Thinking about the homeless in a NYC heatwave: An essay How can I rest easy in my comfortably cool apartment
When New York City summer temperatures hit the mid 90s and humidity comes on full force, it is miserable—even life-threatening—to be on the street for an extended period of time.
I couldn’t help but wonder why a homeless person would remain outdoors instead of heading to a shelter. I felt compelled to ask a woman who was camped out on a Brooklyn sidewalk that question since there’s a women-only shelter just a few blocks away. She had her possessions arrayed around her in the meager shade of a shuttered newsstand outside CTown and was open to talking.
She told me she left the shelter because she didn’t feel safe: there were too many fights and she was bullied. And so she ended up on 9th Street in Park Slope. This was right before the heatwave started, but it was still very hot out.
The woman told me she just had to hang on just a few more days because she was on a list for an apartment. I have no way of knowing if that was true or not. I gave her some money, and while we were talking, another passerby gave her food and water and she blessed us both repeatedly. When I went back a day later, she was gone.
With NYC's increasingly extreme summers and winters, the question seems obvious: how can I rest easy in my comfortable apartment when there are people sleeping on the pavement?
A heatwave means Code Red
NYC has an extensive protocol that goes into place during a heatwave, called Code Red. There’s a similar plan that goes into effect during freezing temperatures—Code Blue.
A Department of Social Services spokesperson told me that during extreme weather conditions, outreach teams redouble their canvassing efforts across all five boroughs. The goal is to engage New Yorkers experiencing unsheltered homelessness and encourage them to come inside off the streets and connect with city resources. Those include cooling and drop-in centers.
“As part of our Code Red efforts during this heat wave, DHS and our provider-partner outreach teams are equipped with necessary supplies and continue to be out there around the clock, conducting enhanced efforts throughout and ensuring we are prioritizing the health and safety of some of our most vulnerable New Yorkers,” the spokesperson said.
Highest level of homelessness
According to the Coalition for the Homeless, homelessness in NYC has reached the highest level since the Great Depression. In April 2024, 132,057 people slept each night in NYC shelters. The organization says thousands sleep unsheltered in public spaces—an exact number is impossible to determine.
However, the record increase in the shelter census is primarily driven by the more than 200,000 asylum seekers who have come through NYC’s intake system since spring 2022, according to DSS. Recent arrivals are not typically eligible for rental subsidies so the city is providing emergency transitional housing. If you factor out the asylum population, the number of New Yorkers seeking shelter is 7 percent below the pre-pandemic peak.
The primary cause of homelessness is very straightforward: the lack of affordable housing. An analysis by McKinsey & Company for the Regional Plan Association identified a shortage of 540,000 housing units for the tri-state region. City of Yes, a housing development plan from Mayor Eric Adams, calls for building more housing in every NYC neighborhood, but it is likely to face fierce opposition.
I see this duality in my reporting and in my conversations with friends and neighbors: New Yorkers understand there is a housing crisis—they experience the high cost of housing themselves. But the majority do not want more affordable housing—which needs density to make it financially feasible, developers say—built on their block because that would require zoning changes to allow for bigger buildings. Few seem to be in favor because of the impact it will have on the character of their neighborhood, or because more housing will make parking more difficult or take up seats in their neighborhood's schools—these are the concerns.
And plans to create housing shelters draw even more vociferous opposition.
Right in your face
Homelessness is not an abstract problem. It’s always right in your face, maybe that’s why it isn’t really seen until someone who is homeless gets uncomfortably close, like on your block or in your own building. Brick received several queries recently from readers wanting to know what they could do about homeless people entering where they lived.
In one case, a homeless person was repeatedly entering a building via a front door that is not kept locked. In another case, we heard about someone paying a landlord to sleep in a hallway. Tenants were choosing to look the other way for now.
“We know the situation is illegal, but we worry reporting it will do more harm than good,” they wrote.
Some situations are more complicated, for example, during the heatwave, a post on NextDoor asked for ways to help someone sleeping at the edge of Prospect Park and refusing assistance. Part of the problem was that the homeless person had a lot of stuff: it was piled all around a park bench, even hanging in a nearby tree, and creating a mess, according to the post. Many comments argued for this person’s right to be left alone. Eventually, the Parks Department intervened, it seems.
