NYC turns to Oklahoma for help managing a homeless shelter for migrants

New York City officials are tapping an Oklahoma-based group to manage an emergency homeless shelter for asylum-seekers on the Upper West Side, a decision that’s baffling the city councilmember who represents the neighborhood.

The Department of Social Services – which oversees the city’s largest shelter system – selected Cherokee Nation Management and Consulting to operate the shelter on 88th Street near Riverside Drive, said Councilmember Gale Brewer.

The shelter, which has a capacity of 125 rooms, is one of 100 sanctuary shelters that have been opened since last April by Mayor Eric Adams’ administration to house tens of thousands of asylum-seekers arriving from southern states after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

But the decision to select an organization that hasn’t worked in the five boroughs to run a shelter where newcomers rely heavily on staff to help with myriad issues poses some serious concerns, Brewer said.

“It makes no sense on any level to have an out-of-town – never been a provider in New York City – selected to do this job,” Brewer said.

“Where can I get English as a second language class? Where's the library?” she added. “Local people know that.”

Neil Nowlin, a spokesperson for Cherokee Nation Management and Consulting, declined to comment.

The consulting group is part of Cherokee Federal, a group of contracting companies owned by the Cherokee Nation, the largest indigenous tribe in the U.S. According to company brochures shared with local officials by DSS, Cherokee Federal has responded to humanitarian crises at the U.S.-Mexico border and around the world, including in Afghanistan.

The organization also touts that it was selected by the federal government to run an emergency intake center for unaccompanied minors in 2021 outside of Los Angeles.

Neha Sharma, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services, did not say how much the city is paying Cherokee Nation Management and Consulting to operate the shelter or comment on why DSS is turning to an out-of-state provider to run its shelter.

“We are leaving no stone unturned as part of our emergency response, which includes working to identify new providers, including those with extensive national experience responding to humanitarian crises of this nature,” Neha said in a statement.

The arrival of asylum-seekers comes as the city’s shelter system is swelling and the municipal workforce faces a staffing shortage.

Currently, there are more homeless families and individuals living in city shelters than at any time since the system was created in 1981, according to the advocacy group Coalition for the Homeless. The arrival of thousands of migrants is further straining the already burdened system.

As of Tuesday, there are 73,770 homeless families and individuals in the main shelters, according to the city’s daily census count. Thousands more people live on the city’s streets, in the subways and in specialized shelters.

While more than a dozen existing providers expanded their operations to meet the growing need, demand is outstripping supply, said Catherine Trapani, executive director of the advocacy group Homeless Services United, a coalition of 50 nonprofit agencies serving homeless and at-risk adults and families in New York City.

“Many current providers are in a poor financial position to expand and have been unable to do so due to late contract payments, low salaries that lead to chronic understaffing, which makes opening new programs irresponsible,” Trapani said. “Others have been able to stretch and are opening new facilities. Still, even with uptake from the current crop of providers, demand is so high that the agency has had to recruit new providers.”

The Upper West Side shelter has been set aside to house families with adult children, Brewer said. The eight-story building once housed students at the New York Institute of Technology. Each floor has a kitchen and a coin-operated laundry room, according to the college’s website. Most rooms also have a private bathroom.

The shelter is currently operated by the National Guard and the staff at the city’s Department of Homeless Services, according to email correspondence sent by DSS to Brewer’s office and other city officials. The email was shared with Gothamist.

“Cherokee is not fully at the location as of yet,” according to one email sent Monday. “They are still ramping up.”

Chau Lam reports on homeless and poverty for WNYC and Gothamist. Send tips to CLam@nypublicradio.org

NYC residents shoulder larger cost of homeless family shelter funding, report finds

New York City residents are paying a larger share of the hundreds of millions of dollars to house homeless people over the last decade, according to an analysis by a nonpartisan budget watchdog group.

Ever since Albany lawmakers shifted the financial burden onto the city, New York City taxpayers are picking up more than 76% of the costs of providing shelter to homeless families, up from 31% a decade ago, the analysis by the city’s Independent Budget Office found.

During the 2013 fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to to June 30, it cost the city $490.6 million to provide emergency shelter for homeless families in the five boroughs. New York City picked up $151.2 million or nearly 31% of the costs, and the remainder were covered by state and federal funds.

