Mayor Adams joins homeless advocates at ‘sleep out’ in Manhattan

By Steven Vago and Patrick Reilly July 31, 2022 2:31am

Mayor Eric Adams sat on a park bench alongside homeless advocates at a “sleep out” in Manhattan’s Morningside Park Saturday night amid a city-wide homelessness crisis.

The mayor joined homeless advocate Shams DaBaron, also known as the Homeless Hero, on the bench where DaBaron had slept regularly while he was homeless.

DaBaron organized the Homeless Rights Month Sleep Out to show “solidarity with those who have to spend the night on these benches, those who have to sleep in encampments, those who have to sleep on the trains, those who are in these shelters. We are trying to make sure that that is not our reality,” he said.

New York City Public Advocate Jumaane Williams —  along with his baby daughter — and commissioner of Human Resources and Social Services Gary P. Jenkins also joined the pair on the bench.

About a dozen other advocates were in the crowd, some with lawn chairs prepared to spend the night.

“I come to this bench almost every week,” DaBaron said, who said his “biggest fear” at that point in his life was “dying on this bench.”

“We are here in real-time saying we are not going to let the decades, centuries … of failed policies to keep us in these conditions,” he continued. “We are not doing shantytowns. We are not doing encampments. We are not riding on the subways. We are not doing that.”

He said Adams inherited the problem but pledged to hold him accountable.

As the Homeless Hero praised the mayor, a woman from the crowd shouted, “we don’t want Safe Haven! We want permanent housing!”

“I cannot find housing. There is no way into these housing,” added the woman, who lives in a shelter. She was later escorted away.

Another woman, East Harlem mom Kimberly Tyre, ripped the mayor for school budget cuts.

“If our black and brown students do not get educated, where do you think they will be? They will be homeless and they will turn to guns. The cycle continues and continues and continues,” she said as the mayor sat on the bench in silence.

“The only thing I’m not afraid of is being among the people because I am the people. I’m used to all the energy that comes from all the people … all day, every day,” Adams said as he briefly noted following the criticisms from the crowd.

“I came here for one reason, to support Shams. Period. End of statement,” said the mayor to the gathered press.

Adams said earlier this month that the city’s homeless shelters are being overrun with asylum-seeking migrants with nearly 3,000 arriving in recent weeks.

NYC Council Considers Bill to Probe Why Homeless Are Denied Supportive Housing

Each year, thousands of New Yorkers living in shelters and on the streets apply for permanent supportive housing, a service model championed as a key solution to the city’s homelessness crisis. And each year, the majority of those applicants fail to secure a home.

It’s largely a supply problem. Most of New York City’s 35,000 supportive apartments—affordable units where tenants can also access support services, like counseling and mental health care referrals—are already occupied by tenants and, as nonprofit providers and their trade group point out, there are only so many available units to go around. But some New Yorkers experiencing homelessness, supportive housing residents and their advocates contend that there’s another factor when it comes to who gets selected: the housing shortage allows providers to “cherry-pick” applicants who require the fewest services, a process known as creaming or screening.

Department of Social Services (DSS) records, obtained through Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) requests by the advocacy group Safety Net Project, illustrate the charge. Supportive housing is, by definition, designed for people with mental illness, but on dozens of occasions over the first 10 months of 2020, providers cited an applicant’s “lack of insight” into their mental health needs as the reason for rejecting them.

“Client never lived independently or paid bills. Client had difficulties staying focus[ed] and had no insight in regards to his mental illness, and poor historian,” staff wrote in one April 2020 rejection.

An applicant “has no insight into her mental health diagnosis. At the interview she denied a diagnosis and medication,” wrote another provider in October 2020.

With so many applicants and so few units, rejections are bound to occur. It’s baked into the city’s new multi-agency placement system, which refers three people for each available unit and instructs the nonprofit supportive housing provider to select one.

A four-year-old piece of legislation before the City Council would enable more consistent scrutiny of those rejections, highlight trends in supportive housing placements and, advocates say, allow for closer examination of the gaps in the Coordinated Assessment and Placement System, known as CAPS. The bill’s fate remains up in the air as lame-duck lawmakers approach their final meetings and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration attempts to amend key parts of the measure.

The legislation, sponsored since 2018 by Councilmember Stephen Levin, would compel the city’s DSS to publish an annual report listing the number of New Yorkers referred to, accepted to, rejected from and awaiting placement in supportive housing. The report would also detail rejections, creating a database that would allow policymakers to identify and amend trends like creaming by specific providers or a lack of necessary services across the supportive housing sector, Levin said.

“It’s important to have transparency, but not just for transparency’s sake. We want to be able to amend policies based on what the data is showing,” he said. “We put a lot of responsibility onto supportive housing to take care of a lot of issues and I think it deserves a really comprehensive discussion.”

Mayors past, present and future have included supportive housing in their plans for providing affordable homes and services for people with mental illness, HIV/AIDS or other health needs. Policymakers have held up the city’s network of dozens of nonprofits with at least 86 different funding streams as a sort of catchall solution to the homelessness crisis, even if supportive housing isn’t the best fit for many New Yorkers who simply can’t afford a place, or others who need more intensive services.