It's hard to help someone who doesn’t want help and may be suffering from mental illness but I can’t imagine force is effective in the long run, which is why the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision is chilling.
Last Friday’s ruling upheld an Oregon city’s ban on homeless people sleeping outdoors. The ordinances penalize sleeping and camping in public places like sidewalks, streets, and city parks.
So many shelters, so many protests
Weirdly enough, on the same day a friend invited me to join a community group opposed to a 300-bed homeless shelter proposed for Greenwood Heights, a City Councilmember was arrested during a protest against the city’s plan to put a 150-bed shelter in Bensonhurst.
City Councilmember Susan Zhuang was charged on Wednesday with assault and accused of biting a police officer. According to The City, there have been weeks of demonstrations from the neighborhood’s Asian American community. The district doesn’t currently have a single homeless shelter, the site said.
Interestingly, this friend and I both once lived across the street from the women’s shelter in Park Slope. Sometimes it was noisy and sometimes there were emergency vehicles parked outside, but it wasn’t very different from any of the other places I’ve lived in NYC.
‘Have compassion’
I asked Ellen Davidson, a staff attorney at the Legal Aid Society, what New Yorkers could do about homeless people, including when they enter your building.
“For anyone wondering what they can do about a homeless person sleeping on your block or your building, I would advise them to have compassion for someone who is trying to escape unbearable conditions outside,” Davidson said.
Regarding the homeless person sleeping in a hallway, Davidson said, “The landlord giving a person space to sleep is a moral thing to do.”
Then Davidson turned my questions around: Where have these tenants been when our elected officials slashed resources for homeless people? she asked.
“When a community opposes having shelters and changing zoning to create density and build more affordable and supportive housing, there are consequences,” she said. “People have nowhere to go.
“To the extent that it bothers you to see homeless people sleeping on the street or next to your building, make it priority to elect people who will build supportive and affordable housing,” she added.
If you see an individual who appears to be experiencing homelessness/in need outdoors in extreme heat/weather conditions, the Department of Social Services advises you to call 311 and an outreach team will be dispatched to help. For information about signs of heat illness, or where to find a cooling center in NYC, go here.
Jennifer White Karp
MANAGING EDITOR
Jennifer steers Brick Underground’s editorial coverage of New York City residential real estate and writes articles on market trends and strategies for buyers, sellers, and renters. Jennifer’s 15-year career in New York City real estate journalism includes stints as a writer and editor at The Real Deal and its spinoff publication, Luxury Listings NYC.
NYC’s Unsheltered Homeless Population Reaches Highest Number in More Than a Decade Volunteers and city staffers counted 4,140 people sleeping on the streets and subways.
An estimated 4,140 people were counted sleeping on New York City streets and subways during a federally-mandated annual survey, the highest number of unsheltered homeless people tallied in more than a decade.
The number of unsheltered homeless people counted this year during the HOPE count (Homeless Outreach Population Estimate) was up slightly from last year, when 4,042 people were counted, though each year advocates caution the figure is a rough estimate — and likely far less than the actual number of people living on the streets.
This year, teams of volunteers and city workers fanned out on Jan. 23, at a time when the city’s long-standing “right to shelter” protections had collapsed for adult migrants and securing a cot in the city’s shelter system could take more than a week. Hundreds of migrants spent days in overnight waiting rooms with no beds, while hundreds more were thought to have turned to the streets and subways, according to an internal city survey.
Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Park, who oversees the annual count, pointed to the city’s ability to hold the line, with just a two percent increase in street homelessness, at a time when the number of people living in shelters had soared to unprecedented heights.
“I think it’s really a reflection of the hard work that has been happening to make sure that we are doing consistent 24/7 outreach, that we have a continuum of services that we can offer people,” Park said, adding the administration had placed 2,000 people living on the streets into permanent housing over the past two years, including 500 who had been living on the subways.
But Natalie Druce, a staff attorney at the housing advocacy group Safety Net Project, said she thought the HOPE count figures showed certain Adams administration policies – like persistent encampment sweeps or hospitalizing homeless people against their will – weren’t working.
“The various policies that effectively criminalize street homelessness, it demonstrates from our perspective this doesn't cause people to move out of street homelessness,” she said. “If anything it’s increased the street homeless population, the numbers demonstrate that.”