Fast forward a decade later, the city picked up more than 76% of the costs, or $754.8 million of $987.5 million, to house homeless families in the last fiscal year.

The report comes as the city is expected to spend an estimated $4 billion in this fiscal year to meet the needs of thousands of asylum seekers arriving in New York City since last spring after crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

“Even before the current influx of asylum seekers, for years the city has shouldered a growing share of shelter costs compared with the state and federal governments,” according to the report.

Mayor Eric Adams has pleaded with the federal and state officials for help, but little money has shown up so far.

“While our city may be the face of the asylum seeker crisis, it is not a crisis we can solve on our own,” Adams said in the recently released The Road Forward: A Blueprint to Address New York City's Response to the Asylum Seeker Crisis. “A comprehensive response from all levels of government – especially from our state and federal partners – is needed.”

In her executive budget, Gov. Kathy Hochul proposed reimbursing the city 29% of the costs associated with shelter and other services to all asylum seekers, but the governor limited the spending to $1 billion over two years.

Unlike other places, New York City is legally required to provide shelter to homeless individuals and families.

The city’s Department of Homeless Services, which oversees two separate shelter systems, one for individuals and one for families, relies on a mix of money from the federal, state, and city funds.

However, the governor and state lawmakers decide what share of the federal and state funds goes to municipalities through cost-sharing formulas. Over the last decade, the state reduced its contribution and changed the cost-sharing formula, leaving New York City residents paying for a bigger chunk, according to the Independent Budget Office.

In the shelter system for individuals, the city bears most of the costs with a tiny sum coming from the federal government and some from the state. As of Sunday, there were 70,941 homeless people living in the city’s largest shelter system managed by the Department of Social Services, according to the city’s daily count. Thousands more homeless individuals live shelters managed by other city.

By

Chau Lam

Published Mar 13, 2023

Modified Mar 14, 2023

Migrant crisis sparked ‘unprecedented’ burden on NYC shelters: City Hall

The Big Apple’s migrant crisis sparked an “unprecedented” increase in the number of people living in taxpayer-funded homeless shelters, according to a City Hall report released Tuesday.

The daily average shelter population surged 20.8% — to 54,838 — during the first four months of fiscal 2023, which began July 1, the Preliminary Mayor’s Management Report for February said.

That’s up from an average of 45,381 during the same time in fiscal 2022, with the report saying the spike was “driven by an unprecedented increase in entrants, primarily related to the influx of asylum seekers from the southern United States border.”

The increase — which followed two successive years of declines — was even greater when combined with the final months of fiscal 2022 when the flood of migrants to the city began.

Those figures showed that the number of families with children who entered the shelter system spiked 41.8% while the number of single adults more than doubled, by 104.7%, according to the report.

“This rapid increase in entries resulted in growth of 26.9% in the families with children census and of 9.5% the single adult census, despite increases in exits to permanent housing over that same period,” the report said.

But the number of families receiving welfare benefits actually declined from 78.8% to 67.6% during July through October, compared to the same period a year ago.

“Partly this is a result of families remaining in conditional eligibility status for longer periods, contributing to a delay in the public assistance application process, as well as to the unprecedented increase in entries of asylum seekers,” the report said.

The rate of “serious and violent incidents” among shelter residents also dropped in all three categories of shelters: single adults, adult families and families with children.

“The decline of serious incidents within the families with children system was attributable to the decrease in COVID-19-related incidents, including quarantining of both staff and clients,” the report said.

“Within the single adult shelter system, the decrease in serious incidents was in large part due to a decrease in facility-related incidents — including heating, water and electrical failures that last more than four hours.”

The time period covered by the report includes the suicide of a despondent migrant mom from Colombia who hanged herself from a shower rod with an electrical cord inside a Queens homeless shelter on Sept. 18.

Mayor Eric Adams has said that the city will likely spend as much as $2 billion to provide shelter and other services to the migrant population, and he’s repeatedly called on President Biden’s administration to cough up at least $1 billion.

On Tuesday, Adams spoke privately with Biden following the president’s appearance in New York City, and they agreed to set a date to discuss the matter further, a source told The Post.

Earlier this month, Adams also made an “emergency mutual aid request” for Gov. Kathy Hochul to immediately provide housing for an initial 500 migrants, saying the city was “at our breaking point.”

As of Sunday, the estimated migrant population was 43,200, with 28,200 living in 86 emergency shelters and processing centers, according to City Hall.

