Dear Community Member:

We are proud to be a community that has long welcomed one of the City’s greatest concentrations of permanent social service facilities and supportive housing.  In order to ensure we continue to thrive, the Hell's Kitchen Neighborhood Coalition (HKNC)* advocates for social service provider accountability, street safety, and partnering with local organizations, elected officials and city agencies to ensure the health and well-being of everyone who lives in, works in or visits West Midtown, Clinton / Hell’s Kitchen, Garment District and NoMad.  

HKNC requests your support in signing the below Call to Action Petition:

Dear Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul,

Making tangible progress to improve public safety in West Midtown, Clinton/Hell’s Kitchen, Garment District and NoMad takes a collaborative effort between State and City elected officials, NYPD and social service providers to reform existing laws and propose new ones, address severe recidivism and enforce safe and predictable behavior in the public realm. As part of that effort, we must also address the severe mental health and drug addiction crises facing New York City. The mental-health-and-substance abuse crises are taking an outsized toll on residents in our neighborhoods.

We seek your support and action on the following programmatic and legislative solutions:

1. Evenly distribute social service facilities throughout the five boroughs to prevent concentration in any one neighborhood.

2. Create 1,000-foot radius drug-free zones surrounding social service facilities.

3. Reform legislation to eliminate open needle use on our streets.

4. Establish substantive consequences for repeat offenders with multiple arrests for drug possession with intent to sell.

5. Require that New York City track and map all social service facility locations and perform a Fair Share analysis when siting new ones.

6. Demand accountability from social service providers to ensure all promised services are delivered to clients and provide security in the area surrounding the facility.

7. Call for additional funding and new strategies for in-patient mental health treatment facilities to treat and house severely and persistently mentally ill people.

We, the undersigned, request immediate action to improve the street conditions in our neighborhoods brought about by the concentration of social service facilities. Our neighborhoods cannot continue to serve as one of the region’s primary repositories for these facilities.

Simply put, we need collective action now, for our neighborhoods.

Additional Information
Link 1: Full Letter with Proposed Legislative and Programmatic Actions
Link 2: Map of Social Service Facilities, Supportive Housing and New Homeless Shelters in West Midtown, Clinton / Hell’s Kitchen, Garment District and Nomad

*About Us
The Hell’s Kitchen Neighborhood Coalition (HKNC) was formed in 2020 by residents, block associations, local organizations, business improvement districts and small business owners to address the dramatic change to our community in the wake of COVID-19.  As a historic neighborhood in the heart of Manhattan, we believe that Hell’s Kitchen still plays a vital role in the life of our City. HKNC believes that the City must ensure public health and safety throughout the district for all permanent and temporary residents.