Combating Homelessness Today: Looking Beyond Shelters and Making it Easier to Get Housing

Homelessness is a sad and growing blight in New York City and yet the solutions to this crisis are complicated, not immediate and demand a delicate balance between our moral obligations as a caring society and our need to manage rising costs.

With almost 63,000 men, women and children homeless in New York City, one in every 135 New Yorkers is today homeless, as is one in every 100 children. Sadly, homelessness in New York City has reached its highest levels since the Great Depression.

The root causes of homelessness, while varied, primarily stem from the high cost of urban living. Manhattan and Brooklyn have become two of the country’s most expensive urban areas. Over the last decade and a half, adjusting for inflation, median rent in New York City has increased about 20%, while household income fell about 6.5%.

And this crisis could quickly explode. A majority of New Yorkers lack sufficient savings to sustain a few months of rent and food in the event of a job loss or personal emergency and thereby risk eviction or foreclosure.

Who are the homeless?
New York City’s homeless population includes almost 16,000 homeless families, with approximately 24,000 homeless children sleeping each night in one of the City’s 287 stand-alone shelters. These families represent over 75% of those in the shelter system. In over 30% of these families, one of the family members has a job.

The larger picture is bleaker. More than 127,000 different homeless individuals slept in the shelter system at some point during fiscal year 2016.

For these individuals and families, the primary cause of homelessness is lack of affordable housing, triggered by various factors such as eviction, domestic violence, job loss or dangerous housing conditions.

An additional 3,500 or so sleep outside on the streets or in the subways on any given night. Many of these individuals are single adults suffering from serious mental illness and addiction disorders.

Lastly, the homeless are disproportionately from minority groups, 58% African-American and 31% Latino.

Right to shelter
Unlike every other state in the country, New York must provide its citizens the right to shelter. The state’s Constitution and successive court rulings guarantee this right and clearly confirm New York City’s extensive obligations to the homeless. In fact, it was former New York City Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia who, in 1938, persuaded the state to pass a constitutional amendment to support those in need. The amendment reads: “the aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such subdivisions, and in such matter and by such means, as the legislature may from time to time determine.”

Furthering this provision, in 1979, the seminal state court decision in Callahan vs. Carey ruled that both the state and city had failed to comply with state law and mandated emergency shelter for the city’s homeless. That decision compelled the city to begin to provide nightly shelter for those seeking it and enacted the legal protections that LaGuardia sought.

Homelessness Under Mayor de Blasio
A majority of New Yorkers perceive there to be more homeless people in New York City since the current mayor took office, and three quarters of New Yorkers now view homelessness as a very serious issue. Indeed, homelessness has worsened, from 50,689 persons living in shelters at the time of Mayor de Blasio’s January 2014 inauguration to over 60,000 today.

Since taking office, the mayor has implemented three plans to combat homelessness. The first two sought to stabilize the homeless population in the shelter system and streamline preventive services. The most recent plan calls for building 90 new shelters by 2021 and replacing 17,500 beds that currently provide shelter at expensive commercial hotels and rented apartments with these new quarters by 2023. Approximately 20 of the new shelters are to open each year for the next five years, with each community responsible for assuming shelters for its homeless population.

Some advocates for the homeless describe this third effort as a “status quo plan” that does not achieve a comprehensive solution for the homeless in shelters. The plan itself would only reduce the number of homeless people by 2,500 over the next five years. Neighborhoods are poised to reject community shelters, much as residents coalesced to delay the opening of a new shelter this month in Crown Heights.

Despite the growth in homelessness under his watch, the mayor has implemented several initiatives without which the numbers may well have been far worse. For example, the administration has expanded anti-eviction measures such as legal services and emergency rental assistance to keep families in their homes. The city is also getting the homeless into long-term housing at higher rates than in the past and decreased the number of families returning to shelters after moving into permanent housing. Even so, in the year ending July 2016, 2,346 more families and 1,393 more individuals entered the system than moved out.

These growing numbers have been reflected in the city’s budget: since 2014, Mayor de Blasio has increased spending on homelessness by about 60%, rising to $1.6 billion last year. The city also plans to allocate $300 million in capital funds to pay for the shelter expansion. Concurrently, the city has expanded its budget for homelessness prevention services.

What to do?
Since the 1979 court ruling, each administration has primarily pushed for short-term solutions — such as placing families in expensive hotels — to thwart the city’s growing homeless problem and avoid being held in contempt by the courts. The bottom line is that any approach where we are spending hundreds of millions of dollars without a focus on a long term solution is unproductive.