Hochul — who’s set to unveil her proposed budget for fiscal 2023-2024 on Wednesday — has yet to publicly respond beyond saying that she’s been helping Adams “for many months and will continue to give him support.”

report By Bernadette Hogan and Bruce Golding January 31, 2023

NYC homelessness hits record number Again

NEW YORK - New York City’s homeless problem does not appear to be getting any better.

According to the Coalition for the Homeless, the numbers have actually hit an all-time high. They claim the average number of people sleeping in a shelter every night climbed to nearly 66,000 in October. 

Back in February, Mayor Eric Adams launched his subway safety plan and has repeatedly touted its success. 

But data obtained by the New York Daily News through a Freedom of Information Law request shows that around 70% of homeless individuals who have been moved into shelters have left within a week of being admitted.

The data covers two separate homeless outreach efforts, which City Hall calls the Subway Safety Plan and the End of the Line initiative. It shows that from February to August, nearly 2,300 homeless individuals were moved off the subways and into shelters. But out of those people, only 30% actually stayed longer than a week.

Many homeless individuals have said they do not feel safe in shelters, and many facilities also have strict rules, like curfews.

The news also comes amid the mayor's controversial new policy to start forcing homeless people who are determined to be suffering a "mental health crisis" off the streets and out of the subway system. They will be taken to a hospital for evaluation even if they refuse to go on their own.

The policy faced tough criticism. It directs police officers and street outreach workers to transport someone to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation if they appear to be unable to meet their own basic needs.

But mental health professionals are condemning the plan, arguing it takes away a person's basic human rights. Advocates say "housing" is the best solution for homelessness.

Mayor Adams says officers will get additional training and real-time support from mental health professionals. He framed the policy as a way to help people who need it.

12/18.2022

One of our major partners in handing out sleeping bags: Sidewalk Samaritans featured on ‘Live with Kelly & Ryan’ on ABC TV

NYC Pilots ‘Housing First’ Plan for Handful of Homeless Adults By David Brand . Published November 15, 2022

A new city pilot program is moving 80 formerly street-homeless New Yorkers into vacant supportive housing units while bypassing a series of grueling and time-consuming bureaucratic hurdles, Mayor Eric Adams said Monday.

The program launched in early September at four single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan run by the nonprofit Volunteers of America-Greater New York (VOA-GNY). It’s an example of the “Housing First” model, in which people with mental illness who experience homelessness are given keys to apartments with on-site supports without having to prove they are “ready” for permanent housing or complete onerous paperwork. A growing body of research shows that Housing First is effective for reducing homelessness and keeping people stably housed.

A new city pilot program is moving 80 formerly street-homeless New Yorkers into vacant supportive housing units while bypassing a series of grueling and time-consuming bureaucratic hurdles, Mayor Eric Adams said Monday.

The program launched in early September at four single-room occupancy (SRO) buildings in Brooklyn and Manhattan run by the nonprofit Volunteers of America-Greater New York (VOA-GNY). It’s an example of the “Housing First” model, in which people with mental illness who experience homelessness are given keys to apartments with on-site supports without having to prove they are “ready” for permanent housing or complete onerous paperwork. A growing body of research shows that Housing First is effective for reducing homelessness and keeping people stably housed.

Adams told reporters that the city decided to launch the program with just a few participants through VOA-GNY to assess its effectiveness and consider how to bring the model to scale at other supportive housing sites. 

“We had to get it right,” Adams said. “The worst thing we can do is start with 10,000 and figure we have to shift and pivot and shift without doing the proper analysis. We’re going to get it right and make sure that we can expand it.”

Advocates for the rights of homeless New Yorkers, on the other hand, have said that Housing First is already a tried and true model and could be the basis for filling all the vacant supportive housing units amid a record-high shelter population. The 80 units “are a positive option for 80 people,” said Kathleen Cash, a homeless and benefits advocate with the organization Safety Net Project. “But there are some 2,600 vacant supportive housing units, more than when this administration began, and there are serious actions the city can take— that it has power over—to fill those units. They’ve simply refused to do so.”

City Limits reported in July on the potential for true Housing First programs in New York City, as Adams, building on the efforts of his predecessor Mayor Bill de Blasio, ordered city workers to drive street homeless New Yorkers from public spaces and into shelters with the potential for permanent housing down the road. A large-scale Housing First program has proven effective in Houston, where 25,000 unhoused people have moved from the streets into apartments. Adams previously said he was skeptical the model could work in New York City, where it was pioneered but rarely applied. 