City officials also pointed out that compared to other major U.S. cities, a relatively low proportion of New York City’s homeless population live outdoors. In Los Angeles last year 52,000 of 72,000 homeless people were living outdoors (72%), whereas the unsheltered homeless in New York City is around 5% of the 124,000 who are unhoused in total.
That discrepancy in large part is due to New York City’s unique “right to shelter” protections that require the city to house anyone who requests it. The Adams administration spent almost a year in court fighting homeless rights advocates in an effort to roll those protections back. A settlement in March sets stricter limits on the time adult migrants can stay in shelters.
“The right to shelter is absolutely fundamental to the work that DHS does,” Park said. “It's the bedrock of everything that we do.”
Over the past two years, New York City’s shelter system became a beacon to newly arriving migrants crossing the southern U.S. border in unprecedented numbers, in the absence of any meaningful federal support.
New York City saw the largest increase in homelessness of any city in the country between 2022 and 2023, according to an April report from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. And now more than 120,000 people live in the city’s vast shelter system, including more than 65,000 migrants, city officials said.
Critics have blasted the Adams administration for strict 30- and 60-day time limits set on some migrant shelter stays, which have driven untold numbers into tenuous situations like overcrowded mosques or commercial spaces.
"The increased street homelessness count is the clear result of the Administration's cruel and counterproductive shelter eviction policies," said Councilmember Shahana Hanif (D-Brooklyn), who has introduced a bill that would end the administration’s time limits on migrant shelter stays. "When we kick people out of the shelter system, it is inevitable that they will be forced to sleep on the streets and subways."
BY GWYNNE HOGAN JUNE 13, 2024, 2:13 P.M.
30K children lived in NYC homeless shelters every month last year, data shows
The highest number of children in nearly a decade were staying in New York City’s homeless shelters last year, according to a data dashboard unveiled by the comptroller’s office Thursday.
As homelessness rates among the youngest New Yorkers continue to surge, nearly 30,000 children in 2023 were living in shelters, according to the data.
The stats are part of a new database launched by Comptroller Brad Lander's office that offers a comprehensive, monthly view of the city’s ongoing homelessness crisis as rents rise and affordable housing options shrink across the five boroughs. The dashboard is going live as the city continues to grapple with a rise in migrants entering the city’s Department of Homeless Services shelter system and a new network of temporary facilities, along with other New Yorkers struggling to secure and maintain permanent housing.
“We urgently need to combat the homelessness crisis and we’ve got a lot better shot of managing it if we measure it, if we look at the data clearly, if we try to find the patterns,” Lander told Gothamist in an interview.
The public dashboard, which will be updated monthly as the city releases periodic data, details New York City’s shelter population by age, race and family composition, while also tracking eviction rates and shelter exits dating back to 2015.
An average of 13,000 children 5 years old or younger spent a night in a DHS shelter last year, a 47% increase from 2022. The nightly average increase was even sharper for teenagers between the ages of 14 and 18 — up 64% in 2023 than the year prior. The nightly average shelter population for kids aged 6 to 13 also rose by 58%, data shows.
While thousands of migrant families with children reside in DHS facilities, Lander’s age-specific data excludes kids living in other city-run shelters created in the past two years to specifically house recently arrived immigrants.
Gabriela Sandoval Requena, policy director at the organization New Destiny Housing and a leader in the Family Homelessness Coalition, called the findings unsurprising given the dearth of housing options and the lingering economic effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on low-income families.
Sandoval Requena, whose organization runs housing for victims of domestic violence, said the sharp increase demonstrates the need for more housing and stronger interventions to help people cover rent.
“Housing is the key solution that the state and city need to invest in,” she said. “We know shelter stays can be traumatizing. The shorter the shelter stay, the better.”
Overall, about more than 120,000 people are spending each night in a city-run homeless shelter, including DHS sites and facilities set up for migrants and run by other agencies — up 63% in the current fiscal year, according to the comptroller’s database.
Meanwhile, the Adams administration has helped 11% more New Yorkers exit shelter every month through subsidy programs this fiscal year, compared to last year, typically through a housing subsidy known as CityFHEPS that pays the bulk of the rent. The number of move-outs into permanent housing of any kind increased by 17%, according to DHS data.
That rate of exits from shelters into subsidized housing mirrors the rate of non-migrants entering Homeless Services facilities, but falls short of the overall rise in the shelter population, the data shows.
