In a city where most people rely on public transportation, the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals’ Wheels of Hope program provided a unique, invaluable service in moving thousands of animals at risk of euthanasia at the city’s Animal Care Centers of NYC (ACC) facilities to safe havens. Between 2005 and May 2019, our fleet of Wheels of Hope vans transported more than 130,000 animals from ACC to permanent new homes, foster homes, and no-kill shelters and rescue groups that had the resources to find them new homes. Because animals in open-admission shelters like ACC are at risk of euthanasia nearly every day, Wheels of Hope was up and rolling nearly 365 days a year.

Wheels of Hope provided transport for up to dozens of animals at one time within a five-hour radius of New York City. This free transportation service for shelters and rescue groups allowed these organizations to save more animals than they otherwise could have saved and focus their energy and money on finding homes for the animals in their care.

Wheels of Hope allowed ACC to move animals out of its crowded facilities more quickly, creating space for the hundreds of additional animals arriving on its doorstep each week. Moving the animals out of ACC shelters quickly reduced the chance that they would become ill, thereby reducing medical costs for the rescue partners who took them in and found them new homes.

In addition, Wheels of Hope supported Trap-Neuter-Return (TNR) colony caretakers by providing free transport of feral and stray community cats to and from spay/neuter appointments and free delivery of traps for TNR projects.

On May 1, 2019, Best Friends Animal Society, with assistance from the Alliance, created a transport program to continue to work with ACC and its New Hope Partners.