Episode 5: Transcript

Rethinking the Role of Animal Shelters

Will Zweigart: This is the sound from inside an animal shelter in Texas, but it could be any shelter in the country.

Virginia Marshall: Barking dogs, echoing halls. A cacophony that makes it hard to think or to relax. These are stressful places for cats and dogs and for people too.

Liliana Gomez: Do you feed yourself or do you feed your pet? And when it comes to that, it really is like, what do you do?

Virginia Marshall: That’s Liliana Gomez. She’s the veterinary manager at the city run animal shelter in Manhattan, and when she spoke with NBC New York a couple years ago, she talked about the challenges she and her fellow staff members face every day with more and more animals coming into their doors.

Liliana Gomez: Absolutely never ending. Had my weekend off and so I walked in to catch up. Just in the two days that I was out in this one location, we had 66 animals come in. I had close to 50, 60 hours a week. We’re well past burnt out.

Virginia Marshall: Liliana is nearly in tears in this clip, and it’s actually hard to watch without becoming emotional. So we just wanna set up a framing for this story. We’re going to talk about the failures of animal shelters here in New York City, but not as a criticism of the people who work there. They are selfless, hardworking people who are just trying to do right by these animals in impossible conditions.

Will Zweigart: New York City animal shelters have a combined capacity to house only a thousand animals. Far less than you would think. And given that there are hundreds of thousands of cats outside on the street and tons of dogs that people are also struggling to keep, that is just vastly inadequate. There’s supposed to be animal shelters in every borough. The city passed a law stating that, but right now, there is no shelter in the Bronx or in Brooklyn. They’re either closed or under construction.

So we have to ask, if shelters are always full, can they even be a safety net? And what role should the city play in fixing this?

Virginia Marshall: That’s what we’re gonna get into today on the podcast. We’ll dig into the potential for change in this great city and ask why our elected officials are still dragging their feet on the cat crisis.

I’m Virginia Marshall audio producer.

Will Zweigart: And I’m Will Zweigart, Executive Director of Flatbush Cats. You’re listening to Underfoot, a podcast about New York City’s hidden cat crisis and how we can solve it.

Virginia Marshall: So we’ve now heard a couple of news clips about animal shelters being constantly overwhelmed here in New York City, both in this episode just now, and back in episode two.

So I have to ask, Will, why are animal shelters always at capacity? And if the media keeps drawing attention to that one issue, why has nothing been done?

Will Zweigart: The vast majority of funding and the focus and criticism is based around these shelters, but they’re really the tip of the iceberg. They’re viewed as the safety net, but can we reasonably expect a safety net to also solve the problem? That’s like criticizing a city run emergency hospital when there is zero public health investment to keep people healthy.

The best way to help shelters is to ensure that both pet owners and rescue and TNR volunteers have affordable access to veterinary care, including spay neuter surgeries, which can prevent pet overpopulation and all of that stress that we just heard. Before it happens.

Virginia Marshall: Right. But is it even true that animal shelters are always overwhelmed with animals? Is that what the data is showing?

Will Zweigart: Yeah, and things are actually getting worse compared to a few years ago. Adoptions are down the length of stay, meaning how long a pet is in a shelter is going up, and most concerningly, the percentage of pets who are unfixed when they enter the shelter has been creeping up for several years.

This leads to some larger structural issues that we’re really here to talk about. One, shelters are encouraged to make their numbers look okay to avoid criticism from the public or to receive funding from the city or from large animal welfare organizations.

So, what do I mean by making your numbers look good? I’ll just give you one example. Release rate is the percentage of animals who leave your shelter in what they would consider live outcomes. So if a dog gets surrendered to a shelter and then they find a home, that would be considered a live release.

Well, you can fudge those numbers by just making it really hard to surrender. If you create barriers for people to surrender, then you have less animals to move through the system, and then your numbers look better. So, often with shelters here and around the country, folks have to jump through a lot of hoops just to get pets into the shelter.

Virginia Marshall: So if they’re saying like 70% of our dogs were live release dogs, the number that even got to the shelter is lower. And so it’s not that impressive, is that what you’re saying?