DHS spokesperson Neha Sharma said the agency attributes 75% of the rise in its shelter census since 2022 to newly arrived migrants entering the homeless services system. The DHS shelter census has increased from about 47,000 people at the start of 2022, when a statewide eviction freeze and several pandemic-related assistance programs were in place, to about 86,000 people today.
Lander said his office was inspired to create the database by a similar project launched by the news site City Limits at the start of 2022, and continuously updated amid the rise in migrants entering the shelter system.
Gothamist has also tracked the sharp rise in evictions over the past two years, following the end of a statewide freeze on most legal lockouts. Marshals completed roughly 12,000 evictions last year, approaching eviction levels from prior to the pandemic, city data shows.
Lander said he would like to drill down further on the experiences of people staying in shelters specifically housing migrants. He said he wants to accurately track exits from those shelters and find where migrants go after mandatory 30- or 60-day move-outs.
“The city is just booting people out with really no attention to and not gathering any information about how they're landing,”
Settlement reached over 'Right to Shelter' law in New York City
NEW YORK (WABC) -- The legal agreement between New York City and homeless advocates scales back the decades-old 'Right to Shelter' law as the city tries to find housing for thousands of migrant adults.
The terms of the settlement ease the burden on city shelters by limiting adult migrants to stays of no more than 30 days, the city said.
Families with children would not be affected and some adults would be allowed to stay longer if they meet certain conditions.
The Right to Shelter law became a target because, Mayor Eric Adams had argued, the city has been pushed to brink financially because of the influx of asylum seekers.
In announcing the settlement, Adams said the city's shelter system had fewer than 2,500 people in its care when the law went into effect compared to the 120,000 people today. More than half of them are migrants.
Homeless advocates pushed back, saying thousands of New Yorkers would be denied shelter as a result and New Yorkers would start to see more encampments on the streets.
The settlement comes after months of negotiations between city officials and the Legal Aid Society, representing homeless advocates.
The new rules are temporary, as they will only exist as long as the migrant crisis continues and apply only to new arrivals who are single adults.
The agreement preserves the underlying 1981 Right to Shelter consent decree and prevents the government from automatically denying shelter to any group of people if they have no other place to go. It guarantees the Right to Shelter for anyone - longer-term New Yorkers and new arrivals alike - while ensuring the City's compliance with multiple court orders and existing law.
"This settlement safeguards the right to shelter in the consent decree, ensuring single adults' - both long-time New Yorkers and new arrivals - access to shelter, basic necessities and case management to transition from shelter to housing in the community," said Adriene Holder, Chief Attorney of the Civil Practice at The Legal Aid Society.. "It also requires the City to immediately eliminate the use of waiting rooms as shelters where new arrivals have been sleeping on chairs and floors while they wait for shelter placement."
Mayor Adams said the settlement "grants us additional flexibility during times of crisis, like the national humanitarian crisis we are currently experiencing."
He said the settlement gives New York City additional tools to address the crisis while ensuring that the most vulnerable can continue to receive the support they need.
"Like impacted cities across the country, we cannot bear the brunt of this crisis alone and continue to seek significant support from our federal partners, including expedited work authorizations, more funding, and a national resettlement strategy," Adams said.
Nearly 190,000 migrants have passed through the city's shelter system since the spring of 2022.
Under the new rules, younger adult migrants, between the ages of 18 and 23, can stay up to 60 days in the shelter system before having to move out.
NYC homeless shelter population surges 53% during migrant crisis: mayor’s report
The number of homeless people in New York City’s shelter system skyrocketed 53% over the past year — driven by the unrelenting surge of migrants, according to Mayor Eric Adams’s preliminary management report released Tuesday.
The report compares data and performance of city agencies for the first four months of the fiscal year — July through October of 2023 — with the same period in 2022.
“During the first four months of Fiscal 2024, the average number of individuals in shelter per day increased by 53 percent compared to the same period in Fiscal 2023, driven by the unprecedented increase in entrants, primarily asylum seekers who made up over half of all entrants during the period,” the Department of Homeless Services said its quarterly assessment of its shelter system included in the 432-page report.
There was an average of 83,985 people in city-run shelters per day during the quarterly period compared to 54,738 individuals in 2022.
