Year: 2015

Ten years ago, William Burnett often spent his nights sleeping on the New York City subway. It was better than his other option: a shelter on Wards Island where he said two rival gangs, the Bloods and the Latin Kings, were “trying to outdo each other ove ..Read More

Early in August, the Department of Justice weighed in on a legal dispute over ordinances in the city of Boise, Idaho, that make it a crime to sleep in public. The plaintiffs, who first filed the lawsuit in 2009, were themselves homeless people convicted of dis ..Read More

The national campaign to end chronic homelessness in America’s cities has focused on veterans and the chronically homeless. But there is another class of newly homeless: Evicted tenants, often families with children, who can’t afford a roof over their head ..Read More

The city is looking for a few good landlords. Mayor de Blasio’s administration is launching a $400,000 ad campaign to urge landlords to house homeless veterans who have vouchers to pay their rent, as officials try to meet a goal of ending veteran homelessnes ..Read More

Amid a documented rise in the number of homeless in New York City, many of those without homes may be effectively invisible – going about seemingly normal routines and even work without a place to live. Walking through Tompkins Square Park in Manhattan&# ..Read More

Once a month, Darlene Waters grabs her shopping cart and heads uptown from Chelsea to the Port Authority. Walmart and Sam’s Club beckon, just a bus ride away in Secaucus, N.J. “Right now, they are my two favorite stores,” she said. Ms. Waters doesn’t l ..Read More

As winter comes around in New York, the city’s police commissioner Bill Bratton said this week that police will be cracking down on homeless people trying to take shelter in the subway system. “Subways are not homeless shelters, and the homeless will not b ..Read More

Some think that being poor is simple. You don’t have enough money to buy a lot of stuff, so you’re forced to buy less stuff. But that’s not really how it works. When you’re broke, you can’t do all the little things that will improve your budget over ..Read More

Last week, the New York City Independent Budget Office published a fiscal brief -Albany Shifts the Burden: As the Cost for Sheltering the Homeless Rises, Federal & City Funds Are Increasingly Tapped- detailing the financing of city homeless shelters from 2 ..Read More