Will Zweigart: Yeah. There’s a variety of different factors. Think about a shelter as a glass of water. It’s incredibly small and it’s already full. So no one has any idea how many pets actually need help, because we’re just looking at the glass of water, which is always full.

On top of this, we’ve talked a lot about rescuers. And something that I always try to make sure our supporters understand ‘cause it’s crazy: rescuers cannot bring animals to the city shelter. That’s insane. If you’re a rescuer and you see a sick cat, you cannot just pick it up and bring it to the shelter, unless it’s pretty much just gonna be a medical euthanasia.

And so, you hear a lot of criticisms, like, why don’t people help? Why doesn’t someone just pick this cat up? Where are they gonna take it? You own that bill. I really need people to understand that the shelter situation is actually much worse than we think because of how we’re measuring it, because we’re looking at carefully selected metrics that hide the full picture.

Even measuring shelter intakes and surrenders alone, just measuring the number of animals who show up at a shelter which we’ve done, is almost meaningless if most people in that city, which is true here in New York, have been conditioned not to surrender. This is called intake suppression. So if I talk to my neighbors in Flatbush, like half of them are not aware of ACC, the shelter. And the other half would say, oh, I would never take my pet to a shelter because they would put them down.

Virginia Marshall: Right.

Will Zweigart: So, you’re starting to see how you don’t really have a full picture of what’s going on just by looking at that. And there’s other things we can discuss as we get into this about, what does surrender prevention look like? That’s a good thing. Surrender prevention is anything that actually keeps a pet with their family.

Virginia Marshall: Giving them food, access to affordable vet care...

Will Zweigart: yeah, and ACC does that too. They don’t get credit for that, but they are actively trying to help people keep their pets. That’s the good side. The bad side, and this is what is happening across the country, is again, what I would call intake suppression. And that’s just, if you make it harder, then it fudges the numbers on the shelter side.

Virginia Marshall: Right. I would definitely say there is a perception that, as you’re saying, if a person takes an animal to the animal shelter, they might be put down. I’ve also heard this term on the other side of that, this idea of a “no kill” shelter. So what does that actually mean?

Will Zweigart: Yeah. This has been a very damaging term for the sector and it’s time for us to start to move beyond it. “No kill” is a marketing scam, essentially, it’s great at raising money, but it’s terrible for shelters and for anyone who wants to solve this problem.

It is defined by a completely arbitrary, made up metric. A shelter is considered “no kill” if they have a 90% release rate or more. That’s what we were talking about earlier, live outcomes. So if 90% or more of the animals that arrive at the shelter, eventually find homes or essentially are exiting the shelter alive, then that’s considered “no kill.”

That sounds great, right? It’s a shell game. So here are a couple of different ways that you can game that release rate. And this is, again, not a blame on any shelter in the country. They have been dealt an impossible situation.

Some of the things that they feel pressure to do include creating a wait list for surrender. This is called “managed intake.” So shelters often, let’s say you have a capacity for a thousand animals, they may have a wait list of like 3,000 animals. People who have reached out and said, I need to surrender my pet, and again, remember, these are very volatile situations.

You might have like three days left in your apartment. You may have a sick relative, it’s not even your cat, right? You’re trying to help your aunt and they’re told like, well, we put you on a wait list. What do you think is gonna happen? You’re waiting six months and you’re waiting to surrender a pet when you’re in an emergency. They also pass strict rules on who can surrender and when. I mentioned earlier, a rescuer can not roll up with a pet or with a cat that they found outside. Some shelters have been accused of letting pets pass away so that they don’t have to euthanize them, which would be categorized as a different outcome.

Again, this is shelters across the countries. I’m not talking about ACC. They don’t have to count feral cats because they’re not considered friendly. There’s all these different ways you can game the system. And so you’re actually dealing with a lot more animals than you realize.

There’s another scam called “return-to-field.” The logic is, oh, well these cats are just lost, so we’re just gonna put them back, and then they’ll find their home. And so they microchip these friendly cats and then they just dump them back outside. And that is considered a live outcome because they dumped a live cat outside so it doesn’t impact the release rate. So they could be considered “no kill” by just not sheltering the animals.