“The flow of asylum seekers to New York City drove a 147 percent increase in entries to shelter for families with children and a 185 percent increase in entries to shelter for adult families,” the report said.
The number of homeless people in New York City’s shelter system skyrocketed 53% over the past year.Robert Miller
Meanwhile, the average length of stay in shelters dropped by about 29 percent for families with children, and childless families and 10 percent for single adults compared to the same period a year ago.
Mayor Adams announced a 60-day limit in shelters for individuals in July and reduced it to 30 days in September to provide relief to the stressed system — though the report doesn’t explicitly cite the time restrictions as spurring the shorter stays.
DHS said the sheer increase in migrants led to a “larger proportion” of shelter residents exiting the system sooner.
The city has opened more than 210 emergency shelter sites to house more than 170,700 migrants during the border crisis now entering its third year, according to officials.
The report compares data and performance of city agencies for the first four months of the fiscal year — July through October of 2023 — with the same period in 2022.Robert Miller
More than 100 hotels have been converted into emergency shelters, at an estimated cost topping $1 billion.
The massive report details numerous ways city agencies have responded to help the waves of asylum-seekers, and how the crisis has impacted services.
The city’s public hospital system reported that enrollment in NYC Care — the free and low-cost city-run medical insurance program started by former Mayor Bill de Blasio to provide care for undocumented immigrants and others who are uninsured — shot up 16%, from 105,070 to 121,478 from a year ago.
“Some asylum seekers are qualifying for the program,” the report said.
Health+ Hospitals attributed much of the increase in enrollees to pregnant moms seeking prenatal care, including recently arrived migrants.
“The increase in late prenatal care registrants and accompanying increase in the number of deliveries from the end of Calendar 2022 to 2023, reflects the time period when there was an increase in the number of asylum seekers arriving to NYC,” the agency said.
“Historically, immigrant communities may arrive late in their third trimester, having had prenatal care in their home country. OBGYN care, especially pregnancy-related care, was a common need among asylum seekers.”
NYC to include migrants in annual street homelessness census
NYC migrants spotted sleeping outside will be counted as part of the city’s annual street homelessness census this month, according to Adams administration officials.
The so-called HOPE Count, which was set to be conducted Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, involves city outreach workers and volunteers fanning across the five boroughs to tally how many individuals are sleeping on the streets. The tally is reported to the U.S. Housing and Urban Development Department and used to assess how much federal funding the city should get for operating homeless shelters.
In a Tuesday afternoon briefing, Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Anne Williams-Isom confirmed that newly arrived migrants — dozens of whom have been spotted sleeping outside a Manhattan intake center in recent weeks amid overcrowding in local shelters — will be included in the HOPE Count. She said the city has 1,500 New Yorkers signed up to volunteer for the count, a number she called “fantastic.”
However, asked by the Daily News after the briefing if she expects a bump in federal homeless aid as a result of an increase in the HOPE Count, Williams-Isom demurred.To date, the feds have provided less than $500 million — an amount Adams has characterized as a drop in the bucket when compared with the hundreds of millions of dollars the city says it’s spending every month on housing and providing services for migrants.
According to the latest data from Adams’ office, nearly 70,000 migrants remain housed in city shelters. The city has shelled out more than $3 billion on housing, feeding and providing them with services since the crisis started in spring 2022, Adams administration officials say.
Shelter Evictions Will Damage Migrant Children, Schools Warn
About 3,500 migrant families in New York City shelters have received eviction notices. Children will have to change schools or face long commutes.
Since last summer, tens of thousands of migrant families living in homeless shelters have enrolled children in New York City schools. Their arrival buoyed the system, which had been losing students, prompting the mayor to declare that “public schools are back.”
But now, the city is forcing many of those families to reapply for shelter beds, threatening what educators say is a hard-fought and fragile stability for migrant children, many of whom endured upheaval and trauma on their journey to America.
But more than two dozen principals, educators, parents and advocates said in interviews that the policy could lead to the biggest disruption since schools closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
As the eviction notices go into effect next month, the migrant families will face a difficult choice: Stay in the same school, which could mean a long commute if they’re placed in a distant shelter, or transfer to a new school and start from scratch.
Either way, the upheaval is likely to be painful for both students and schools, educators and experts say.
Homeless families have a federal right to keep their children enrolled in the same school when they move, in part because midyear transfers can be devastating to students, interrupting academic progress and relationships formed with teachers and friends.
