Thousands of people live in the streets and refuse to leave. A modest number now accept shelter in “safe havens.” Bonnie Coover, a nurse practitioner, has been searching for people who need help in parks, on sidewalks and beneath railroad tracks since 2016.
May 30, 2019
They are the most visible sign of New York’s homelessness crisis: A man covered in dirt sits outside a subway station in Jamaica, Queens. Another man, cross-legged and ragged on a Midtown sidewalk, begs for money. A dozen people form an encampment in Central Park.
While the overwhelming majority — about 95 percent — of the more than 78,000 people who qualify as homeless in New York actually have temporary shelter, others live on the streets, for a host of reasons. They represent a persistent challenge. Since an annual count began more than a decade ago, that population has never fallen below about 2,300, and it hit near-record levels under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
But there has been some recent cause for cautious optimism. For the second year in a row, the number of people known as chronically homeless, or “unsheltered," has fallen.
The decline, while modest, may be traced to more intense outreach efforts and an expansion of so-called safe havens. These specialized shelters have fewer restrictions and a streamlined application process to try to quickly place people into permanent housing. “We’re using every tool that we can develop to try to help people rebuild their lives,” said Steven Banks, the city commissioner of social services.
There are still thousands of people living in the open overnight. An annual count conducted in late January estimated 3,588 people fell into that category.
They are often grappling with a constellation of problems, so helping them means not only providing shelter but perhaps finding a drug rehabilitation program, a psychiatrist, a medical doctor or even guidance in a getting birth certificate or Social Security card.
Some prefer the independence of living in the street and balk at having to comply with the rules of the city’s shelter system, such as curfews or sobriety.
That differs greatly from the kind of assistance the city gives to families with children, who often simply need shelter and a voucher to find an apartment.
The number of chronically homeless people climbed to almost 4,000 after Mr. de Blasio took office, when he abruptly stopped opening shelters, including safe havens, in response to complaints from elected officials and residents who said the city was opening shelters without adequate community input. Other factors contributed to the increase, from high rents to a jump in both the number of patients discharged from mental health facilities and inmates released from jail and prison
The city changed course, and the number of beds in safe haven shelters has tripled to 1,800, with plans to add hundreds more, Mr. Banks said.
“A lot of us were saying, ‘We need beds, and we need these kinds of beds,’” said Muzzy Rosenblatt, the chief executive of the Bowery Residents’ Committee, a nonprofit that first started the safe haven model. “Better late than never.”
Safe havens are an alternative to the city’s more traditional dormitory-style shelters for single adults, which some people avoid because they have a reputation as unsafe and drug-ridden.
Hylema Aiken, who used to be part of a clutch of people who set up camp each night in Central Park near 110th Street, said she used to prefer to take her chances