“In life, I learned that idealism collides with realism,” Adams said at a June press conference when asked about Housing First moves. “There are people living on the street right now who are dealing with mental health illnesses…that can’t make those decisions.”

Several supportive housing providers, meanwhile, said a direct-to-housing program seemed like a no-brainer—ending homelessness by giving people homes—but they worried paperwork delays or eligibility considerations could jeopardize state and federal funding sources or put at risk their low-income housing tax credits—lucrative cash streams that incentivize development but can be revoked for noncompliance with income eligibility and other rules.

By June, however, the VOA-GNY plan was already in the works. The city owns the buildings and will put up the money to house the tenants and provide services until other funding comes through from state and federal housing and mental health agencies. That arrangement serves as a fiscal backstop for VOA-GNY, covering the rent and social service costs, while allowing them to provide case management and offer counseling to tenants in stable housing—a key to stability in other areas of life. 

“The obvious goal that we all have is to take these unsheltered individuals off the streets and into housing,” VOA-GNY President and CEO Myung Lee told City Limits. “The second goal is that we really want to make sure that any bureaucracy that stands in the way of clients being housed is something we can work through.” 

Tenants in the program were first staying at a Bronx “Welcome Center”— a type of short-term shelter for people who had been bedding down in public spaces—where they were informed of the SRO units, Lee said. In three of the buildings, tenants have their own rooms and share common kitchens and bathrooms, she said. Case management and social service staff work on-site and tenants sign annual leases.

Department of Social Services Commissioner Gary Jenkins said the agency will “evaluate the pilot” over the next six to eight months in the hopes of expanding the Housing First model. 

“This is really groundbreaking for us,” he told City Limits by phone Sunday. 

Expanding Voucher Access

Along with the Housing First announcement, Adams also described a number of rule changes designed to give more New Yorkers access to CityFHEPS housing vouchers, which pay the bulk of the rent for families and individuals who qualify based on their low income. A number of rules have prevented many New Yorkers from accessing the rent subsidies, however.

The city will increase CityFHEPS eligibility to include single adults who work full-time and earn minimum wage, even if their income is above 200 percent of the federal poverty level, or about $27,180. Families with one person, including a child, who receives Supplemental Security Income (SSI) will qualify for CityFHEPs as opposed to old rules that required the SSI-recipient to be the head of household. As will families with an adult who works 14 hours a week—down from 30 hours. 

In the past, parents who worked 30 hours a week may have made too much to qualify for the voucher, but working any less also disqualified them, said Catherine Trapani, head of the organization Homeless Services United. She said the new changes will address that “income cliff.”

Adams said the city also plans to tackle source of income (SOI) discrimination—a pervasive form of bias by landlords and brokers against people who use rent subsidies that can stand in as a proxy for racial and anti-poor discrimination. In April, the main municipal enforcement unit tasked with cracking down on SOI discrimination had zero staff members, as City Limits reported at the time.

“This program, the housing voucher program, it puts people in better homes and better places. But you do find discrepancies as far as, because you have [a subsidy] you are, quote, a certain kind of people,” said Ernestine Jackson, a former NYPD employee who secured an apartment for herself and her son with a federal Section 8 housing voucher.

The reforms do not necessarily get at some of the core bureaucratic problems that force many CityFHEPS recipients—and frustrated landlords willing to accept them—to wait months to actually move into an apartment. Many of those problems may come down to staffing. A report Monday by the state comptroller’s office found that the Department of Social Services (DSS) was down roughly 15 percent of its budgeted staff in August. 

The city is planning to soon hire 150 new staff members for DSS with many of them set to process CityFHEPS applications, a City Hall spokesperson said following the press conference. 

The changes received positive feedback from a number of advocates working to move people out of shelters and into permanent housing, though they had hoped the city would go further by ending a 90-day wait time for access to vouchers.

“They’re encouraging,” Trapani said. “I don’t want perfect to be the enemy of the good. I think there were a lot of positive changes.”

NYC homeless shelter population hits all-time high amid cascading migrant crisis

The city’s homeless shelter population has hit an all-time high as hundreds of Latin American migrants continue to pour into New York every week as part of a crisis that’s driving the local social safety net to the brink of collapse.

