NYC’s affordable housing lottery a ‘mythic’ option for many homeless residents as wait times jump

New York City’s homeless shelter population is swelling, but one method for moving people into permanent housing is taking longer than ever to complete.

The median timeline for shelter residents moving into city-financed apartments reserved for them has nearly doubled since 2020, according to city data.

Last year, it took about seven months for someone to move into those apartments after the approval process, the annual mayor’s management report shows. But in the 2020 fiscal year, it took less than four months. That timeline is considered to be a "critical indicator" of the Department of Housing Preservation and Development's performance.

More New Yorkers did manage to move from shelters to HPD-financed housing last year compared to 2021, with that number again trending up between July and October 2022. The agency said that was due to more completed apartments opening up last year.

The longer wait times come as the city’s shelter population exceeds 80,000 people a night, many of them recently arrived migrants, and as Mayor Eric Adams seeks ways to move people out more quickly to free up space in the beleaguered system.

HPD spokesperson William Fowler said the agency is evaluating how to streamline the move-in process, and noted that more than 1,200 households have moved from shelters to HPD-financed apartments since January, a figure that is on pace to surpass last year’s total.

“The data shows clearly that we’re helping a record number of homeless New Yorkers move out of shelter and into permanent housing and we’re currently on track to exceed last year’s placements,” said Fowler.

But that’s little comfort to New Yorkers in shelters still struggling to navigate the bureaucratic lottery process, relying on the mail or cheap cell phones to send in applications, submit required paperwork and stay up to speed.

Brooklyn native Darren Whitney, 62, wonders if the affordable housing lottery offers a false hope for getting out of a shelter system where he’s lived for the past six years.

Whitney has applied for a spot in more than a dozen buildings through the lottery in recent months, according to records he showed Gothamist. He entered the shelter system in 2017 after his release from state prison and has undergone multiple hip replacement surgeries while trying to secure permanent housing from a group shelter on Wards Island, which has limited access to the rest of the city.

Last month, Whitney, who earns less than $10,000 a year but has a rental assistance voucher from the city, learned he was picked to proceed to the final stage of the selection process for a brand new seven-story building in East Flatbush. It was the first time he received anything more than a denial and he said he started feeling optimistic.

But Whitney didn’t submit the necessary documents in time, resulting in an administrative rejection.

“I thought I had this,” Whitney said. “This whole premise was leading up to this. That … if you get lucky, they'll call you. You have all your documentation, you have it.”

Whitney said he asked his case manager at the Wards Island homeless shelter to upload various forms of identification, a birth certificate, an income statement and other documents required by the building developer. But the case manager did not send the forms before the deadline, or during a 10-day extension, Whitney said.

Whitney appealed the rejection, explaining in a message to HPD that he lacked the “tech literacy” to upload the documents from his glitchy cellphone.

“There's no way that this should happen,” he said. “But it’s gone. Let’s face the facts.”

According to Whitney, his case manager did not send the required paperwork in time.

Photo by David Brand

The building owner did not respond to an email, but an HPD official said the site still has some available apartments.

HELP-USA, which operates the shelter, declined to comment on the specifics of Whitney’s experience, citing client privacy, but said it currently has three housing specialists and a housing director on staff at his shelter.

“We are proud of the work we do every day to help people find and maintain housing,” said Stephen Mott, HELP-USA's chief strategy officer. “This search can be a difficult process, especially in a city as unaffordable as New York.”

But the problems go much deeper than the interactions between individual shelter staffers and residents, said Catherine Trapani, head of the agency Homeless Services United.

The housing lottery process is plagued by short supply, too much paperwork and too few staff members at city agencies and nonprofit providers, Trapani said.

Back in 2019, the city enacted a new law requiring developers to set aside 15% of units in new apartment buildings for people leaving homeless shelters. But four years later, securing one of those units can be like “finding a needle in a haystack” — especially for people living in shelters, she said.

“It’s one of those things that’s almost mythic,” Trapani said. “The process to attain them is not easy.”

Since 2014, New Yorkers have submitted tens of millions of lottery applications. Roughly 30,000 people have moved into units over that span, according to city data first reported by City Limits. Last fiscal year, 2,175 households moved from shelters to units listed on the affordable housing lottery, according to the mayor’s management report.