There are about 19,000 apartments in buildings built or redeveloped specifically for supportive housing. Providers rent out another 16,000 so-called “scattered-site” units from private landlords, with services offered by visiting case managers and social workers. More supportive apartments are in the pipeline, and Mayor-elect Eric Adams has pledged to facilitate the creation of 25,000 additional supportive housing units inside converted hotels.

As it stands, just about 1-in-5 supportive housing applicants get an apartment, according to the Supportive Housing Network of New York (SHNNY) and the Coalition for the Homeless. A total of 1,035 people living in Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelters moved into supportive housing during the first nine months of 2020, a Human Resources Administration (HRA) administrator testified at a Council hearing last year. Another HRA deputy commissioner said about 5,000 people are awaiting placement at any given time, meaning they have been deemed eligible for supportive housing, but not placed in an apartment

About 16,000 people have moved from shelters and other settings into supportive housing since de Blasio took office in 2014, according to DHS.

Intro. 147 faces little public opposition, but in internal emails obtained through FOIL and shared with City Limits, DSS officials and SHNNY administrators said the legislation would impose a reporting requirement on city-funded supportive housing that does not apply to state-funded units. In emails from 2017 and 2018, they also said the reporting would fail to capture the “nuance” in finding the right housing placement for an applicant. SHNNY said it is no longer involved with the bill and has not seen recent versions.

In recent weeks, DSS and the mayor’s office have attempted to water down the bill’s reporting requirements, allowing providers to choose a predetermined list of rejection reasons from a dropdown menu rather than specify their determination. The legislation’s supporters, including the Supportive Housing Organized and United Tenants (SHOUT), say that change is unacceptable. The group urged the Council to pull the bill after viewing the last-minute changes from the mayor’s office.

A Council spokesperson said the bill continues to go through the legislative process. And a spokesperson for de Blasio said the “administration is committed to making supportive housing data more transparent and accessible.”

But recent data is hard to come by. DSS and the mayor’s office said the acceptance and rejection figures for the past two years are only available through FOIL. For the past seven years, Safety Net Project staff have filed records requests for the numbers from DSS and shared them with City Limits.

The most recent response provides data that would be publicly reported under Intro. 147. During the first 10 months of 2020, nonprofit providers scheduled nearly 3,000 interviews with supportive housing applicants, including some returning for follow-up appointments, according to the DSS records. About 361 of those applicants were definitively accepted for an apartment, according to the data, while at least 340 applicants declined the units they interviewed for.

Another 560 people were outright rejected and at least 720 people were listed as a “no show,” meaning they did not attend their interview, the data shows. A final decision for hundreds of other applicants was still pending based on apartment availability, additional information or other factors, according to the records.

Craig Hughes, a social worker at the Safety Net Project, said his organization has used the data to flag examples of “clear disability discrimination by providers” and brought those to the attention of city agencies.

Nonprofit providers and city officials acknowledge that creaming does occur, but say finding the “right” placement for a tenant can be complicated. Often, they say, the level of services available at a particular site do not go far enough to meet an applicants’ needs. That raises another problem: New York state has cut funding to licensed mental health beds, which serve people who require more intensive services.

“What is not generally understood is that there has been a disinvestment by the state in various types of licensed housing that offers a higher level of care than supportive housing,” Association for Community Living Executive Director Toni Lasicki told City Limits in 2018, a few months after Intro. 147 was introduced.

Many supportive housing applicants were rejected after interviewing for units because the provider staff determined they needed a “higher level of care”—a phrase used 72* times to justify rejections in the first 10 months of 2020, according to DSS records.

Advocates say Intro. 147 would allow for a better examination of the disconnect between the HRA referrals and the services the nonprofit supportive housing provider offers. “The bill is trying to illuminate what comes out of a referral,” said Homeless Services United Executive Director Catherine Trapani.

She said the reporting requirement could also shed light on the effectiveness of the system that the city uses to make supportive housing referrals and move people out of shelters. CAPS is a federally-mandated system for identifying the most vulnerable New Yorkers and prioritizing them for limited housing and resources. The multi-step CAPS process allows a person experiencing homelessness, usually working with a case manager or social worker, to complete a standardized survey to determine their eligibility for supportive housing or other options, like rental assistance vouchers. If they are found potentially eligible for supportive housing, they complete an application which goes to a team of HRA staff members.

The HRA unit then determines the person or family’s final eligibility based on their application and a Standardized Vulnerability Assessment, which seeks to identify the New Yorkers most in need of housing and resources based on a number of factors, like their use Medicaid, history of incarceration and the amount of time they have been homeless.

HRA staff use this pool of applicants to make referrals to providers with vacant supportive housing units. The team typically refers “three similarly situated individuals for each vacancy” and allows the provider to “select the people that they feel are a good match for their program,” said Jennifer Kelly, deputy commissioner of the Office of Supportive Affordable Housing and Services, at a Council hearing in December 2020.

Trapani, a member of the Continuum of Care coalition that developed CAPS, said the better data reporting would highlight where the system is working well and what problems need to be addressed.

“It’s a way to spot gaps and needs and errors,” she said. “When data becomes available, we’ll notice what if there’s a lack of inventory for a specific housing type or person and need to focus specific supportive housing agreements on a specific population. Wouldn’t that be healthy?”