And we are finding disoriented friendly cats and I have done a microchip scan and I have called and the microchip reads back to the city shelter. And I’ve called the city shelter and they’re like not sure what happened with that. Or work through the details and turns out that they had released it to a group who then released it back outside so that it wasn’t their problem.

When I say shell game, I mean there’s a lot of problems with how we’re measuring this issue.

Virginia Marshall: So what you’re saying is that animal shelters are not measuring the right things, or they’re not measuring at all, for a variety of reasons. While the public perception of the issue is pretty skewed.

Will Zweigart: Yeah, and I say this with love, but the reality is that our city leadership right now doesn’t understand anything that we’re talking about. Part of the reason why they’re misinformed is they’re being placated by those who are supposed to be in charge of animal welfare in the city. They are being told everything is under control.

Virginia Marshall: Right, and that actually came up in a City Council hearing last year. This was back in September of 2024. A few City Council members convened a hearing on the state of animal rescue in New York City, and it was the first time in the city’s history that something like this came together.

For nearly eight hours, cat rescuers, adoption advocates and representatives from animal care centers and other departments in the city shared their experiences and laid out their ideas for a path forward. And you were there at that hearing, right Will?

Will Zweigart: Yeah, mixed feelings about it. I was one of the people that gave testimony along with Sassee and Tanya, who you heard from. Many of the proposals that people were sharing, things they were asking for, are all basics that we’ve talked about in the series. More money for TNR, more citywide funding for spay neuter appointments, truly affordable veterinary care, but ultimately we just felt ignored.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah, and I wanna play a little bit from that hearing, because I think there is one exchange in particular that encapsulates a lot of the frustrations you were talking about. Not measuring the right things, not being heard, that kind of thing. This is a moment where Council member Lynn Schulman was questioning an official from the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

And for listeners, there are two acronyms you’re gonna need in this episode. D-O-H-M-H, or the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. That’s the entity that provides oversight and funding to the A-C-C, or the Animal Care Centers of New York. We’ve mentioned them before. Those are the city funded animal shelters here. So Council member Schulman was asking the DOHMH representative about how the city counts and enforces a city law that requires all owned cats living outdoors to be spayed or neutered.

Lynn Schulman: How many requests for proof of sterilization has DOHMH filed in the past year?

DOHMH Representative: We don’t have that data.

Lynn Schulman: Do you not collect it?

DOHMH Representative: We collect the information only where we have issued a summons for failing to comply. And in the instances where we have done that enforcement, we have found compliance. And so we do not have the data on having asked for the information.

Lynn Schulman: Is there a reason for not doing that or is there a funding issue? Staffing issue?

DOHMH Representative: It has not been part of our protocol to document that.

Lynn Schulman: How many notices of violation has DOHMH issued in the past year?

DOHMH Representative: For this circumstance, you mean?

So we have, when we have conducted these inspections and made those observations about the cat and asked the owner, we have found that cat to have been altered. And so there have not been, we have not issued violations.

Lynn Schulman: Okay. So none?

DOHMH Representative: We- right. That is right. We have found compliance, and so we have not issued violations.

Lynn Schulman: What- so I want to ask. Ms. Winestock, tell us the percentage of animals that you get at the shelters that are not spayed or neutered.

Risa Weinstock: Close to 59% of the animals coming in are not spayed or neutered. I mean, and it’s been going up.

Virginia Marshall: So at the end of that clip, you heard Risa Winestock, who’s the CEO of ACC, saying that the city’s shelters found nearly 60% of animals coming in are not fixed. And the DOHMH official is claiming that every time they’ve investigated a free roaming cat outdoors, it has been spayed or neutered. So what were you thinking when you heard this exchange, Will?

Will Zweigart: I can’t even, I can’t even say it. I’m not, I couldn’t even use the words. These clips live rent free in my head. What’s the point of a City Council hearing if the City Council doesn’t hear it? I think hearings are only helpful if you have elected officials who deeply care about addressing issues at hand, and if the people in power are accountable for addressing those issues.

Neither was the case here. From that perspective, it was mostly an empty room. I think there were maybe five council members present max at any point in the day. That’s less than 10% of the council. And the folks who were present are the ones who already care about this issue. So once again, we were preaching to the choir.

