THE CITY’S SHELTERS OF SHAME
BLACK AND HISPANIC neighborhoods struggling with poverty, not affluent white communities, bear the brunt of the battle to shelter the homeless, a Daily News data analysis shows.
Critics say this racial imbalance is likely to be reinforced by Mayor de Blasio’s new plan to keep homeless individuals in the communities where they become homeless.
“This basically comes down to segregation,” said Councilman Donovan Richards, whose majority-black Queens district has more shelter beds than any other district in the city.
“This is where the mayor’s plan falls short,” Richards said. “If you’re saying that communities like East New York are still shouldering the majority of responsibility, how do you say it’s an equal responsibility?”
In the struggle to combat homelessness, a racial and class divide can be seen across the city where some neighborhoods host hundreds of shelter beds — while others host none.
The News compared the racial balance and poverty rates with the number of shelter beds, cluster site apartments and hotel rooms located in each community district.
The data show the five community districts with the highest number of shelter beds in the city (Jamaica/Hollis in Queens, Concourse/Highbridge in the Bronx, Brownsville and East New York in Brooklyn and East Harlem) are all majority black or Hispanic. The racial tilt is most pronounced in the outer boroughs, where 17 of the 20 community districts with the heaviest shelter burden are at least 75% minority.
Meanwhile, six of seven community districts that currently host zero shelter beds (Tottenville and South Beach in Staten Island, Bay Ridge and Bensonhurst in Brooklyn, and Forest Hills, Queens) are majority white.
Only three of the top 20 community districts for shelter beds are majority white: Murray Hill/Stuyvesant Town and the Upper West Side in Manhattan and Greenpoint/Williamsburg in Brooklyn.
For Richards, who represents Far Rockaway, Hollis and Springfield Gardens, this is simply unfair. His district has nearly 3,000 shelter beds — the most in the city, data show. Most of these homeless families and individuals stay in hotels that cost on average $350 a night. In a one block area near JFK Airport off South Conduit Ave., there are four hotels housing hundreds of homeless individuals — Days Inn, Holiday Inn, Best Western and Metro Inn.
His district has a relatively low poverty rate (between 8% and 20%), but communities with high levels of poverty also bear this burden far more than affluent zip codes.
Of the top 20 community districts with the highest number of homeless beds and units, 15 have poverty rates over 20%. Six have poverty rates over 50%.
The mayor, who has watched the number of homeless in city shelters rise from 53,000 to over 60,000 during his tenure, is struggling to reverse the course in a balanced way.
In unveiling his latest blueprint for reform Feb. 28, he vowed to shut down the cluster sites and hotels and build 90 new shelters citywide through 2027 but promised to try and distribute the burden across all neighborhoods, whether rich or poor.
He also said he’d push to keep people in the neighborhoods where they became homeless, allowing families to attend the same schools and houses of worship they attended before they became homeless. It also quells fears that strangers are descending into neighborhoods.
Critics say that approach reinforces the current disparity because few residents in shelters come from communities that are predominantly white and affluent. And what about communities that are housing more than their fair share of homeless from outside their district? Will the city move those families to other shelters to even the score?
De Blasio spokeswoman Jaclyn Rothenberg said the imbalance will change as the city shuts down cluster sites and hotels and adds shelters.
“Our shelter system is a critical safety net meant to help homeless neighbors from every community get back on their feet,” she said. “Our borough-based plan aims to keep people closer to their support networks, schools and jobs. Smart homeless policy cannot right a centuries-long history of wrongs that have led to a division of segregation in our city or anywhere else.”
City Hall officials said homeless individuals come from every part of the city, so they predict