*Correction: A previous version of this article referred to a higher number of rejections that included instances from late December 2019 and early November 2020.

https://citylimits.org/author/david-brand/

AUTHORDavid Brand

Number of Homeless NYC Students Surpasses 100K For 6th Consecutive School Year

More than 100,000 city public school students were homeless at some point during the past school year, according to new state Education Department data.

For the sixth year in a row, more than 101,000 city kids lived in unstable housing, including 28,000 who spent time in shelters while 65,000 lived “doubled-up” with friends or relatives, according to state Education Department data compiled by Advocates for Children.

The number is down roughly 9% from the total during the 2019-2020 school year, but still 42% higher than the totals at the start of the decade.

Some of this year’s drop may trace back to an overall dip in enrollment in city public schools in 2020, and advocates warned it was also more difficult for school officials to confirm which kids were homeless.

The challenges of keeping up with school while experiencing homelessness are steep in a normal year, and were even more daunting last year with the pandemic and remote learning, families and advocates said.

Shelters often had nonexistent or spotty Wi-Fi or cell phone service, and kids sharing cramped rooms with multiple family members had a hard time concentrating on schoolwork.

Like in past years, homeless students were not spread evenly across the city.

More than one in five students in the South Bronx’s District 9 were homeless last year, compared with fewer than one in 20 students in Staten Island’s District 31.

Dozens of groups that advocate for homeless kids released a set of recommendations Monday urging incoming mayor Eric Adams to use federal stimulus funds to hire an additional 150 Education Department employees based in shelters who work directly with families on issues like arranging transportation and setting up school placements.

“With the right support, schools can transform the lives of students who are homeless,” said Advocates for Children Executive Director Kim Sweet. “The next administration should bring together city agencies and charge them with ensuring every student who is homeless gets the support needed to succeed in school.”

Michael Elsen-Rooney

Education Reporter

CONTACT

Mike Elsen-Rooney covers education for the Daily News. He previously covered education for The Teacher Project at Columbia Journalism School and The Hechinger Report, and his work has appeared in The Atlantic, Bloomberg, and the Boston Globe Magazine, among others. Mike’s a former high school Spanish teacher and afterschool program coordinator.

Abandoned NYC dining sheds are now havens for the homeless

These dining disasters are turning into hovels for the homeless, giant garbage dumps, and traffic-blocking storage sheds.

Outdoor dining structures that were once meant to pump life into the struggling restaurant industry during the COVID-19 pandemic are now standing abandoned after the eateries have shuttered, or refocused on indoor dining.

Three forsaken al fresco setups sat until recently on just a single previously busy block of LaGuardia Place in Greenwich Village between Houston and Bleecker Streets.

One graffiti-covered outdoor hut belonged to Bosie, a French restaurant that served afternoon tea and whose doors have been padlocked since August. It was removed only late last month.

Next door at Le Souk, which in its pre-COVID glory days boasted belly dancers and a hookah lounge, another wooden structure stood empty.

And the third abandoned setup provided outdoor space for the former GMT Tavern, which closed after a damaging fire on April 19.

“These sheds are an eyesore — people are now depositing garbage in them. Why are they up months after restaurants have shut down?” someone griped in a July complaint to the Department of Buildings, which said no violation was warranted.

But one local resident called the area beneath the dining sheds a “breeding ground” for rats and expressed little hope the structures will be removed anytime soon.

“It’s not economically feasible for the landlords or (former) tenants to take them down, and the city doesn’t have the political will to get it done,” he said.

Leif Arntzen said he sees the homeless sleeping in the dining sheds on his Cornelia Street block “‘all the time” after restaurants close for the evening or on days they are not open.

The covered shed outside the Uncle Chop Chop restaurant, which is a step up from plain plywood, is a popular one, he said.

“I think they pick it because they’ve got this sort of AstroTurf on the pavement that they can just kind of lay down on,” said Arntzen, who is part of the CUEUP alliance which opposes making the “open restaurants” program permanent.

Residents complained last spring about an unused and filthy shed outside Ajisen Ramen on Mott Street in Chinatown becoming sleeping quarters for the homeless. Then the restaurant put doors on it and began using it as a storage locker, with only a lone diner seated inside one recent night, according to a local observer.

The only thing occupying the outdoor shed for Michelin-starred Jua, a Korean restaurant in the Flatiron district, one recent weekday night were cardboard boxes.

Restaurants are not allowed to use their outdoor huts as storage, according to the Department of Transportation, which oversees the open restaurants program.

Assemblywoman Deborah Glick, who represents Greenwich Village, Soho and Tribeca, tweeted Tuesday about an empty structure outside a restaurant that never opened saying “huge structure remains from JUNE with various violations- cease & desist ⁦@NYC_DOT⁩ & still no action.”

The shed is not abandoned, according to the DOT.

Nearly 12,000 outdoor setups dot city streets, including 1,202 located in the roadway; 4,295 on the sidewalk; and 6,047 that are a combination of both sidewalk and street, according to DOT stats.