It’s the highest number yet recorded, but still a drop in the bucket, Trapani said. She said making sure applications are submitted correctly and then speeding up the move-in process were two important ways to reduce the city’s burgeoning shelter population.

One problem is supply. Production slowed amid inflation and rising interest rates, and most newly created homeless set-aside units are in supportive housing sites reserved for people with mental illness or other special needs. HPD data shows developers started 2,275 units reserved for homeless New Yorkers last fiscal year — down from 2,849 the previous year. New construction in the first four months of the current fiscal year trailed last year’s pace.

Competition for apartments priced for the lowest-income New Yorkers is also extremely tight, reporting by City Limits and the news site The City shows. The City’s analysis of more than 18 million lottery applications found that units priced for “extremely low-income” New Yorkers received an average of 650 submissions, compared to 123 for middle-income apartments

And staffing problems across city agencies and nonprofit providers are only making things harder, Trapani said.

“You look at the staff shortages, low rates of pay, high caseloads. it’s not really a wonder that people can’t get through,” the lottery process she said.

But for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness who do manage to beat the odds, the affordable housing lottery is a lifeline.

Karim Walker, an outreach organizer with the homeless rights group Safety Net Project, was approved in August 2020 for a one-bedroom apartment in East New York that he applied for two years earlier. It took about five months before he was finally able to move in.

Walker said he has thrived since then. He said his health is improving and he has been losing weight by preparing his own meals in his kitchen.

“I don’t have to sign in and out of my apartment. I have my own space,” he said. “I wish everyone could benefit from something like this.”

This story has been updated to correct that 1,200 households have moved from shelters to HPD-financed apartments since January, and 2,175 households moved from shelters into affordable housing units last

Ditching decades-long barrier for homeless families could save NYC millions: Study

Some homeless New York families are required to spend months in a shelter before they become eligible for a voucher for more permanent housing. And removing the decades-long requirement could save the city millions as it currently faces economic uncertainty, according to a new study out Monday.

“There is no good reason for it: it costs money, it causes more trauma and it reduces the amount of time people have to look for housing,” said Christine Quinn, president and CEO of Win, which provides shelter and supportive services for homeless families with children and authored the study.

Homeless families with children must spend three months in a homeless shelter before they can access a CityFHEPS housing voucher, in what is known as the city’s 90-Day Rule. It’s been a source of frustration for some politicians and homeless advocates who say that shelters require more money to upkeep – and prolongs a psychologically challenging period for young children.

The push to end the requirement is being compounded by the city’s ongoing economic uncertainty. Mayor Eric Adams already called for steep budget cuts across various agencies in anticipation of the ongoing influx of migrants into the city now that a pandemic-era measure that previously quelled these numbers is now expired. Advocates are now calling for the adoption of legislation – backed by half of the City Council – that would end this rule.

Ditching the 90-day-rule could save the city “tens of millions of dollars,” according to Quinn.

“Three months out of a little child’s life is a great deal of time,” Quinn said. “So beyond just the inhumanity of it, it costs the city money. Putting someone in permanent housing – with a voucher – is significantly cheaper than it is to pay for someone in a shelter, and even cheaper than the most expensive welfare hotel option.”

Housing a singular family of three in a traditional shelter costs the city $188 per night – and the number climbs to $383 if it's an emergency hotel shelter, according to the analysis from Win. In contrast, the city would spend $72 a night if it gave that same family a housing voucher – and it would open up space in shelters for the other tens of thousands of homeless New Yorkers.

“If we intend to solve the bottlenecks within our shelter system, then we must take a look at all the policies in place that are contributing to that bottleneck, including the 90-day rule,” Councilmember Diana Ayala, who represents parts of Manhattan, including El Barrio and East Harlem, and is the bill’s primary sponsor, said in a press release.

The mayor’s office said it will be reviewing the report.

“This administration has implemented a wide range of reforms to cut the red tape and significantly strengthen and expand access to CityFHEPS, the only city-funded rental assistance in the country. We also continue to make investments in social services and support for shelter clients, providing dedicated case management and equipping them with the tools that will truly help stabilize their lives and position them for long-term housing stability," a City Hall spokesperson told Gothamist on Sunday. "The scope of this work is reflected in the declining rate of clients who are placed in subsidized housing and return to shelter year-on-year. "

This story has been updated with a comment from the mayor's office.

By

Giulia Heyward

Published May 14, 2023

Modified May 14, 2023

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/