This is what people are so frustrated about nationwide. They’re asking for help. They’re asking for their city government to make services available to make life better for them as residents, and they’re being ignored.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. There were some ideas though that were brought up in that hearing that I think are worth digging into more deeply. There was a serious discussion about the need for more dedicated oversight and resources when it comes to taking care of the city’s animals, right?

Will Zweigart: Yeah, and I recently spoke with Council member Justin Brannan to get his take. He’s one of the City Council members who called for, and participated in, the 2024 animal welfare hearing, and he has been a huge advocate for animal welfare in New York City.

Virginia Marshall: Right. And he is also on the record saying that the city is taking advantage of volunteer labor. He said that those hardworking rescuers we’ve been hearing from all series, they’re actually doing the work that the city should be doing.

Will Zweigart: Exactly. So I started our interview by asking him a question we brought up already in the series, the idea that New York City used to be a leader in animal welfare. We passed the first anti-animal cruelty laws, created animal shelters really early on. So I asked Council member, Brannan, do you think New York City is still a leader in animal welfare?

Justin Brannan: I’d say we’re still leading, but we’ve got a long way to go. And it’s frustrating, right? Because I really do believe that you can judge a city, or a society, based on how it treats its animals. Especially in a society now that is so divided and where everything is some tribal war, you’d like to think that animal welfare is one of the few, if not the last remaining thing, that can transcend those party divides. So it’s an issue that I like to build community and consensus around.

I represent a pretty purple district, and getting the garbage picked up and animal welfare are like two of the things that still transcend the toxic politics of our day. I don’t know that enough policy makers really understand that. Or the fact that, how do we tie it to the affordability crisis, right? If my wife and I go and buy groceries, we’re buying dog food for our dog and we’re buying cat food for our feral cat colony that we take care of. So it’s all coming out of the same budget.

Will Zweigart: What do you think it is about this topic that has managed to just escape public consciousness? There was obviously the hearing you co-chaired in September of 2024, which I think went over eight hours of rescuers and TNR volunteers and pet owners and folks across the city trying to use the appropriate channels to bring this to their attention. And yet, the pervasive feeling since then has been that most City Council members still don’t feel as though they need to engage. What do you think would need to change? Given that people are trying to raise attention around this issue and still feel like it’s not breaking through.

Justin Brannan: I think back to when I worked for the Department of Education when we were rolling out Universal pre-K. And at the time it was seen as this super radical thing, right? And now obviously early childhood education has become such a basic fundamental piece of the affordability crisis, right, where everyone’s talking about expanding universal childcare.

The reason why I brought up UPK was because I remember early on we went to the business community to make a pitch to them to say, look, this is gonna help the economy, right? You might think this is only helpful to parents with little kids. It’s actually helpful to, even if you don’t have kids, because it’s a benefit that has broad based economic impact. And I think subsidizing veterinary care and vet clinics, to help keep pets with their families and reduce the burden on rescue groups and help with our overcrowded shelters, it’s good for the economy. It’s an affordability argument.

Will Zweigart: So on top of the, kind of, early win, which would be some legislation around the need for clinics. I think the next win is something that you fought for, which is the creation of a Department of Animal Welfare.

Justin Brannan: So my idea for creating the Office of Animal Welfare became urgent for me when an animal got loose from one of the live slaughterhouses. And I remember there was this multi-agency response that just seemed nuts. Everyone was pointing fingers at each other, who was responsible for it? Department of Health? Well, no, technically it’s not. Well, is it the Building’s Department? Is it NYPD?

There was no immediate emergency response for when things like this happen, because what I’d found was, every agency had some random guy who was just their in-house animal guy. There was no one to take all these agencies, who all in their own way touch some sort of animal issue, and wrap that under one umbrella to help inform policy, to help when there’s an emergency situation, to figure out the long-term plan for how the city treats its animals.

So that was my vision. Unfortunately, that’s not what we got, right? We got an agency that’s staffed by one or two very well-meaning people, who are not really given a whole lot of autonomy, or at least not a whole lot of resources.

Will Zweigart: And it’s clear that the Department of Health wants nothing to do with this. We go back and we look at the history of the Department of Health and their mandate at the time was to protect people from rabid dogs, essentially.

