Photo Courtesy of Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
Mayor de Blasio (c.) and DHS Commissioner Steven Banks (r.) recently indicated that the City is aiming for a borough-based approach to homeless shelter placement .
New figures released as debate over borough hotel facilities rages
By Michael V. Cusenza
The number of people in Department of Homeless Services shelters is now at nearly 60,000, rather than the expected 67,000 – a direct result of rental assistance and other preventative measures implemented by the administration, according to Mayor Bill de Blasio and DHS Commissioner Steven Banks.
“We said five months ago when we announced the results of the 90-day review of homeless services that it would take time to reverse 20 years of policies and that the number of people in shelter might continue to grow. Our current programs have substantially slowed the rate of growth in homelessness. And we will keep working to strengthen our efforts to prevent homelessness,” Banks said.
Had the new measures not been implemented, the census would have grown to 67,000 by October 2016 and to 71,000 in June 2017, according to DHS. Instead, the census is now at nearly 60,000, 7,000 less than projected, and should continue to be well below the projected 71,000 in June 2017.
The move out and prevention efforts include:
- New rental assistance and other move out programs that helped 40,000 people leave shelter or avoid entry through the end of FY 2016.
- A tenfold increase in legal services for tenants to $62 million from $6.4 million.
- A 24-percent reduction in evictions by marshals in 2015 compared to 2013.
- Emergency rent help to nearly 53,000 households at a cost of $180.7 million in Fiscal Year 2015, an average cost of $3,400 per family, much less than $41,000 annual cost for a family in shelter.
At the same time that it works to prevent homelessness, the City has indicated that is also aiming to phase out the use of cluster shelters and commercial hotels. Cluster shelters are individual apartments in apartment buildings that the City has rented to house homeless households in a program that began 16 years ago. They are an expensive form of shelter, according to DHS, many are not in good condition, and by renting them the City takes the apartments off the rental market. For that reason, the City has made exiting clusters a priority, committing to stop using them by December 2018, DHS said.
As a stop-gap, since the City has a legal obligation to provide shelter to individuals and families with no place to live, the administration said it has had to increase its use of commercial hotels as temporary shelter, which is also expensive. There are currently 11,400 adults and children in clusters and about 6,000 in commercial hotels.
The de Blasio administration’s shelter placement policy has been a hot-button issue across the borough in recent months. On Thursday, Oct. 6, elected officials representing Queens communities are set to gather at City Hall “to condemn” de Blasio’s response to the homeless crisis and treatment of borough residents “who are fed up with inappropriate shelters,” according to an advisory issued by State Sen. Joe Addabbo, Jr. (D-Howard Beach).
The pols “will urge the Mayor’s administration to change its plan of action to include more long-term solutions and will offer up more effective ways of dealing with homelessness that do not include warehousing homeless individuals into rooms that are not equipped to serve as a primary residence,” according to the memo.
