Profile in Influence: Christine Quinn
For Women’s History Month, ClearPath will be discussing some of the most prevalent women’s issues in poverty and homelessness, as well as profiling influential women from New York City who have left a mark on how New York deals with homelessness.
Throughout most of the 21st century, and certainly through the 2010’s, the most powerful woman in the New York City politics of homelessness and poverty, and particularly how these issues affect women and families, is former New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn.
In her long career in politics and the nonprofit sector, Quinn made history as the first female and openly gay Speaker of the New York City Council, chaired a number of housing and anti-violence committees in liaison with the city government, and currently serves as the president and CEO of Women in Need (WIN), the largest provider of shelters to women and children in New York City. At the helm of WIN, and with years of political experience behind her, Quinn has become the preeminent figure in New York City’s homelessness response.
A Trailblazing Politician
Prior to entering politics, Quinn worked for several nonprofits and community organizations that focused on the betterment of life for underserved populations in New York City. Quinn’s first major position in the NGO world was at the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development (ANHD), a Manhattan-based organization focused on achieving affordable housing throughout the city, chairing their Housing Justice Campaign. Quinn would also go on to serve as the executive director of the New York City Anti-Violence Project (now an umbrella organization called the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs), which aims to eliminate violence against LGBTQ+ Americans.
At age 25, Quinn managed the city council campaign of Thomas Duane in New York City’s 3rd District. Duane would go on to become the first openly gay member of the New York City Council; Quinn served as his chief of staff for the first five years of his tenure. When Duane resigned in 1998 after his election to the New York State Senate, Quinn successfully ran to finish his term.
On the City Council, Quinn was a fierce advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, sponsoring the Equal Benefits Bill and the Health Security Act, which required equal benefits from contractors for heterosexual married couples and gay domestic partners. Quinn has boycotted every St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York City since 2006, as the parade organizers were staunchly against allowing LGBTQ+ groups to march in the parade.
After six years on the City Council, Quinn was elected Speaker of the body; Quinn was the first woman and openly gay legislator to serve as Speaker of the City Council. As Speaker of the Council, Quinn fought for more lenient standards for food stamp acceptances, including NYC’s Greenmarket, and to end the use of fingerprinting for food stamp applications. In 2011, she led a panel on a lawsuit against Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who had enforced a strict policy of requiring homeless adults to prove that they had no home or place to sleep before being allowed entrance into a shelter.
In 2013, Quinn ran for Mayor of New York City; though she was initially viewed as the frontrunner of a crowded field, her ties to outgoing Mayor Michael Bloomberg and her reversing of her position on term limits made her vulnerable to attacks from opponents. She eventually came in third place in the Democratic Primary, behind Comptroller Bill Thompson and current Mayor Bill de Blasio. After losing the race for Mayor, Quinn retired from politics.
Quinn and WIN
In 2015, Quinn returned to the nonprofit world when it was announced that she would take over as president and CEO of WIN. In the midst of a homelessness crisis exacerbated by Mayor de Blasio’s handling of shelters and policing, Quinn was coming into a powerful position at a critical juncture of New York’s politics of homelessness. Two years after leaving her position as Speaker of the New York City Council, Quinn was taking charge of an organization with a $70 million budget, 500 employees and 400 volunteers.
WIN has a long history of assisting homeless women and children with temporary shelter and permanent housing placement. In 2014, WIN helped place 750 families into permanent housing and annually assists nearly 10,000 clients. Under Quinn’s helm, WIN houses 4,700 people each night and houses nearly 10% of homeless families in New York City. WIN’s focus on family assistance and assistance for homeless women, in addition to their fierce advocacy for impoverished families, have made them one of the dominant homelessness nonprofits in New York.
Quinn and WIN work closely with the city government, as most of their budget comes from the city. In 2019, controversy arose when residents of Park Slope identified a large discrepancy in the budget laid out for two proposed WIN shelters. Detractors alleged that by inflating the expected rental price, the contractors, along with WIN, had inflated the budget for the project by nearly $74 million dollars. Prior to joining WIN, Quinn faced criticism for advocating against the construction of a homeless shelter in her neighborhood of Chelsea, claiming that the proposed shelter’s building plan violated zoning laws.
Speaking Out During the Pandemic
As previously covered by ClearPath, the pandemic hit the homelessness non profit sector particularly hard. In the midst of 2020, WIN’s staff had been cut by 67%, and many WIN centers, such as the Shirley Chisholm Center, were running on a skeleton crew. During the pandemic, Quinn has come to the forefront to address rising homelessness and the inability of the city and nonprofits to adequately serve those affected by the pandemic.
In the aftermath of the 2020 Presidential Election, in the midst of the worst of the pandemic, Quinn advocated strongly for an extended suspension of evictions in New York City and called on President Biden to include money for affordable housing in Biden’s first stimulus package.
Quinn has put emphasis on the issues that homeless women and children have faced during the pandemic, arguing for the installation of wi-fi in all homeless shelters for tele-learning and dealing with the widespread physical abuse faced by women in poverty and those on the brink of homelessness. She has also put an emphasis on the necessity for more effective housing vouchers, arguing that the current maximum vouchers allowed for homeless New Yorkers does not cover rent anywhere in the city.
In May 2020, WIN published The Aftermath Plan, a strategy that the organization states will be necessary to help homeless families make it through the pandemic and mitigate the effects of the pandemic on vulnerable families.
The plan is laid out into five main steps:
Creating a Stay at Home Emergency Rental Assistance Voucher
Creating Rapid Housing Vouchers, house searching services and short term housing
Ensuring access to shelter by appropriating hotels into shelters, as well as rehabilitating purpose-built shelters
Helping families leave shelter quickly and stay stably housed, by bolstering community based support services and making adjustments to rental vouchers
Redoubling efforts to create and preserve deeply affordable housing getting government contracts for more affordable units in New York City
With Quinn in charge of the largest organization of homeless shelters in the city, she has major sway in determining the future of shelter and affordable housing in New York City, and has a commanding voice on changing policy to make housing more accessible to impoverished New Yorkers. After a long and pioneering career in politics, Christine Quinn now continues to navigate the crisis of homelessness in New York City, advocating for the rights of underserved families, women and children who fall through the cracks.