The previous record — 61,415 individuals in city shelters on Jan. 12, 2019 — was first cracked over the weekend, data from the Department of Homeless Services show. On Monday, the latest day for which data is available, the tally reached 62,174.

In addition to setting a new population record, the average length of stay has also surged to all-time highs, with single adults now spending an average of 509 days in shelters, according to city data. Families with kids are, on average, in a shelter even longer — 534 days — and adult families spend an astonishing 855 days in shelters on average, the data shows.

As of this Monday, more than 19,000 Central and South American asylum seekers fleeing violence and economic devastation in their home countries had cycled through the city homeless shelter intake system, according to data from Adams’ office. A majority of them remain in shelters, and more migrants are being sent to the city every day after crossing into the U.S. from Mexico.

The administration has scrambled to accommodate the migrants, and is in the process of building a controversial tent camp on Randalls Island to house some. City Council members have lambasted the tent plan as inhumane, and urged Adams to house migrants in vacant hotels instead.

On that note, Adams announced in a Wednesday afternoon statement that the city is opening an emergency relief center for asylum seeking families with children at the upscale Row Hotel in Midtown. It will initially have capacity to house 200 families, who will get access to food, medical care and case work services.

Despite having been at the forefront of calling for migrants to be housed in hotels, Council Speaker Adrienne Adams (D-Queens) said she was given no heads up on the latest emergency facility announcement, signaling brewing tensions between the Council and the mayor’s team.

“I was not privy to this information,” she told reporters at City Hall. “It’s never ok when you get no notice. But given the situation that we’re in now — the crisis that we’re in now — we certainly understand that things happen.”

Many migrants in New York were sent to the city by Republican governors, including Texas’ Greg Abbott, as part of a political stunt aimed at criticizing Democratic immigration policies.

The Daily News spotted roughly 60 Venezuelan migrants being dropped off Wednesday morning at the 30th Street intake center in Manhattan — the same location where dozens of people were forced to sleep on floors and benches last month in apparent violation of the right-to-shelter law after the city failed to provide beds for them in a timely manner.

The migrants included teenagers, and several wore clothing emblazoned with the words “Save the Children,” a humanitarian organization that helps asylum seekers with accessing services.

While the migrant crisis is undoubtedly straining the shelter system, the Legal Aid Society and the Coalition for the Homeless said some dysfunction can be attributed to “bureaucratic bottlenecks” at city agencies and a drastic slowdown in affordable housing production.

Adams, the advocacy groups said, has not done enough to address the matter.

“Mayor Adams must commit to financing at least 6,000 apartments per year for homeless households and 6,000 apartments per year for households with extremely low incomes. We have urged the administration to take these necessary steps for months,” the groups said in a statement. “Should the city fail to act, the shelter census will only continue to rise even higher and more people will needlessly suffer homelessness.”

In his Wednesday announcement, Adams also affirmed that the tent city on Randalls will “soon” open, and added that his administration is looking into building several more similar facilities in the city.

The mayor has pushed back against criticism over his tent plans by accusing Council members of publicly voicing support for the migrants, but privately expressing reservations about housing them in their districts.

“Some of the loudest that are saying we need to make sure we house asylum seekers have been some of the loudest of saying not on our block,” he said Tuesday before predicting that “every community is going to see asylum seekers” if the crisis continues at its current pace. He declined to name the Council members whose views he’s taking issue with.

By Chris Sommerfeldt and Michael Gartland

New York Daily News

•

Oct 12, 2022 at 6:00 pm

NYC Issues Thousands of Federal Housing Vouchers, But Finding an Apartment Remains Tough

Just 19.4 percent of the 7,788 federal Emergency Housing Vouchers (EHV) issued to New York City by the Biden Administration in May 2021 have been used to secure an apartment, according to city data. That’s compared to a national rate of 48.7 percent.

Seventeen months after New York City received a trove of much-needed Section 8 housing vouchers, homeless recipients are still finding it hard to actually use them as the city’s sluggish lease-up rate trails far behind the national average.

Just 19.4 percent of the 7,788 federal Emergency Housing Vouchers (EHV) issued to New York City by the Biden Administration in May 2021 have been used to secure an apartment, according to city data. The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) provided 5,738 of the new subsidies to NYCHA and another 2,050 to the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), accounting for about 11 percent of the 70,000 vouchers issued nationwide as part of the administration’s American Rescue Plan stimulus package.

