Spencer Norris is an investigative reporter covering homelessness for New York Focus and ProPublica's Local Reporting Network. He has exposed deficiencies in opioid treatment in New York's jails and prisons, as well as a treatment desert spanning most of upstate. Spencer previously worked with the investigations team at the South Florida Sun Sentinel, where their reporting spurred reforms cracking down on sex trafficking and providing new protections for survivors. He earned his master's degree from the Missouri School of Journalism.
The proposal follows a New York Focus and ProPublica investigation that found counties had placed thousands of adults and children in often-dilapidated hotels as the main response to homelessness.
Social services agencies across the state now place nearly half of all individuals and families seeking shelter in hotels, leaving people without resources like food and help finding housing.
Statewide spending on hotels has more than tripled in recent years. The shift away from shelters has prevented families from accessing services like child care and help finding housing.
Stark disparities in access to life-saving medication for opioid addiction persist between facilities — and racial groups.
Hochul’s budget would level off funding for addiction treatment — and use opioid settlement funds to fill the gaps.
The average New Yorker has to travel nearly 10 miles to access methadone, a New York Focus analysis found. Upstate, they have to go even further.
The governor has neglected to announce a public emergency over the increasingly deadly opioid epidemic. Observers are perplexed.
The Sheriffs’ Association lobbied against a bill to provide medication for opioid addiction in jails. Since it passed, they’ve failed to evaluate thousands of people for treatment.
Men locked up in the Broome County jail describe an opioid treatment program so shoddy, they risk withdrawal, relapse, and overdose.
The addiction epidemic is getting worse in the Capital Region. Through local zoning laws, residents fight to keep the state’s solutions out of their backyards.
Mixed evidence was piling up about a signature New York drug policy experiment. Then the state stopped releasing the data.
In the state’s byzantine system for addiction services, some people don’t know they have tenants’ rights. Some don’t have them at all.
Formerly incarcerated “peers” offer drug counseling to people in county jails — when they can get in.
The governor buried policies in her budget proposal that would give police and prosecutors more leverage over people with opioid addictions.