Preventing Shelterization: Alleviating the Struggles of Homeless Individuals and Families in New York City
Introduction I. State of the Homeless: Factors Contributing to Homelessnes; and Failed Legislative Policies A. Homelessness Defined B. Statistical Data on Homelessness and Its Effects on Taxpayers in New York City C. Factors Contributing to Homelessness in New York City D. A Landmark Case: Establishing a Legal Right to Emergency Shelter E. New York City Mayoral Strategies Implemented to Address the Homeless Problem Since 2002 II. Select Housing Programs Utilized by New York City and Why They Fall Short of Their Intended Goals A. Municipal Shelters B. Public Housing Managed by the New York City Housing Authority C. Section Eight Housing D. Other Notable New York City Housing Programs III. Proposals for Immediate and Practicable Strategies to Alleviate the Homeless Problem A. Improving Services Within New York City Homeless Shelters B. Encouraging Interagency Collaboration C. Reforming Policies for Public Housing and Section Eight Housing D. Concerns About Incentivizing Homelessness and Fraud Conclusion INTRODUCTION Eleven year old Dasani, a homeless child in New York City, and her family have few prospects for escaping chronic homelessness. (1) Dasani lives in the Auburn Family Residence, a city run shelter where sexual predators roam, and mold, roaches, and mice swarm in multitudes. (2) Dasani is among 280 children at the shelter and shares a 520 square foot room with her parents and seven siblings. (3) Auburn is known as a place of last resort for the chronically homeless and has some of the poorest living conditions for families among the city's 152 shelters. (4) Inside the shelter, Dasani and her siblings' hopes for the future are grim as their family of ten struggles to survive in their single shared room. (5) Auburn has been cited frequently for health and safety violations, such as sexual misconduct by staff members, spoiled food, asbestos, lead paint, and vermin. (6) The shelter also has no certificate of occupancy, as required by law, (7) and the premises are absolutely unfit and unsuitable for children and infants. (8) To make matters worse, the youngest child in Dasani's family is an infant, and one of her younger sisters is legally blind. (9) Exacerbating the situation, Dasani's parents do not have the education or the financial discipline to maintain permanent housing after leaving the shelter system because they, too, grew up in broken homes falling below the poverty threshold. (10) When Dasani's grandmother passed away, her parents inherited $49,000 of her pension savings. (11) With the help of a rent subsidy program called Advantage, the family was able to avoid becoming homeless and leased an apartment in Staten Island. (12) However, when the subsidies ran out, Dasani's family along with one quarter of those participating in the assistance program ended up back in shelters. (13) After two years at Auburn, Dasani's parents made a solemn vow to move as soon as they received their Earned Income Tax Credit. (14) When the time came to receive that credit, however, Dasani's father learned that the government seized his tax refund to pay for child support owed for two other children he had. (15) Although Dasani's circumstances are partly a product of parental dysfunction resulting from unemployment, lack of discipline, history of arrests, and drug addiction, it is not the sole reason she is a homeless child. (16) As sweeping new policies were implemented to invigorate New York City's economic growth, rents steadily rose while low income wages stagnated. (17) Hence, chronically poor families such as Dasani's were left with no other option but to enter the New York City shelter system, with few opportunities for transitioning into permanent housing. (18) The longer the family stayed at the shelter, the more difficult it became to keep the family together and the more desperate they became for a permanent home.