The DOT said it considers a dining setup abandoned only if the restaurant is permanently closed. It has directed the Sanitation Department to remove only 21 of these deserted dining dens citywide.

But there are many more that remain.

A total of 136 complaints about abandoned dining setups were placed to 311 between May 6 and Sept. 23, although some were for the same restaurant, city records show.

The Village Den, the restaurant venture from “Queer Eye” host Antoni Porowski, shut its doors in July, leaving the plywood framework for its outdoor dining setup standing empty on West 12th Street.

It took more than two months and many complaints to remove the shed — which had become a storage area — belonging to the former Fabiane’s restaurant on North Fifth Street in Williamsburg.

“It took up metered parking for over two months,” said Shannon Phipps, the head of the Berry St. Alliance in Williamsburg and Greenpoint, who noted there were several other unused setups in the area. “I suspect the longer this program exists, the more these conditions will surface, especially because there is no enforcement, management or oversight.”

Two apparently unused wooden corrals flank the Slaughtered Lamb Pub on West 4th Street. The bar manager said the structures kept getting hit by cars or trucks and he did not want to seat patrons there.

The D.O.C. Wine Bar in Brooklyn had two sheds, one of which was used for storage. A restaurant manager said it was removed last week after the city said it was too close to a fire hydrant.

The restaurant wasn’t the only one flouting the rules.

A City Council survey of 418 downtown Manhattan restaurants released in August found that 93 percent were not complying with at least one DOT guideline including blocked fire hydrants, barriers that extended too far into the street and setups on streets that were too narrow.

The DOT said it was reviewing the locations in the report and would be meeting with Council Speaker Corey Johnson’s office “soon to discuss next steps.”

By Kerry J. Byrne and

Melissa Klein

October 2, 2021

NYC homelessness up nearly 45% in most notorious subway vagrant spots

The city’s subway stations with the worst ongoing vagrancy problems saw homelessness spike nearly 45 percent over the summer, the MTA’s safety chief revealed Monday.

The eight stations — all but one in Manhattan — were being used as living quarters by an average of 14.7 people in August, up from 10.2 homeless people in May, MTA chief safety officer Patrick Warren said.

The stations comprise some of the city’s busiest commuter hubs, including Grand Central Terminal, Penn Station, the Port Authority bus terminal and Lexington Avenue/59th Street, Warren said during a monthly meeting of the MTA’s Safety Committee in Manhattan.

The others are tourist landmarks Times Square and Union Square, as well as Manhattan’s Fulton Street and Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn.

All of the stations ranked in the 98th to 100th percentiles of those occupied by homeless people seeking shelter, Warren said.

At Penn Station, The Post saw about eight men milling about inside and outside on Monday afternoon.

One man was wandering around shirtless.

A commuter from Long Island who identified herself as “Nina S.,” 40, an education worker from Long Island, said, “I make sure to stand near people when I’m here.”

“I see feces, crazy people, people peeing in the corner of stairs. It’s gross,” she said.

Another commuter, Jim Colletti, 59, said, “Something has to be done for our safety and theirs.”

“People think the city is trash and won’t come in,” he added.

All of the stations ranked in the 98th percentile of those occupied by homeless people seeking shelter, Warren said.

Warren said transit officials began conducting their own counts because data from the annual tallies conducted by the city each winter is “not usable” because they’re “just a one-point-in-time count, which is interesting at the moment but we just don’t get the results until four months later.”

“This is a data-driven approach to understanding where the homeless are and how we can support them, provide outreach to that at-risk group,” he said.

“We can use our scarce resources by targeting them using information like this.”

Surveys at the MTA’s end-of-line stations, where vagrants tend to congregate overnight, showed that Stillwell Avenue and Flatbush Avenue/Brooklyn College in Brooklyn were the most populated, with an average of three people at each stop April 1 and Aug. 31.

Kathryn Wilde of the pro-business Partnership for New York City said that having homeless people living in the subway system was “a significant threat to the city’s recovery” from the coronavirus pandemic.

“New Yorkers fear catching COVID-19 or being assaulted or harassed by someone who is not wearing a mask, likely not vaccinated, and often evidences mental and physical health problems,” she said.

“The MTA has begged for police enforcement and has hired social agencies to try to relocate people, but the problem has only increased.”

Wilde added, “We all understand that there are no easy solutions, but our city is used to dealing with tough problems and this should be a top priority.”

City Councilman Stephen Levin (D-Brooklyn), chairman of the General Welfare Committee, said the MTA’s findings showed “the need for better and more accessible resources for people living on the street.”

“While we expect to see an increase in the number of people on the street in the summer months, we need to acknowledge that right now, with the Delta variant so prevalent, people should not be in congregate shelter,”: he said.

“There are common-sense solutions: We should be investing in more Safe Haven and Stabilization beds, increasing access to mobile mental health, health and addiction services and focusing on rapid rehousing.”

Caitlin LaCroix, a co-founder of the nonprofit RxHOME advocacy group, said, “The lack of effective outreach that connects people directly to permanent homes and a failure to hold our elected leaders accountable for providing housing has exacerbated New York City’s homelessness crisis in the wake of the pandemic.”

“The city needs to fully embrace using a housing-first strategy, which would move people out of subways and shelters and into permanent homes,” she added.