Justin Brannan: Right. Forever, Department of Health, if you went on their website, their only mention of animals was about rabid animals or about vermin. Then they got cute and started talking about urban wildlife, which was nice. But until then, it was about, if you get bit by something with four legs, here’s what you can do. There was nothing proactive about pets, about feral cats, about any of that stuff.

So, you’re right. That reminds us of how far we’ve come, but how far we still need to go. We still need a department, a bureau, that’s going to tie together all of these issues. Again, in a time when things feel so tribal and toxic, this should be an area that we can all agree that the most important city in the country should be doing more. And should be leading the way so that other cities can follow our lead.

Will Zweigart: Justin, I want to thank you for leading the way in New York City in animal welfare. I know your time as a City Council member is unfortunately nearing to a close. What would you say to your City Council colleagues to continue that momentum?

Justin Brannan: I mean, we’ve come a long way. There’s so much more to do. You can be a champion, a hero, on this issue who would have reverberations around the country because other cities would absolutely see what we are doing. I mean, the amount of times that I pass a bill and I get calls from legislators in other cities to say, Hey, can you share the language for that bill?

It happens all the time, and you can start a real movement across this country. And I think it’s just waiting there. It’s just sitting there for someone to pick up that torch. As goes New York goes the nation, and whatever we’re doing here will be followed by other municipalities. We want this to be the laboratory of ideas, to have a real, progressive, compassionate society, and that has to include how we treat our animals.

Virginia Marshall: That’s so true what the Council member just said, that we have an opportunity to be a leader on this issue here in New York, so let’s not waste it.

Will Zweigart: Absolutely. And we have a few additional challenges to progress ahead. One, city leaders and media are uninformed about this issue. Period. We all need to start with the baseline, and I think you can apply this to wherever you live. Assume that your city leaders have zero idea about what’s going on here.

Again, we’re talking about a systemic issue where, to reduce the suffering and the pain that’s happening at the shelter level, you need to go over here and focus on a solution. It does require a little bit of nuance to understand that we can’t just build more shelters, which is what they continually ask for.

I have done media interviews in New York City on this issue for eight years or more, and I’m still spending half of all of those conversations trying to explain basic terms. No reporter I’ve talked to knew what a feral cat was, what Trap Neuter Return was, the benefit of spay/neuter. And at the end of the interview, often they still don’t understand some of these concepts, and so they end up cutting these key parts about what is TNR, what does a trapper do, et cetera. So when we look at the systemic causes of this issue, part of it is our information environment.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah.

Will Zweigart: And a little bit of tough love here. There is a history in New York city of animal welfare advocates being very aggressive towards elective officials on a personal level. Talking about attacks, harassment, and that does have an impact on how work like ours is received. And it can now feel like these City Counselors are putting us on mute, even as we bring solutions, even as we talk policy.

And so you put all these things together, large organizations and city agencies hiding behind vanity metrics while actively protecting the status quo. City leaders and media not informed about the issue, not driven to cover or explore it. And for the most part, they have also tuned out a lot of animal welfare folks. Combine all of that together, and you can see we do have a lot of work ahead.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah. So was there any movement on solving the cat crisis after that City Council hearing last year?

Will Zweigart: Yes. There is some good news here. So for the fiscal 26th year, which starts July 1st, 2025, New York City Council allocated $500,000 for spay/neuter services for both pet owners and rescuers.

Virginia Marshall: Wow.

Will Zweigart: Yeah, good start. A few months later, in September, they allocated that funding to Flatbush Cats as part of a pilot project. Compared to the scale of what we’ve been discussing, this is a very small amount of funding, but it’s also very significant for two reasons.

One, the fact that the City Council funded this at all in the budget, not just as like a council discretionary thing. Number two, this is a pilot project, so this is just a opening. The benefit here is that we have an opportunity to make a case for why this funding should be expanded.

New York City needs about 190,000 affordable spay/neuter appointments per year. That would cover pet owners, cats and dogs, and all the stray cats and feral cats outside that need to be spayed or neutered. This funding represents less than 2% of that need, so about 3,500 surgeries, which we will perform at Flatbush Vet, which our supporters helped us build. And I added in, to the scope, that Flatbush Cats will develop a measurement framework and report back on the impact.

