Posted on March 23, 2015 by Jacquelyn Simone A recent NYC Department of Investigation report detailed the alarming conditions in the family shelter system – a system in which an average of 14,500 homeless families must bed down each night. The magnitude of youth homelessness in NYC makes the DOI findings even more horrific. The Coalition’s State of the Homeless 2015 reports that 1 in 43 NYC children spent at least one night in the shelter system in fiscal year 2014. That means that 42,000 different boys and girls went to sleep in shelters that were, according to the DOI, often decrepit, vermin-infested and unsafe. Homelessness is traumatic enough for children without the added risks of staying in dangerous, dirty shelters. As The New York Times points out in its March 23, 2015 editorial, the litany of health and safety violations starkly illustrates how the City has neglected the family shelter system for years, if not decades. What is appalling about the report, released earlier this month by the city’s Department of Investigation, is the systemic collapse it reveals. It takes years to build a mess like this. New York has about 57,000 people in its shelters. The system is so strained for space that millions of dollars are spent to put people up in places known to be dangerous and squalid, because a dangerous, squalid place with a roof is considered better than the street. While the editorial goes on to say that the terrible conditions in the family shelter system “festered” under Mayor Bloomberg’s 12-year watch, the Times calls on Mayor de Blasio to take immediate action to address all of the problems: The Homeless Services Department needs to work with the Buildings Department, the Fire Department and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to make sure all of its 145 shelters, housing nearly 12,000 families, are up to code. It needs to move more clients into public housing and city-run shelters and end the reliance on “cluster” sites in derelict private apartment buildings where security is lacking and access to social services is negligible. And it needs to sign contracts with all of its outside providers, so it can force them to clean up and make repairs. The DOI report, which Mayor de Blasio initiated, shows how bad things have gotten for the men, women and children who are most in need of shelter. These struggling families deserve far better.