Last week, former Mayor Michael Bloomberg said homelessness needed to be addressed for the city’s economy to rebound from the COVID-19 pandemic.

“We cannot have the subways full of people who have no place to sleep,” Bloomberg said during an appearance at Ground Zero ahead of Saturday’s 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

Gov. Kathy Hochul — who met with the billionaire ex-mayor before his remarks — also called the issue “something that is going to define New York and whether or not we’re going to have a full recovery.”

In June, internal MTA documents showed an increase in subway cars soiled with human waste, vomit and blood, leading an agency spokesman to call the situation “a reminder of the need for more mental health outreach and social service support in the city and throughout the system.”

In a prepared statement, city Department of Homeless Services spokesman Isaac McGinn said ongoing efforts by Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration had led about 700 homeless people to leave the subways and move into shelters.

“We’re not sure what this survey is or how it was conducted by MTA’s transit staff but we do know that working with qualified outreach providers 24/7/365, we continue to directly engage New Yorkers living unsheltered on the streets and subway,” he said.

NYC officials, residents rip conditions at Wards Island homeless shelter

The troubled men’s homeless shelter on Wards Island has continued to deteriorate into an unsanitary COVID-19 nightmare, a group of elected city officials said after touring the facility Monday.

“Nobody should be here,” City Councilman Stephen Levin told reporters outside the Clarke Thomas Men’s Shelter. “Nobody should be in this building right now.”

The harsh take on the 233-bed shelter off Hell Gate Circle is just the latest slap at the city-run facility, long the target of complaints from homeless residents and advocates.

The critics Monday said social distancing is non-existent at the facility — even in the midst of a resurgence of the pandemic — with beds no more than 2 feet apart and masks rarely donned by residents.

“If you have COVID, it’s going to spread in there,” said Public Advocate Jumaane Williams, who led the tour with Levin and Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer.

The group, which included “Da Homeless Hero” Shams DaBaron, a onetime vagrant New Yorker-turned-activist, addressed reporters outside after the tour.

“I remember how horrible this experience was,” said DaBaron, who once lived at the shelter, to the press. “It was so bad that it led me to increasing my drinking, and (it) developed into a major problem.

“This place does not foster growth and development,” he said. “It fosters death and destruction.”

The visiting officials blamed the state of the shelter on Mayor Bill de Blasio, saying the city hasn’t done enough to help the homeless men placed in the facility — which they noted is physically far from the mental-health and counseling services that many require.

Last year, a former shelter resident launched a petition drive to bring attention to what he called a dire situation at the center, blaming the city Department of Homeless Services for the alleged unsanitary conditions and creating a hotbed for COVID-19.

On Monday, residents at the shelter griped about the “abhorrent” conditions that they say remain unaddressed at the isolated facility.

“The conditions here are deplorable — roaches, mice, flies,” said shelter resident Anthony Simmons, 52. “[Staffers] don’t clean the bathroom properly. They just mop the floor.

“It’s better in the street than it is in here, and I’m in a wheelchair saying that,” he said.

Gerald Patterson, 54, who has lived at Clarke Thomas for three years, called the facility “nasty.

“People will piss on the floor before they piss in the toilet,” he told The Post. “They will s–t and throw up in the shower before they do it in the toilet.

“It’s crazy,” Patterson added. “You can’t sleep at night. You have people hollering and bugging out at night. You have people with knives here and razors. It’s ridiculous.”

The residents said the city did have the bathrooms recently cleaned — but only in anticipation of the tour by Williams and the other officials, who brought reporters with them.

“This place is a nightmare,” said a shelter resident, who would only identify himself as Marvin, to The Post. “It’s an absolute nightmare.”

Officials at City Hall said Monday that the city has invested “hundreds of millions of dollars” in its previously underfunded shelter system, including the Wards Island facility.

The money pays for such things as on-site vaccinations and COVID testing at least twice a week at city shelters while implementing protocols for treatment and quarantine of residents who do test positive for the virus.

Since 2016, de Blasio’s “Turning the Tide” plan has also ramped up repairs at such facilities and included more than 59,000 shelter inspections, with violations now at an all-time low as the facilities clean up their acts, the statement said.

While acknowledging that “there is always more work to be done,” city officials said their “proactive” initiatives have reduced the shelter population to about 45,000 — “well below the level when Mayor de Blasio took office in 2014.”

The city signed a $45 million deal with HELP USA in 2019 to lead the effort.

Additional reporting by Julia Marsh

In N.Y.C., a push to bring back tourists includes razing homeless encampments.

As New York City strives to lure back tourists and office workers, it has undertaken an aggressive campaign to push homeless people off the streets of Manhattan.

City workers used to tear down one or two encampments a day. Now, they sometimes clear dozens. Since late May, teams that include sanitation workers in garbage trucks, police officers and outreach workers have cruised Manhattan around the clock, hitting the same spots over and over.

The sweeps are part of a broader effort by Mayor Bill de Blasio that includes transferring more than 8,000 people from hotels, where they had been placed to stem the spread of the coronavirus, to barracks-style group shelters.

The transfers are continuing despite the recent surge in the Delta variant, though the city told a judge that it would delay the moves on Monday to address concerns that it was not adequately considering people’s health problems and disabilities.