But more than two dozen principals, educators, parents and advocates said in interviews that the policy could lead to the biggest disruption since schools closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
As the eviction notices go into effect next month, the migrant families will face a difficult choice: Stay in the same school, which could mean a long commute if they’re placed in a distant shelter, or transfer to a new school and start from scratch.
Either way, the upheaval is likely to be painful for both students and schools, educators and experts say.
Homeless families have a federal right to keep their children enrolled in the same school when they move, in part because midyear transfers can be devastating to students, interrupting academic progress and relationships formed with teachers and friends.
But more than two dozen principals, educators, parents and advocates said in interviews that the policy could lead to the biggest disruption since schools closed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
As the eviction notices go into effect next month, the migrant families will face a difficult choice: Stay in the same school, which could mean a long commute if they’re placed in a distant shelter, or transfer to a new school and start from scratch.
Either way, the upheaval is likely to be painful for both students and schools, educators and experts say.
Homeless families have a federal right to keep their children enrolled in the same school when they move, in part because midyear transfers can be devastating to students, interrupting academic progress and relationships formed with teachers and friends.
On Thursday, elected officials — including the city comptroller, public advocate and a third of the members of the City Council — demanded a reversal of the policy in a letter to Mr. Adams.
“I can’t stop thinking about the trauma this is going to cause,” said Rosa Diaz, a parent leader whose East Harlem district has received thousands of migrant students.
A court order requires the city to provide a bed to any homeless person who asks for one, and Mayor Adams has repeatedly cautioned that New York cannot handle the costs of housing and caring for migrants.
Over 157,000 migrants have arrived since last year, and more than 67,000 are now in shelters. Officials say the 60-day time limits are meant to help clear space. In September, the city placed 30-day limits on shelter stays for single adult migrants, and most did not reapply for placements when their time was up.
But in recent weeks, dozens of adults who are reapplying have slept on sidewalks in frigid conditions as they wait for beds. Critics of the 60-day plan have raised the specter of similar scenes playing out for families with young children this winter.
Mr. Adams has said he hopes to avoid having families sleep on the street.
“If they say don’t do the 60-day rule, give me an alternative. Because we’ve been open to ideas,” he said this week.
The 60-day policy does not yet apply to families living at many shelters, where the city requires state waivers to distribute eviction notices. But starting next month, families living in several emergency shelters are expected to pack up and leave to reapply for housing at the Roosevelt Hotel intake center in Midtown.
The school system is split into 32 local districts, and officials have said they will try to place families in, or near, their youngest child’s district.
The new shelter plan is setting off a chaotic scramble in parts of the school system. At one Brooklyn school, teachers hugged some of their students goodbye for winter break, uncertain whether they would return in the New Year. In Queens, a principal worried that children who had finally begun trusting school staff would again be thrown into turmoil.
At Brooklyn RISE, a charter school in Downtown Brooklyn, teachers have welcomed more than 30 migrant children this fall. The students have become “such a part of the community,” said Cary Finnegan, the school’s founder.
They initially greeted their teachers every day with “buenos dias!” Lately, it’s been “good morning,” staff members said. As families began receiving eviction notices, school leaders and social workers called one city official after another, trying to find out what might unfold.
“I just can’t think of a worse time to do this,” Ms. Finnegan said.
Amaris Cockfield, a mayoral spokeswoman, said in a statement that the administration has been warning that “this crisis could play out on city streets” without additional help. “We have been national leaders, but, simply put, we’re out of good options,” Ms. Cockfield said.
Outside the Row NYC hotel this week, several migrant parents said they and their children were losing sleep. Most had received little to no information on what to do when they reach the 60-day limit.
One father, Jose Gregorio Leal, 35, had kept his family’s notice from his wife who has a heart condition. A mother, Luz Rodriguez, 35, said she watched shelter staff toss migrants’ belongings into black trash bags and place them outside. She fears the same thing could happen to her family.
Some migrant families left the shelter system in recent weeks, doubling up in apartments. Others have departed for different states, school leaders said. Many migrants described disillusionment after arriving with great hopes for their lives in New York.
“Imagine that, 60 days at one site and 60 days at another,” said Luisa Castillo, 47, whose two public school children are “really anxious” over the disruption. “They’re never going to learn.”
