NYC Bloomberg administration forces families out of shelters

On Oct. 12, the Bloomberg administration instituted a change in the emergency shelter regulations in New York City that will prevent hundreds of homeless families from obtaining shelter each night. Prior to that date, families who could not obtain a set space in the city’s shelters could apply for one night emergency shelter if they came to an intake center after 5 p.m. The change in the regulations ends the 5 p.m. policy and means that these families will no longer be given the emergency shelter they so desperately need, even as the cold winter months are fast approaching.

Despite widespread condemnation and outrage from advocates for the homeless, the Bloomberg administration has callously pushed forward with this change to the regulations. The Bloomberg administration asserts that these families are “ineligible” for emergency shelter because the city has already determined that they have other housing options. In most cases the city says these families have relatives they could conceivably stay with.

The Bloomberg administration has turned to a familiar tactic, used in many of the wars waged against the poor in U.S. cities, by attempting to paint the emergency shelter policy as a “loophole” that people were “taking advantage of.” The headlines in the major New York newspapers even used the word “loophole” to describe the policy.

This characterization is completely inaccurate, rife with racist undertones, and highlights the extreme disconnect between the billionaire mayor and the thousands of homeless families in New York City for whom every day is a struggle for survival.

In recent years the number of homeless families in the city has skyrocketed to a record high of more than 9,500. Currently, there are more than 14,000 children staying in city shelters on any given night. Affordable housing in New York is disappearing by the day as gentrification and stagnant wages destroy working class neighborhoods, pushing an ever-increasing number of families into the city shelter system.

Applications for shelter by homeless families have risen in tandem with the growing affordable housing crisis. As the crisis grows, and faced with a limited amount of shelter space, the city has been denying shelter to an increasing number of families. This has caused more and more families to seek one-night emergency shelter.

In August, there were more than 800 applications for one-night emergency shelter. Applying for and staying in the emergency shelters is an extremely strenuous and grueling process. Usually families, many with small children and infants, are forced to wait in long processing lines at the intake centers and are not let into the emergency shelter until 10 or 11 p.m. Then they are woken up each morning before 7 a.m. and are put back on the streets, where they are forced to begin a new daylong search for a place to stay that night.

Far from being a “loophole” that families “were taking advantage of,” the emergency shelters offered a last-ditch effort by families to put a roof over their child’s head for the night. And the fact is that many families that the city rules ineligible for shelter are later found to have had their cases wrongly assessed, and are in fact eligible. Furthermore, the city’s contention that some of these families should stay with relatives is completely ludicrous. While it may be possible for the billionaire mayor to put some of his family members up in his Upper East Side apartment/mansion, in apartments in working class and oppressed neighborhoods throughout the city, this is usually impossible.

The Bloomberg administration has shown a callous disregard for the growing magnitude of the affordable housing crisis and the alarming spike in family homelessness in New York City. Bloomberg’s 2004 declaration to “reduce homelessness by two-thirds” rings as hollow as ever. Bloomberg’s anti-homeless policies must be met with a more militant grassroots struggle in the streets.