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Dozens of Big Apple businesses will collectively dedicate more than $8 million for services aimed at tackling the city’s dire homelessness problem, Mayor Eric Adams announced Tuesday.

The tranche of funding will be delivered via a “Homeless Assistance Fund” that will allow the nonprofit Breaking Ground to expand its outreach to New Yorkers living on the street and who suffer from mental illnesses with the goal of getting them into housing and treatment programs, officials said.

The expansion of the organization’s Connect to Care project that’s been underway during the last two years is scheduled to begin dispatching more outreach crews in seven pockets of the city by the early fall, they revealed.

“This administration has made clear [that] we are not gonna walk past our brothers and sisters who have fallen on hard times,” Adams told reporters at City Hall. “This initiative will offer them the assistance they urgently need.”


  Mayor Eric Adams announced the donation windfall on Tuesday. NYC Mayor's Office Mayor Eric Adams announced the donation windfall on Tuesday. NYC Mayor's Office

“Today, we are seeing those partners. Heroes are not only wearing blue capes; they wear blue suits, blue dresses, and they are not sitting back and allowing these crises to take place,” he added.

“That’s what the partnership is about, and I’m proud to say that these 61 businesses stood up, and I’m sure more are going to stand up.”

Among the finance, real estate companies and law firms handing over the cash are BlackRock and Blackstone; Bank of America; Morgan Stanley; Tishman Speyer; Ernst & Young; The Related Companies; Davis Polk & Wardwell; Cushman & Wakefield; the MetLife Foundation; Mastercard; and JP Morgan Chase, according to a City Hall press release

The new batch of funding will allow 100 more outreach teams to perform their work in privately owned spaces not currently covered by existing city contracts where homeless people often spend time, like bank vestibules, officials said. The program’s staffers will focus on Midtown, Lower Manhattan and Downtown Brooklyn.

“It will allow us to collaborate and coordinate with our city-funded outreach teams to provide an additional level of service and to reach people that we ordinarily wouldn’t reach,” said Brenda Rosen, head of Breaking Ground. 

Breaking Ground operates about 4,000 units of privately run permanent support housing, 500 units of “safe havens” — facilities with few regulations governing who can stay in them. They are designed for street homeless who often resist being moved to the city’s dangerous and disordered shelter system.

Kathyrn Wylde, head of the Partnership for NYC, said the city-business team-up came in response to a survey that showed street homelessness is a main reason why many white-collar workers have not returned to their offices. 

“We’re happy today so many companies have been willing to step up,” she said. “We’ve got to be a part of solving that problem, stepping up in support for the city and state’s efforts in that regard.”

Adams on Tuesday called on other business executives to provide more money to add even more capacity.

The announcement came after Adams in February launched an initiative with the goal of cracking down on people living on the trains and in the stations. Since it began, 2,000 people have been convinced to accept shelters as part of the “subway safety plan,” according to the mayor’s office.

Separately, his administration has in recent months conducted encampment sweeps, and has released less-than-impressive figures on how many down-and-out Big Apple residents have accepted invitations to reside in a homeless shelter.

Meanwhile, Adams and NYPD Commissioner Keechant Sewell in May met with business leaders to attempt to convince them that the five boroughs are safe enough for desk jockeys to commute to their cubicles.

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