Before closing the application window on Sept. 30, HPD and NYCHA released an additional 1,000 vouchers to allow more households to try to secure an apartment. But in the city’s tight rental market, where voucher holders face administrative hurdles and rampant discrimination—with little enforcement—finding a unit can be nearly impossible.

All told, New York City households have used just 1,515 of the vouchers as of Oct. 3, HPD said. That’s a lease-up rate of about 17 percent when factoring in the extra 1,000 vouchers, but 19.4 percent of the actual total provided by HUD. Either way, New York City lags behind the statewide rate of 27.5 percent and the national rate of 48.7 percent, according to a database maintained by HUD.

Stay informed with City Limits.

https://citylimits.org/2022/10/05/

Migrants use charity cash to flee NYC when they can’t get into shelter By Bernadette Hogan, Kevin Sheehan, MaryAnn Martinez and Bruce Golding August 11, 2022 7:57pm

From south of the border, to the front of the line.

The city rolled out the red carpet for a group of migrants at the Bellevue Men’s Shelter who could be seen on Thursday boarding a yellow school bus headed to a homeless assessment center in Brooklyn.

The 17 migrants were escorted from Manhattan to their next accommodations while carrying identical, brand-new black backpacks and wearing clothing that also appeared new.

One, Daniel Reyes, said he was from Honduras and had been at the shelter for around a month after arriving in the US about a year ago. Reyes said eight others — one from Colombia, one from Guatemala and six from Venezuela — showed up at the shelter three days earlier.

“The gangs — no good. They come to the United States,” he said. We’ve all been here waiting, going through this process, and let me tell you: They’re getting everything real quick,” said Ronald Francois, 55, a Navy veteran from Queens. “They got more in four or five days than I got in 29! They’re brushing us aside.”

The preferential treatment wasn’t enough for some asylum-seekers. Four people who braved trekking to the US-Mexico border and across it got so fed up waiting for beds in New York City that they used charity money to head to Washington, DC, The Post has learned.

The unidentified men arrived in the Big Apple within the past three weeks and went to the city-run Bellevue Men’s Shelter in Manhattan’s Kips Bay, which also serves as an intake center for the Department of Homeless Services, sources said.

“They were either turned away or confused by the situation because there were a lot of people waiting for intake that day,” a source said.

The men — who don’t speak English — returned to the shelter “a few times” during about two and a half days in the city but “ultimately they decided to go to Washington,” the source said.

They had spent a night in the nation’s capital while traveling to New York, and they used $50 gift cards they received from Catholic Charities to pay for their bus fares back there, the source said.

The Post exclusively reported this week that City Hall was scrambling to open a dedicated migrant intake center with enough room to house 600 families in Midtown by Monday.

Mayor Adams last month revealed the city’s shelter system was overloaded by migrants, some of whom told The Post that they were directed to the city by Biden administration immigration officials in Texas.

The Department of Homeless Services didn’t respond to a request for comment.

‘Forced’ busing?

Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott started sending busloads of migrants to the city to protest what he called President Biden’s “irresponsible open-border policies.”

Since Friday, at least 160 migrants have arrived on five buses chartered by Abbott, with 92 dropped off outside the Port Authority Bus Terminal over the course of about 45 minutes Wednesday morning.

On Sunday, Adams alleged that Abbott had sent some migrants to New York unwillingly.

“Some of the families are on the bus that wanted to go to other locations, and they were not allowed to do so,” he said. “They were forced on the bus.”

Abbott’s office has said all the migrants voluntarily sign waivers before being put on the buses.

The Post on Thursday was prevented from interviewing migrants at the Bellevue Men’s Shelter about Adams’ accusation. Three uniformed city Department of Homeless Services officers ordered a reporter off the sidewalk in what appeared to be a blatantly illegal act.

“If you need to talk to our clients, call 43 Beaver St., 17th floor!” one officer said.

At that point, two migrants from Venezuela who arrived on the Abbott-chartered bus Wednesday — and who agreed to be interviewed — got scared and retreated inside the shelter.

Also Thursday, two other Abbott-chartered buses left Del Rio, Texas, en route to Washington, DC. It was unclear if the buses would continue on to New York City, as others have.