Metrics. We cannot combat homelessness without establishing appropriate metrics to measure progress. We need to track: 1) number of individuals entering the homeless system; and 2) number of homeless individuals who successfully leave the homeless system.

Incentives. The unconditional right to shelter in New York City requires a focus on whether any of the programs give rise to an incentive to abuse the system. Some experts believe that the benefits of receiving certain subsidies encourage some to seek shelter who would otherwise have not. Others counter that families and individuals would not place themselves in a state of homelessness in order to receive benefits. Even if remote, the city must implement appropriate barriers to prevent anyone from availing themselves of benefits that must be directed to those truly in need. The Preventive Assistance and Temporary Housing program developed under Mayor Bloomberg is a basis for finding alternative housing for those who seek shelter.

The city’s shelter system should also seek to exclude those from out of town and out of state from entering the system. Lastly, the city must carefully monitor the shelter acceptance rate, which has climbed significantly since the Bloomberg years.

By The Numbers. We must remain vigilant in managing rising costs and monitoring the effectiveness of program spending. The paradox in responding to homelessness is that it is far costlier for the city to place individuals in shelters than in apartments, which would be better for both the homeless and the city. By way of comparison, the city spends, on average, $3,400 annually to house a family in an apartment as opposed to an estimated $41,000 annual cost for a family in a shelter. But the city cannot simply give individuals rental assistance money or allow them to fast track the long waiting period for NYCHA apartments — because many New Yorkers would naturally line up for these low-cost benefits. It becomes incumbent on the city to devise appropriate screening and penalties to focus on this more economical and more humane solution.

Shelters. Shelters are not the optimal solution. They are often poorly run, represent a poor substitute for mental health and other social support systems and often house gangs that harass other residents. For these reasons, many homeless people would rather stay out of the shelters and instead seek safety in the parks or subway system. Yet shelters that are clean and safe must still play an important role as a transient place before seeking to relocate individuals and families to low-income housing.

Street Homeless. A separate, individualized approach is needed to reduce street homelessness. With many street homeless suffering from mental illness, the city needs to expand its efforts under Kendra’s Law to require the mentally ill homeless to take appropriate medications. Moreover, city social workers need to show street homeless that shelters can be both clean and safe so that they feel compelled to leave the streets.

Benefit of Permanent Housing. Housing is the critical first step to reducing homelessness, providing a stable place to live. Such stability also enhances job hunting, removes the stigma associated with a temporary address and has a positive impact on children. Within the shelter system, during the 2014-15 school year, over 30% of homeless students missed in excess of 20 days, while another 30% were absent for more than 40 days. Unfortunately, the number of affordable units for those with low incomes is insufficient. In this regard, de Blasio’s goals to build or preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing are laudable but need to be accelerated.

Rental Assistance Programs. Extensive research reveals that homeless people who gain housing with rent subsidies rarely return to being homeless. Rental assistance programs must therefore focus on moving families out of shelters and into more permanent housing as well as helping families stay in their current apartments.

Both types of programs, if structured and monitored correctly, can be more economical and more effective. Already, a statewide rental assistance program that bridges the gap between meager public assistance rent subsidies and typical rents is being circulated in Albany. And, under a legal settlement, the state itself is revamping a separate rental assistance program that seeks to prevent evictions.

Eligibility requirements for such programs must be clear and thorough, and determine how to reduce the commitment fairly over time using monitoring and after-care support. The Advantage program can serve as a basis. Advantage, which went into effect in 2007, paid all but $50 of monthly rent to start and then ultimately paid the difference in the apartment’s market rent and 30% of the renter’s income. The program, though criticized, showed positive results until it ended in 2011 after the state, facing a budget shortfall, ended its proportional financial commitment. The number of homeless increased markedly after the program ended.

Mayor de Blasio has effectively continued rental assistance programs, which have moved thousands of individuals out of shelters and into apartments and ensured that tens of thousands of New Yorkers have been able to stay in their current apartments.

But the city needs expanded and highly monitored rental assistance programs to effectively start reducing homelessness. Concurrently, the city must crack down on landlords who illegally refuse to rent to tenants who receive government aid.

Partnerships. It is becoming clear that the city alone cannot solve this crisis. The city should seek to partner with the state to both create and jointly fund programs as well as with the private sector to incorporate business and technology solutions. For instance, technology may streamline all of the documentation that homeless individuals retain and may discover new ways to connect homeless to shelters and other housing solutions.

The sad reality is that there is no quick fix to eradicating homelessness. But with billions of dollars being spent on our efforts over the last 40 years, we still need to make sure we are focusing on effective programs that will move the needle in the right direction.