The city is also responding to months of complaints about homeless people blocking public spaces, menacing passers-by and committing assaults. On Wednesday, Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, whose administration has slashed aid for addressing homelessness, cited the problem as one of the main hurdles to the city’s recovery.

The debate over how to tackle homelessness in New York City, where more than 2,000 people live on the streets and the subway, comes as cities across the country grapple with growing encampments.

On Wednesday, the Los Angeles City Council outlawed camping near parks, libraries and schools. On Saturday, a national eviction moratorium expired, spurring fears of a new surge in homelessness, though in New York the moratorium continues through Aug. 31.

By Andy Newman and Nicole Hong

Aug. 2, 2021

News NYC Faces Legal Challenge Over Decision To Move Homeless New Yorkers Back to Shelters

The Department of Homeless Services temporarily suspended its push to move 8,000 homeless New Yorkers from hotels and into shelters Friday — just hours after advocates filed a motion accusing City Hall of violating the rights of people with medical and mental health problems.

DHS quietly stayed three upcoming moves after the Legal Aid Society charged in a federal court filing that the agency was failing to perform required health screenings before the relocation, potentially endangering homeless people with special needs.

So far, residents from 23 of the 60 emergency hotel shelters opened to provide space for social distancing during the pandemic have already been moved back into the city’s congregate shelter system.

A spokesman for DHS confirmed that the suspension of the three other planned moves would last through at least Tuesday, when the first hearing is set in the court case.

“Pending the court hearing on Tuesday, we are holding in abeyance the scheduled transition out of 3 more COVID-period commercial hotel locations that were set to relocate” Friday and this coming Monday, said spokesman Isaac McGinn in a statement.

“The health, safety, and wellbeing of the New Yorkers we serve as they get back on their feet is our number one priority – that’s why we’re continuing our comprehensive COVID-19 testing and vaccination programs, making it as easy as possible for our clients to get tested and vaccinated by delivering these free, vital resources directly to clients where they are,” he added.

But Legal Aid’s lawsuit disputes that statement, claiming that City Hall failed to follow required protocol for transferring the homeless hotel residents with major health needs back to more traditional barracks-style shelters.

“The Mayor is forcing DHS to move shelter residents faster than staff can screen them,” Joshua Goldfein, attorney at Legal Aid, told The Post. “As a result every day we are meeting very vulnerable people with serious needs who have been placed in shelters that put them at risk.”

In court papers first reported by The New York Times, the Legal Aid attorneys argued that failure puts homeless New Yorkers with mental and physical challenges at high risk of contracting COVID-19.

“Many of the class members have disabilities that put them at higher risk of severe consequences if they were to contract SARSCoV-2, the virus causing COVID-19, and many have physical and mental disabilities that present risk of harm if they were to return to congregate shelter, or otherwise make living in congregate shelter untenable,” the group’s lawyers argued in their court filing.

City Hall launched the emergency shelter program after a slew of outbreaks in shelters during the early days of the pandemic highlighted the ease with which the deadly virus could spread in crowded shelters.

The move to hotels, officials argued, helped to “flatten the curve” of COVID-19 cases among the vulnerable population at the height of the pandemic.

However, following the rollout of the coronavirus vaccines, Mayor Bill de Blasio has said the shelters are once again sufficiently safe and that returning homeless New Yorkers there would make it easier to provide them with healthcare and social services.

“It is time to move homeless folks who were in hotels for a temporary period of time back to shelters, where they can get the support they need,” de Blasio said last month.

Our Spring Walk is scheduled for 6/13/2021. Please join us!

The Sleeping Bag Program Spring Walk, 6/13/2021

While raising needed funds to assist the homeless, we will be walking along some very historic steps in the history of Brooklyn, based upon the Battle of Long Island renamed the Battle of Brooklyn took place on between August 27 & August 29 1776 and was the first official battle of the revolutionary war of the new nation. Join us @ 9am for all or part of this Walk:

(The British were coming with superior numbers. They landed in the southern most part of Long Island and were going to proceed through the densely wooded area towards Manhattan. There were four passes: a) the Guon (later known as Gowanus) which is ~5th Ave with fighting at Battle Hill (Greenwood Cemetery); b) Flatbush Pass which is East Drive in Prospect Park; c) the tiny Bedford Pass; and d) Jamaica Pass (between Brooklyn and Queens). The British did the impossible and force marched via Kings Highway to the Jamaica Pass surrounding our troops. George Washington successfully retreated to Brooklyn Heights in large part because of the Maryland 400 (About 264 Maryland militia). The British had us in a siege between themselves (i.e., hell) and the East River (i.e., high water). Later that night, GW crossed the East River with the help of the Massachusetts Boatmen to Manhattan and while we lost that battle, we did not lose the war!)