Javier, 25, a migrant from Venezuela, told The Post that he was boarding the first bus in hopes of making his way to the Big Apple, where he said a friend was living.

“I’m a lot closer to New York in Washington than I am here,” he said. “I heard there is a shelter where you can stay for some time until you’re able to get on your feet financially.”

Javier said he was penniless after getting robbed and having to pay bribes to officials during his trek to the US, and he called the free bus ride “a blessing because I don’t have money to keep going.”

“Any help that I can get is a godsend,” he added. Other migrants interviewed by The Post in San Antonio, Texas, said they were also hoping to get to New York City.

“The only thing I want right now is to be able to stay in a shelter where I can stay for at least a week, so I can work and earn a little money to find a place to live for my family,” said Cesar Sandoval Guerrero, 26.

Guerrero said he, his wife and their kids, ages 3 and 4, left Venezuela on June 19 because he couldn’t afford to live on his wages as a national-guard member and was told to extort bribes from his neighbors to make ends meet.

A short time later, 17 migrants came out and got on a yellow school bus that was apparently headed for a homeless assessment center in Brooklyn.

The men were all carrying identical, brand-new black backpacks and wearing clothing that also appeared new.

One, Daniel Reyes, said he was from Honduras and had been at the shelter for around a month after arriving in the US about a year ago.

Reyes said eight others — one from Colombia, one from Guatemala and six from Venezuela — showed up at the shelter three days earlier, apparently after being transported on an Abbott bus.

NYC Now Leasing 11 Hotels for Families as Homeless Population Rises By David Brand . Published August 10, 2022

New York City is now leasing 11 hotels for homeless families as the shelter population continues to rise amid record-high rents, lingering inflation and the well-publicized arrival of a number of asylum-seekers and other new immigrants.

Officials from Mayor Eric Adams’ administration disclosed the number of hotels rented out for families during a Council hearing Tuesday, just over seven months after the city phased out commercial lodgings for children following a substantial drop in the overall shelter population last year. City Limits first reported on the return to hotels last month.

But attempts by councilmembers to gain more concrete information about New York’s rising shelter census yielded little substantive information as the commissioners of the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) and the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs pleaded ignorance when asked for specific details.

Adams and his agency heads have said that more than 4,000 newly arrived immigrants have entered the shelter system, or at least visited an intake facility, since May. On Tuesday, Department of Social Services (DSS) Commissioner Gary Jenkins, who oversees DHS,  repeated that estimate, but could not say how many of the new immigrants in shelters were children—a key consideration as the administration pins the rise in family homelessness on immigrants.

Jenkins told Bronx Councilmember Kevin Riley he would get back to him with specific data, reciting a common refrain throughout the proceedings that keeps concrete numbers out of the public record. DHS did not provide a response when asked by City Limits.

Overall, the DHS shelter census has increased from 46,591 people on Jan. 2 to 52,370 on Monday, according to data tracked each day by City Limits. The number of families with children in shelter has approached 10,000, up from less than 8,500 on Jan. 1.

“This uptick has been largely driven by an increasing migrant population seeking asylum,” Jenkins told the General Welfare Committee, adding that evictions, by contrast, have accounted for just 1 percent of people entering DHS shelter (The state’s eviction moratorium, in place during the pandemic to keep New Yorkers in their homes throughout the crisis, ended in January.)

Still, some advocates for homeless New Yorkers and a handful of councilmembers have questioned the figures that Adams and his agency heads have cited. In a statement ahead of the hearing, The Legal Aid Society and Coalition for the Homeless criticized the mayor’s“unsupported claims that recent increases in the shelter census are due primarily to an influx of asylum seekers.”

The two groups say they have unsuccessfully sought more complete information about the asylum-seeker tally from DHS—which does not ask for a person’s residency status at intake and instead relies on interviews and assumptions.

They also accused the Adams administration of using the presence of a certain number of immigrants to distract from broader problems with shelter capacity, rising homelessness and delayed move-outs into permanent housing. About 200 people a week are leaving shelters with housing vouchers, Jenkins told the Council. Meanwhile, he said, roughly 100 newly arriving immigrants are entering the system. That does not include an as yet untold number of New Yorkers seeking shelter for more traditional economic reasons—namely, that the rent is too high.

