Op-Ed | The solution to New York City’s animal shelter crisis | amNewYork

New York City animal shelters have been overcrowded for decades. It got so bad last year that shelters were forced to temporarily stop pet intake due to the overwhelming number of surrenders and abandonments. 

Animal-loving volunteers and local independent rescue groups are everywhere but they cannot keep up.

There is a solution. But first we must travel upstream to understand the root cause instead of blaming our city’s animal shelters for a problem they cannot solve. 

The Real Problem

In the wealthiest city in the world, so many of our neighbors’ pets go without the veterinary care they all deserve. In fact, more than 50% of pet owners can no longer afford a basic vet visit, let alone a spay neuter appointment (which now costs more than $1,000 at many NYC vet clinics). 

Affordability is the top issue for New Yorkers across the board. It’s also the #1 reason why people are surrendering their pets to shelters – and why so many sadly say they may never be able to adopt again. 

To tackle this issue head on, local non-profit Flatbush Cats recently built the brand new 3,700-square-foot Flatbush Veterinary Clinic. Here they will provide tens of thousands of spay neuter surgeries and wellness appointments in the coming years – at affordable rates – with initial pilot funding from Councilman Justin Brannan. 

Now it’s time to scale. We need several affordable veterinary clinics like Flatbush Vet in every borough to keep more pets together with their families. And with thousands of cats and dogs flooding municipal shelters every year, we need to act now. 

Everyone Wins With Access to Care

Everyone benefits from affordable access to veterinary care: pet owners, rescuers, shelters, and taxpayers. We can keep thousands of pets with their families where they belong, and out of shelters, for a fraction of what it costs to house them currently. 

Currently, New York City spends less than 5% of its animal welfare budget on high impact, upstream measures like spay neuter – which has been proven to reduce overpopulation and shelter intake. The City has typically looked the other way and relied on citizens and non-profit organizations to volunteer to solve the public problem of stray and abandoned cats. Rescue volunteers show up for everything from hoarding and abuse cases to an abandoned sick cat on the subway. Over many years, an ecosystem of hundreds of tiny neighborhood rescue organizations have popped up to fill the vacuum of city services. But it is wrong for our government to continue taking advantage of compassionate animal-loving New Yorkers by expecting them to continue digging into their own pockets to solve these problems and it’s time we called it out. 

The good news is that the City of New York can correct this imbalance by allocating real funding in next year’s budget to ensure more pet owners and rescuers have affordable access to spay neuter services. 

Let’s be clear: we cannot rescue, adopt, or shelter our way out of this crisis. But we can move upstream and prevent more pets from ever needing help. It’s time to do the right thing for New York City pets and their families. City-funded affordable veterinary clinics will keep pets with their families and reduce the burden on independent rescue groups and our overcrowded shelters. 

Justin Brannan represents southern Brooklyn in the City Council. Allie Taylor is the President of Voters for Animal Rights. Will Zweigart is the Founder & Executive Director of Flatbush Cats.