Finally in a good place after hard road
Continued from page 5 data obtained via a Freedom of Information Law request by the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project and shared with The News.
From January through September 2023, for example, officers with one of those teams, the city’s “End-of-Line” outreach group, recorded that just 15%, or around 3,700, of over 24,000 interactions with homeless New Yorkers, resulted in transport to a shelter. About 82%, or around 20,000, of the encounters, which don’t count individual people, resulted in a refusal.
Another team, the Joint Response Team, under the Subway Safety Plan reported 139 shelter acceptances, but 7,905 refusals during the same time frame.
Since the plan began in February 2022, DSS reports nearly 6,900 people have checked into shelter beds throughout the Subway Safety Plan, although that number that does not count how long a person stays at the shelter.
The data “demonstrates the inadequacy of services” the city offers, said Natalie Druce, staff attorney at the Safety Net Project.
The End-of-Line teams also “ejected” or removed 12,655 people from the transit system during the first nine months of 2023. The number doesn’t specify how many of them are homeless, but Druce said she believes many of them were. Overall, the data shows that NYPD officers accompanying the four interagency teams inspected nearly 30,000 trains, made over 15,000 ejections, made 72 arrests and issued 1,767 summonses in January through September of 2023.
Advocates say the data is proof that police enforcement activities overshadow outreach.
“There is zero evidence to suggest that ejecting homeless people from the subway system when they have nowhere else to go will help them secure permanent housing,” Druce said. “In fact, the opposite is true. Treating homeless outreach as a police function leads to a breakdown in any possibility for trust, further criminalization of homelessness and causes serious harm by exposing them to hazardous weather conditions.”
Eduardo Ventura, 38, has been homeless for over 20 years. He’s slept on the trains and streets for much of that time. He badly wants an apartment of his own, but he doesn’t see a path towards that.
“What’s the point of a shelter, they don’t help you in nothing,” Ventura said. “They don’t help you, they don’t get you forward. They don’t help your mental problem, they don’t got Medicaid.”
Ventura said the city hasn’t been able to help him get ID or a voucher. He said that when he has refused help from outreach workers, police have removed him from the station.
“I’ve talked to older people than me, younger people than me, and we’re all in the same boat,” he said. “We haven’t seen no difference in years, generations.”
Daunting challenges
The city’s efforts in the subways are unfolding against a troubling backdrop: The overall picture of street homelessness is dire — and may be getting worse.
The scale of the problem is huge: There are more than 120,000 people currently residing in the city’s shelter system. Thousands more sleep on the streets and subways. That population has been boosted by the influx of migrants coming to New York City.
Most are still falling through the cracks, said Giffen, of the Coalition for the Homeless. His team has not seen much improvement since the implementation of the plan two years ago, and Giffen said his clients are still unable to get the services they need as delays still plague the system.
The varied and complex needs of the city’s homeless population present another layer of difficulty. Around two-thirds of the city’s street homeless population have a mental illness, and one-third have some kind of physical disability, according to a 2021 report by the Coalition for the Homeless. Moreover, some don’t know how to read, or they lack basics like IDs or bank accounts.
To get them to shelter, city workers have to help them overcome the myriad reasons why people avoid the homeless shelter system. Prior traumatic experiences in shelters, violence, poor living conditions, placements in unfamiliar parts of the city, strict rules imposed by shelters and fears of getting robbed are just a few.
In speed-tracking them to housing, city employees along the way need to devote extra time and attention to getting them this help.
“Not everybody’s ready,” Carmen Charlton, the program director of Sanchez’s supportive housing site, said. “Not everybody’s not ready for housing.”
New York is also in the midst of a housing crisis. Vacancy rates have dropped to the lowest in decades, and the need for housing, especially affordable housing, far outpaces the number of new apartments being constructed.
Finally, the program is labor intensive and, therefore, expensive. Hitting the achievements outlined by Park cost the city a hefty $171 million price tag in fiscal year 2023. The city is in the midst of a budget cycle marked by shifting announcements, slashed Sunday service at public libraries and the prospect of budget cuts in the public schools. It’s unclear how deep the city’s pockets go in funding these efforts.
“It may not look like a large number of successes,” Charlton said. “But it is successful, and I hope that it continues to grow.”
Sanchez is glad the program is in place. For years, as he lived moving from place to place, he dreamed of a space of his own where he could store his things and relax and listen to music. He’s now proud to have people visit him, and he likes to trade cleaning tips with his neighbor.
His favorite thing about his place? “It’s clean. That’s what I like.”