“I really hope that you can get clear data to understand what’s happening,” said Councilmember Lincoln Restler, a former aide to ex-Mayor Bill de Blasio who worked on issues around homelessness. “My strong suspicion is that we are experiencing an increase in the families with children census as a result of the eviction moratorium ending and a regular spike we see in the summer months [but] we are pointing to the immigrant community that is growing in New York City and asylum-seekers as the rationale.”

New York City is under unique court-orders to provide temporary shelter to any single adult who requests a bed and any family who proves they have nowhere else to stay. Historically, the vast majority of shelter residents come from within New York City, according to records reviewed by City Limits.

It is clear, however, that a sizable number of newly arrived immigrants and asylum-seeking families have entered the DHS shelter system—including some bused from Texas in a state-sponsored political stunt by far-right Gov. Greg Abbott—contributing to a steady rise in the number of people in emergency accommodations each night. City Limits encountered eight men outside the city’s homeless intake shelter Friday who had arrived via bus that morning after completing arduous journeys, mostly by foot, from Venezuela and Colombia and into Texas.

One who has a working cell phone and has been in consistent contact with City Limits said he is now staying at the cavernous Bedford Atlantic shelter in Brooklyn with just one set of clothes and no money.

The head of the New York City branch of Catholic Charities, Monsignor Kevin Sullivan, testified that his organization has so far assisted 1,100 newly arrived immigrants, predominantly young men from Venezuela. Some said they have entered city shelters while “some are sleeping in the parks,” he said. Most of all, the men say they want to work, Sullivan said.

“Some of them say, ‘I’m coming to New York because that’s where you make it,” he added.
The immigration issue has ignited a cross-country feud between Adams and Abbott, who began commissioning buses loaded with immigrants to New York City Aug. 3. The first arrived early Aug. 5. Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs Commissioner Manuel Castro told the Council that city officials only learned of the bus after they were alerted by the organization Grannies Respond. The bus company hired by Abbott to transport immigrants to New York signed non-disclosure agreements preventing them from sharing more information, Castro added.

Abbott’s spokesperson Renae Eze said Tuesday that five buses with 250 people have departed Texas for New York. Two buses pulled up at Port Authority on Wednesday morning, where they were greeted by aid groups and city officials. Not every immigrant on the buses has ended up in city shelters, and in at least one instance, the majority of passengers left for other destinations.

Eze said Texas plans to continue busing  asylum seekers to both New York City and Washington D.C., where over 6,500 immigrants have been sent in over 160 buses.The Abbott buses coincide with efforts by nonprofits working near the Southern Border to help recently arrived immigrants travel to New York City.

During the hearing, General Welfare Committee Chair Diana Ayala acknowledged the unexpected increase in newly arrived immigrants, but attempted to separate the issue from other systemic problems. She questioned why DHS did not act to open additional shelter capacity earlier knowing that statewide eviction protections had come to an end, rents were soaring and a typical summertime surge was on the horizon. The shelter vacancy rate for families with children dipped below 1 percent in June, according to city data shared by Legal Aid.

“I think you had a little bit of a heads up and enough time to come up with a plan,” she said. 

Jenkins in his opening remarks said the agency can meet the need. “While challenges have arisen, our existing system is withstanding the many stresses placed upon it,” he said.

Councilmembers, service providers and formerly homeless New Yorkers also criticized the shelter intake process, which forces families to visit a facility in The Bronx where more than half are initially denied a long-term placement.

“The clear solution is for the city to get serious about housing for homeless New Yorkers no matter where they come from,” said Karim Walker, an organizer with the Safety Net Project of the Urban Justice Center who has experienced homelessness.

DHS shelters are a last resort for most residents squeezed by a housing crisis and failed by other systems. With homelessness on the rise, Jenkins urged councilmembers to welcome new shelters in their districts to add capacity rather than oppose every site put forth by the city, as is often the case with the placement of such facilities.

The agency should soon get some more breathing room. An emergency declaration announced by Adams earlier this month will allow the city to bypass public review and quickly tap nonprofits to open an immigrant referral center and new shelters inside hotels, including a potential 600-unit facility outlined in a request for proposals first reported by the New York Post.

Adams has also requested reimbursement from the federal government to cover the costs of housing and serving newly arrived immigrants. But there, too, Jenkins and Castro avoided concrete answers. 

Jenkins said the administration is still trying to determine “what the ask will be.”

Additional reporting by Daniel Parra.