It would be silly to do a project of this size and not track how it’s working.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah.

Will Zweigart: This is a high leverage opportunity to make the case for citywide funding, and it’s a responsibility that we take very seriously.

Virginia Marshall: So in addition to the funding that’s badly needed, what other things do you think that the City Council can, and should, do to help solve street cat overpopulation?

Will Zweigart: Most importantly, and I’m thinking about our new mayoral administration, pet ownership is now not affordable for the average New Yorker. So I see this as absolutely part of the broader affordability platform, for making New York City a great place to live. We know that money is the number one reason why people cannot have a pet. It’s why they surrender, and it’s why they say, when my current pet passes, I will never be able to adopt again.

Sit with that for a second. Someone who has known the love and joy of pets their entire lives telling you that they already know this is their last pet. No, I don’t accept that.

Virginia Marshall: Yeah.

Will Zweigart: So we need to pass legislation requiring affordable veterinary clinics in every borough. They already have a law on the books stating that there should be shelters in every borough. This passed a few years ago. To support those shelters, we also should mandate nonprofit veterinary clinics in each borough, and then we can fund it and work to make sure that’s actually part of the budget.

Virginia Marshall: That sounds great, but it strikes me as a tall order, this idea of adding subsidized veterinary clinics into the city budget. So I’m wondering, is there any precedent for doing something like that in New York City?

Will Zweigart: Yeah, and I think we can use New York City Parks as a great example. There’s a really strong long-term movement towards 1% for the parks, meaning at least 1% of our city budget should go towards maintaining and beautifying the park system. And that just makes sense, right?

Virginia Marshall: Yeah, absolutely. We rely on our parks. That’s what makes New York City a livable place.

Will Zweigart: Yeah, similar mental health and emotional physical benefits, parks and pets, right? So it seems like a lot of money. That’s $1.5 billion if that was 1% of the budget. Here’s my pitch: I’m saying if you spend 0.1% of our current budget on animal welfare, that’s about $150 million. And I’m including shelters here too, right? So that sounds reasonable. Does that sound reasonable?

Virginia Marshall: Yeah, point-one? Sure.

Will Zweigart: Okay, so with 0.1% of the budget for animals, we can get clinics built across the borough and support our shelters.

Virginia Marshall: And once there is that funding, whether it’s 0.1% or something else, there’s going to need to be an agency to manage that kind of big project, right? Because we’ve heard in the hearing and from City Council member Justin Brannan, that there is a lot of hot potato going on when it comes to animal welfare. We need someone in charge of it, right?

Will Zweigart: A hundred percent. It’s not that deep. We need a Department of Animal Welfare. The Department of Health is more than busy and has demonstrated that they have no interest in managing this issue. No problem. Take it off your plate. Let’s get a dedicated department that can actually help keep people with their pets.

Virginia Marshall: Listeners, we are reaching the end of our series. Underfoot has just one more episode for you and it’s an important one.

Will Zweigart: That’s right. We do have a path forward together if we can marshal our energy and our resources, both as private supporters and combined with municipal funding to get the job done. To do that, though, we’re going to have to rethink how we see this problem and what we believe is achievable as a solution.

Virginia Marshall: And that’s what we’re going to tackle in our next and final episode of Underfoot.

Will Zweigart: Underfoot is brought to you by Flatbush Cats and is made possible by our generous donors and supporters who want to get to the root of this problem. If that sounds like you, subscribe to our newsletter and become a supporter, you can learn more at flatbushcats.org.

Virginia Marshall: We’d love to hear from you, listeners. What are you seeing in your own neighborhood? Do you have a rescue story, a question, or something you’ve noticed about the cats underfoot in your community? Share your thoughts at flatbushcats.org/underfoot and your voice may appear in a future episode or newsletter.

Underfoot is hosted by Will Zweigart, and me, Virginia Marshall. Our field reporter is Sarah Gabrielli. Additional reporting by Priscilla Alabi. Episodes were recorded at Good Studio in Brooklyn and mixed and mastered by Will Whatley. Podcast art was created by Lazy Chief and the series was Executive Produced by None Other.