from this, which includes more perspectives and additional aspects of the budget, on our website at wbfo.org.

Emily Watkins: First, I want to introduce Todd Vaarwerk. Todd, can you tell us a little bit about who you are?

Todd Vaarwerk: Well, I’m the Chief Policy Officer at Western New York Independent Living. I am a person with a developmental disability who has worked in the independent living field for 30 years.

Emily Watkins: And Stephanie, you also work at Western New York Independent Living. Tell us a little about yourself.

Stephanie Orlando: hello I am a person with multiple disabilities and I am the Head of Operations.

Emily Watkins: And tell us a little more about Western New York Independent Living as well.

Stephanie Orlando: We are a family of agencies including three independent living centers that support people with disabilities to live fully inclusive lives in the community.

Emily Watkins: I noticed that $43 million will go to supportive housing units for people with mental health issues. Stephanie, I know Independent Living of Western New York works hard with people with mental health issues to make sure they have the resources they need to succeed. What have you heard about how this can affect people?

Stephanie Orlando: Well, I think it is necessary. We have such a shortage of affordable, accessible, integrated housing and for this population it is only one part of our disability community, but absolutely important to have. And the remarkable thing about this is that it includes single room occupancy and the option to receive housing in unlicensed Office of Mental Health facilities. So that means you can get help getting an apartment in the community where you would probably be in a building with other people who don’t have disabilities or mental health conditions. So that’s really important, to remain integrated into a part of society where we’re not segregated into specific housing settings, but we have access to housing and the support we need in those housing settings.

Emily Watkins: Todd and Stephanie, WNYIL obviously does a lot of work to help people with housing, connecting with housing. What are the problems that currently exist? So, do we see any other way that the budget is helping to solve these issues?

Todd Vaarwerk: Well, remember this is part of a bigger, much bigger push for housing that came out of the Governor’s State of the State address. And as we’re referring to people who are served by the Office of Mental Health and what we refer to as “o-agencies,” right, we’re talking about people who are being served by o-agencies, but people who are not still in a housing crisis problem due to not being able to get accessible housing because locally it’s all being taken and the housing you can get is obviously priced from someone who doesn’t already have a housing support like a federal housing choice coupon or something from one of the state waivers.

So, as we can say in many areas of the budget, this is a very good initial investment for the most persistent homeless population that the state says it deals with. But we cannot let it be the only step. So we’re advocating with local politicians to talk about the overall housing plan, including the provisions for accessible housing, so that there’s accessible housing that can use the money that they’re setting aside in this program.

Emily Watkins: And just to clarify for our listeners, those o-agencies are the Office of Mental Health and the Office of Developmental Disabilities or as we call it OPWDD.

Todd Vaarwerk: And the other, the Bureau of Alcohol –

Stephanie Orlando: – Addiction Services and Support.

Todd Vaarwerk: Addiction Services and Supports.

Stephanie Orlando: Yes, they changed the name not too long ago.

Emily Watkins: So o-agencies, but obviously not everyone with a disability is served by an o-agency.

Todd Vaarwerk: Correct.

Stephanie Orlando: And some become an obstacle of who is the primary, who is taking the lead. And so let’s say you have multiple disabilities and you’re served by both agencies. Sometimes it can be difficult to get services at all because there is a lot of finger pointing.

Emily Watkins: And housing was a major part of the budget, but I know employment was another major point for the Governor. And New York said they’re becoming a quote, “Employment First” for the disability community and they’ve contributed $6.7 million to the budget for that, tell us a little bit about what that means for the community.

Todd Vaarwerk: Well, Employment First is designed at the state level to prioritize the ability of people with disabilities to obtain integrated competitive employment. This is the first time that a budget line and a major government initiative is mentioned in the budget. But Employment First has been around for a while and hopefully with the amount of money they’ve put into it and the amount of planning they’re going to have to use to spend the money, we’re going to get some more substantial results in being able to improve employment outcomes because while we’ve been saying Employment First for many years, we haven’t really built it into corporate jobs beyond the entry level, maybe maintenance jobs or government jobs.

So we’re hoping that this model can be built into something where there’s a real choice of work, especially since we’re now in a deficit for hiring people. Everyone is looking for people to fill a job. People with disabilities are good at this. So here it is again, the government makes a good first investment to say, okay, if we have all these jobs that need to be filled, let’s put some money aside to make sure that people with disabilities have an equal strike against them.

Emily Watkins: And do we know how that money will be used to achieve this?

Todd Vaarwerk: Not yet. Budget language must lead to regulatory language before we understand how they will spend the money.

Emily Watkins: And this year we saw $323 million allocated to New York’s transit systems, but no word on any major changes to paratransit.

Todd Vaarwerk: Now there’s a reason for that, because in last year’s budget, or sorry 2022 budget, they put three-quarters of a million dollars into a fund for a study that would be done by a state transit authority. for the cost of the paratransit expansion, and they gave the money to the Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority, which is currently pursuing the study. The study is supposed to be done by October 2024. So, in terms of the next budget, we need to be able to have a number that is workable and professionally researched and peer-reviewed so that we can go back and say ok, for upstate transit The authorities are separate from the MTA and everything they do because upstate transit is funded differently than downstate transit. Being able to have a number allows us to get into that conversation about how much paratransit expansion the state can afford.

I don’t think it was a failure on the part of the governor to consider that, more than I just think they are waiting for the results. Now that being said, as we move forward, we know that the main guy who pushed the study, Tim Kennedy, just won a position in Congress, and one of the things that we hope his office will take advantage of is continued engagement on the federal side. . to bring in some money that the state could then appropriate. So if they say the regional expansion for paratransit is $20 million, then we can ask the Feds for $10 million and then only have to worry about NFTA matching another $10 million, potentially, with the allocation of the state.

Emily Watkins: You can listen to the Disabilities Beat segment on demand, view a transcript and a plain language description of each episode on our website at wbfo.org. I’m Emyle Watkins, thanks for listening.