Start at 501 6th St Brooklyn, NY 11215

Head northwest on 6th St toward 7th Ave 0.3 mi

Turn left onto 5th Ave 1.0 mi

Turn left onto Main Entrance Greenwood Cemetery 0.1 mi

Turn left onto Battle Avenue 308 ft

Turn left onto Bay View Avenue 0.2 mi

Turn left onto Battle Avenue 476 ft

Minerva Statue Brooklyn, NY 11218 38 min (1.8 mi)

(The Altar to Liberty: Minerva monument: The Battle of Long Island renamed the Battle of Brooklyn is commemorated with a monument, which includes a bronze statue of Minerva near the top of Battle Hill, the highest point of Brooklyn, in Green-Wood Cemetery. The statue stands in the northwest corner of the cemetery and gazes directly at the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbor. The annual Battle of Long Island commemoration is held inside the main Gothic arch entrance to Green-Wood Cemetery.)

Head back to Battle Ave & turn right onto Border Ave

Notice the Henry Chadwick Grave

Make a left onto the entrance on prospect park west

Prospect Park West Entrance Brooklyn, NY 11218 8 min (0.4 mi)Head northeast toward 20th St 105 ft

Continue onto Prospect Park West 0.4 mi

At the traffic circle, take the 4th exit onto West Dr 0.4 mi

Slight left onto Center Dr 397 ft

Slight right 246 ft

Turn right 0.1 mi

Turn left 246 ft

Maryland Monument Brooklyn, NY 11226 22 min (1.1 mi)

(The Monument commemorates the heroic action of the Maryland 400 at the Stone House) Head south toward Well House Dr Take the stairs 253 ft Turn left onto Well House Dr 98 ft Slight right to stay on Well House Dr 0.4 mi Continue onto East Dr 0.1 mi Head north on East Dr toward Midwood trail 0.2 mi (Note the Battle Pass Marker & Dongan Oak Monument, a large granite boulder with a brass plaque affixed, and another marker lies near the road for the Dongan Oak, a very large and old tree felled to block the pass from the British advance.) Continue onto Grand Army Plaza/Plaza St W 0.6 mi Turn onto Flatbush Ave 0.3 mi Chipotle 347 Flatbush Ave Brooklyn, NY 11238 36 min (1.7 mi) LUNCH………………………………………………………..11am (approx.) Head northwest on Flatbush Ave toward Carlton Ave 23 ft Turn right onto Carlton Ave 0.6 mi Slight left toward Cumberland St 397 ft Turn right onto Cumberland St 0.3 mi Continue onto Washington Park 0.2 mi Fort Greene Park, Brooklyn, NY 11201 Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument 22 min (1.1 mi) (The Prison Ship Martyrs' Monument is a freestanding Doric column in Fort Greene memorializing all those who died while kept prisoner on the British ships just off the shore of Brooklyn, in Wallabout Bay. NB: More people died that way than from actual battles.) Head towards Dekalb Ave 0.1 mi Turn right onto Dekalb Ave 0.4 mi Turn left onto Bond St 0.2 mi Turn right onto Atlantic Ave 0.4 mi Turn left onto Court St 75 ft Trader Joe's 130 Court St, Brooklyn, NY 11201 22 min (1.1 mi) (NB: Where George Washington observed the Maryland 400 and a plaque has the quote ‘Good God, what brave fellows I must this day lose!’)

Head south on Court St toward Pacific St 0.5 mi Turn left onto Union St 0.8 mi Turn right onto 4th Ave 0.3 mi Turn left onto 3rd St 472 ft Old Stone House 336 3rd St, Brooklyn, NY 11215 33 min (1.6 mi) (The Old Stone House: A re-constructed farmhouse (c.1699) that was at the center of the Marylanders' delaying actions serves as a museum of the battle. It is located in J.J. Byrne Park, at Third Street and Fifth Avenue, Brooklyn, and features models and maps. NB: The Marylanders did not just defend; they attacked A British force of thousands!) Head northwest on 3rd St toward 4th Ave 433 ft Turn left onto 4th Ave 0.3 mi Turn right onto 9th St 0.1 mi American Legion 193 9th St, Brooklyn, NY 11215 10 min (0.5 mi)

(The 256 dead troops of the Maryland 400 were buried by the British in a mass grave on a hillock on farmer Adrian Van Brunt's land on the outskirts of the marsh. It was from this battle that Maryland gained its nickname the "Old Line State". The Maryland soldiers grave was originally marked with a memorial that stated: "Burial place of ye 256 Maryland soldiers who fell in ye combat at ye Cortelyou House on ye 27th day of August 1776." Yet as the years went by, their story and burial place faded from public memory.

However, not everyone has forgotten the Maryland Regiment, and their grave has been rediscovered where it remains in a fenced-off lot at the intersection of Third avenue and 8th Street in Brooklyn. Despite previous plans for a memorial park, merely a simple placard on the adjacent American Legion building indicates the site from the street.) Head southeast on 9th St toward 4th Ave 0.1 mi Turn left onto 4th Ave 0.1 mi Turn right onto 6th St 0.5 mi 501 6th St Brooklyn, NY 11215 17 min (0.8 mi) Walk should finish around 1pm

1 in 10 NYC public school students is homeless. I was one of them. I kept it from my teachers and friends — doing my schoolwork in the library and imagining a brighter future.

In 2016, I felt like my world was collapsing. My two aunts, then my grandmother, died. This made me afraid that I’d lose my mother and twin brother, too, and be put in the foster care system.

