If you pay attention to homelessness at all, you're sure to see a pattern emerge quite quickly as you review stats and arguments from different cities. Almost always, it boils down to something very simple; there aren't enough beds to go around.
How you want to differentiate those beds - transitional, respite, long-term, etc - is up to you and doesn't really matter anyway, since there aren't enough of any of them to meet the need we're seeing here in the United States.
Everywhere you go and damned near every conversation you hear about homelessness eventually comes back to the fact that what we're really lacking here is....housing.
Doh.
Sounds simple enough, yes?
Provide more housing.
Yet for myriad reasons, we seem to find ways to avoid this very simple solution, whether it's from a downright un-neighborly NIMBY attitude, lack of money to subsidize rents or building of new units, political wrangling, opposing viewpoints, blah blah blah blah.
Drill down still further and of course, you come to that time honored excuse used by politicians and city officials around the world - say it with me now:
"We don't have the money. "
I think, as we look around at all the wealth in this country, folks are having an increasingly harder time buying this excuse and there's only so much folks are going to take before they begin fighting back. Trust me when I tell you that there are lotsa folks on the streets who don't give a damn about following laws they feel unfairly target them, forever relegating them to lives of abject poverty.
Mayor, can you spare a little real change? Homelessness is rising - so change the city's policy
Monday, October 19th 2009, 4:00 AM
Bloomberg shifted blame - noting that the federal government had cut back on Section 8 housing vouchers - and touting a city program that he claims has moved homeless families into permanent housing.
The problem is, he isn't telling the whole truth. Not by a long shot.
In June 2004, Bloomberg pledged to reduce homelessness in New York City by two-thirds within five years. Today, his administration is presiding over a milestone of a different sort: For the first time since the city began keeping records 25 years ago, more than 39,000 homeless New Yorkers are sleeping in our municipal shelter system each night. That number includes 10,000 homeless families with 16,500 children. Compared to 2002, 45% more New Yorkers are sleeping in municipal homeless shelters each year.
Simply put, New York City is in the midst of a homelessness emergency and it's only getting worse.
Last fiscal year, more than 120,000 different New Yorkers slept at some point in municipal homeless shelters, including an all-time record 43,826 different homeless children. This year, the number of homeless adults and children in shelters each night has increased by another 12%.
Just as the cold weather hits, New York City is on track to literally run out of shelter beds for homeless adults. As of Sept. 30, there were only two empty beds left in the entire New York City shelter system for homeless men and only eight empty beds for homeless women - 10 available beds in a system of more than 7,000 for homeless single adults.
With the economy still reeling - and city unemployment now topping 10% - this crisis will continue to get worse unless the Bloomberg administration changes direction and does so quickly.
For starters, New York City urgently needs more beds. But it's not just a matter of continuing to grow the costly shelter system. Bloomberg must speed up the city's plans to develop new permanent supportive housing, particularly for homeless individuals with mental illness and other special needs. While the city's current 10-year plan to construct 6,250 new units is laudable, more than half of those units aren't scheduled to come online until at least 2011.
Even then, meeting the acute needs of homeless adults won't do anything to move 10,000 homeless families out of shelters. That will require Bloomberg to reverse his 2005 decision to cut off homeless New Yorkers from federal housing assistance such as Section 8 vouchers and vacant public housing apartments.
The administration - particularly Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs - argued in 2005 that denying homeless New Yorkers access to Section 8 vouchers and public housing would act as a disincentive to people who might have another housing option with a friend or relative from entering shelter.
It hasn't worked out that way. Long before the recession began, the decision to bar homeless New Yorkers from federal housing assistance has led to more families, not fewer, entering and staying in New York City's shelter system. Now that President Obama and Congress are strengthening the federal voucher program, we should use it to help the neediest New Yorkers.
The mayor doesn't talk much about his pledge to end homelessness anymore. He should - admitting his failures and changing direction before it's too late.