By Troy Closson and Liset Cruz
One in nine NYC students was homeless last year, analysis says By Jillian Jorgensen New York City
One in nine New York City students experienced homelessness last school year.
“Students who are homeless in New York City could fill Barclays Center six times,” Randi Levine, policy director of Advocates for Children, said.
It’s a record high, according to an analysis from Advocates for Children: 119,320 students experienced homelessness during the last school year.
Of them, 40,840 stayed in shelters, 72,500 were doubled up — sharing someone else’s housing, and about 5,900 students lived in hotels, motels, or were unsheltered.
It’s an increase of 14% over the prior year. That growth has been fueled by the surge of migrants coming to the city — but schools were already serving a huge number of homeless students before their arrival.
“The last school year was the eighth consecutive year in which more than 100,000 New York City students experienced homelessness,” Levine said.
Every district served homeless children last year — but some saw more than others. In Bronx District 9, Brooklyn Districts 23 and 32, and Manhattan’s District 4, one in every five students was homeless last year.
“When we look at educational indicators, they are particularly abysmal for students living in shelter,” Levine said. “And that’s why we think it’s so important to make sure that the Department of Education has staff who are particularly looking out for students in shelter.”
The city hired 100 coordinators to work directly with families in shelter — but they’re now being stretched thin, and the funding used to hire them expires in less than a year. Meanwhile, more than 100 new shelters have opened without any public school staff to support them — even though the federal government has provided funding that can only be used for homeless students, and must be spent or returned by next October.
“That funding is available now. There’s a tremendous need right now. And the Department of Education actually has some temporary staff members who they’ve interviewed and are ready to start their work right now. But we’re seeing bureaucratic hurdles get in the way of the Department of Education getting that final green light,” Levine said.
In a statement, an education department spokeswoman said students experiencing homelessness were among the city’s most vulnerable, and a priority for the school system.
“We are grateful for the federal stimulus dollars that have allowed us to establish critical supports for our students and families affected by homelessness, including the shelter-based coordinators that were hired and who have directly supported families within our shelter system,” Jenna Lyle, spokeswoman, said.
“Although stimulus funding is expiring, ensuring continued support for these student populations remains essential,” the statement continued.
Lyle cited the city’s change to the Fair Student Funding Formula, which now provides more money to schools serving students in temporary housing, and the hiring of school-based staff who work directly with students experiencing homelessness and whose positions are funded in the budget.
But there was no mention of any specific plans on how to fund the jobs of the shelter-based DOE coordinators once the stimulus money dries up.
“Moving forward, we will continue to work with our partners at the city and state levels to identify and establish supports for our students in temporary housing, while contending with the city’s financial reality,” Lyle said.
PUBLISHED 6:00 AM ET Nov. 01, 2023
6 Formerly Homeless Black Siblings From NYC Are All Now Becoming Nurses
Six sisters, the Lawrence siblings from New York City, are now on their journey to fulfill their dreams of becoming nurses together after facing nearly a decade of being homeless.
In 2013, the sisters’ parents, David and Yonette, lost their home in Queens, New York City. From then on, their family moved from one relative or friend’s house to another, they toldPeople.
“It was challenging,” said 24-year-old Lauren. “There were a lot of very bumpy, depressing times.”
Two years into this hardship, their father decided he didn’t want their situation to hinder their education. The sisters, who had been struggling to attend school due to constant moves, enrolled in a homeschool program with hopes of earning their GED.
“He didn’t want what we were going through to hold us back,” said 25-year-old Dominique.
Indeed, the Lawrence sisters defied the odds. In 2019, all six earned their GEDs. They then attended Nassau Community College and later graduated from SUNY Old Westbury with bachelor’s degrees in public health in May.
“It’s been quite an adventure,” said 22-year-old Danielle. “But what really pulled us through is our faith in God and in each other.”
These siblings, now aged 19 to 25, said they are just getting started. In August, they began a master’s program in public health at SUNY Downstate Health Sciences University and plan to attend nursing school afterward.
Moreover, their father is very proud of his daughters who made their dream come true despite all the challenges of their uncertain childhood.
“I’m so happy they they’ve done this together,” said David. “I always tell them, ‘Life’s not fair. And when it throws you a curveball, you gotta adjust to it and keep going.'”