In the midst of all that death, my mother, twin brother, and I were forced out of our Brooklyn home, where I had lived all my life. My mom received a foreclosure notice in the mail. She had known it was coming because she hadn’t been able to pay her mortgage.

At the same time, we were living with my violent father. There was constant arguing and fighting and no silence at home. When we finally had to move, I was glad to be free of his toxicity and animosity, but it was still hard to say goodbye to the house where I took my first steps.

The day we moved, we took a cab to Manhattan, where we thought the Department of Housing Services’ Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing, or PATH, was located. It wasn’t, so my mom had to pay for another cab to the Bronx, where the intake facility for homeless families was situated. We each took only three sets of clothes. My mom put the rest of our things in storage near our old house.

Once we arrived at PATH, we spent hours waiting, moving from floor to floor, and coming across many people of different nationalities and ethnicities. I saw children crying from hunger — rushing to get the paper bags of free food. I wondered about all the horrific circumstances the people around me were facing. I felt anxious. Angry. Confused. Hopeless. Powerless.

I could tell my mother was terrified that we wouldn’t be given a place to live. She kept saying we would be OK, that “God is always with us,” so we shouldn’t worry. Her hands were shaking, though. She said she had a headache. It wasn’t until after midnight that they put us in a car to take us to a shelter in Bushwick.

Our room there was small and dirty, with two bunk beds and a small bathroom with a shower, toilet, and sink. The water in the bathroom was mostly cold. We had no air conditioning or cable. There was a 9 p.m. curfew. There was no elevator, so we had to take the stairs to the third floor, which was a problem for my mother because she has COPD. My brother and I have asthma, so whenever we bought food, we struggled to carry the bags up the stairs.

Three months after we got there, my brother had an asthma attack, and he was admitted to the hospital. My mom spent two days with him while I stayed with an aunt. When we returned to the shelter, the guy at the front desk said, “You no longer live here.”

“What do you mean?” my mother asked. “Where are my belongings?”

Staying out at night was not allowed, and he claimed we did not call to inform them that my brother was in the hospital, although my mother did.

“I called the front desk as soon as he was admitted, and they said it was fine,” my mom told the supervisor. “I have papers proving my son was admitted to the hospital. How could you just throw us out? My son just got out of the hospital.“

But our room had already been assigned to another family, and that was that. We found all of our things in garbage bags in a storage room. They even threw out all of our food, not knowing whether or not my mom could afford to replace it. The truth is, we had no money to waste.

That night, we had to go back to the PATH location in the Bronx. After a couple of hours, we were put in a van and sent to a hotel to spend the night while they prepared a shelter room for us. In the morning, they took us to a different shelter in Brooklyn, about 20 minutes from the first one.

The second shelter, near the Marcy Houses complex, was a nicer two-bedroom apartment with a bath, although the water there was almost always cold. The curfew was 10 p.m., but there were weekend passes so that we could sleep at a family member’s home.

Through it all, I went to school every day with a smile on my face and tried to keep my head held high. I managed to earn high grades. I studied at the library most days after school, using the free Wi-Fi and computers. I prioritized earning good grades to give myself a chance for a bright future. I don’t ever want my future children to experience the financial problems my family endured. The rough times motivated me to keep pushing through the trials and tribulations.

None of my teachers knew I was homeless. I was terrified someone would find out. It was a secret I kept from everyone because I feared getting bullied — or worse, pitied. I didn’t want to be seen as the “poor” or “unfortunate” girl. I didn’t want to be treated differently or become a laughing stock.

Sometimes, my friends wanted to walk me home, and I had to make up an excuse so they wouldn’t. Or, when I was walking back to the shelter, and I saw kids from my school, I would wait till they left to go inside. I didn’t even tell my two best friends that my family was homeless. My mom kept it from other members of our family, too. We suffered in the shadows.

At school, a popular boy I’ll call Jacob showed up in nice sneakers and cologne. He lived in the first shelter where we stayed — two floors down. One day I said hi, and we started talking. He messaged me on social media, and we became friends. It was shocking to me how someone’s life may appear so much better than yours, but you never really know what challenges they may be facing. Befriending Jacob made me feel less alone.

We spent about one year in the shelter system. I don’t know how my mom managed to get our house back, but she did. But so many other children and teens remain in homeless housing. According to the latest figures from the Coalition for the Homeless, there were 11,563 families living in New York City homeless shelters in March, including nearly 17,000 children. The New York State Education Department published data “showing that more than 111,000 New York City students … were identified as homeless during the 2019-20 school year.” That’s about 1 in 10 children enrolled in district or charter schools. Those not in shelters were often doubled up in shared, temporary housing.

I know what it feels like to wake up one day to find all that you have taken from you. I know what it’s like to be thrown into a new environment that you have no control over. The sheer number of homeless students in New York City reflects how many people struggle through the same horrific experiences that my family endured.

When I’m older, I want to help those suffering from homelessness and hunger. I want to be wealthy one day and give back to my Brooklyn community. Until then, I hope this story gets others like me to talk about this issue and not be ashamed and hide it. It is not our fault.

Sirsy Galarza is a high school senior in New York City and will be studying business administration at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is also a painter and created the art for this story.