Posted on April 1, 2015 by Jacquelyn Simone It is truly a tragedy that many homeless families with small children have to bed down in filthy, cockroach-infested shelters. As if the findings in the recent NYC Department of Investigation report on the family shelter system weren’t infuriating enough, the broken system is a considerable waste of taxpayer dollars. The City pays an exorbitant amount of money to agencies that run the cluster site shelters, which were cited in the DOI report as having the most egregious health and safety violations. It would cost the City far less to provide safe, permanent housing to these families, instead of paying three times the market rate for dilapidated cluster site shelters. A recent Al Jazeera America article by Abdulai Bah illustrates how the cluster site system is neither humane nor fiscally responsible. These figures, in addition to the heartbreaking DOI descriptions of shelter conditions, point to one conclusion: It is time for the City to end the cluster site system. DHS pays agencies such as Aguila to provide apartments for homeless people while helping them find jobs and permanent housing. In a 2013 report, then city Comptroller John Liu demanded City Hall cut ties with the company, after uncovering unsafe and unsanitary practices at its shelters. Nevertheless, in September 2014, the de Blasio administration awarded Aguila a $16 million contract. That contract could include a huge premium footed by New York City’s taxpayers. According to a yearlong Department of Investigation (DOI) probe, DHS is paying private landlords and nonprofits as much as three times market rate for the substandard housing homeless families occupy. Officials found that the average nightly rate for an apartment in a cluster site is $81.71 (or $2,451 monthly), while in surrounding neighborhoods, the market rate for units in non-shelter buildings ranges from $528 to $1,200 a month. DHS will spend more than $1.11 billion on homeless shelter and services this fiscal year, according to city estimates. The agency currently houses more than 14,000 families with children in roughly 150 permanent shelters and 16 temporary cluster sites, primarily in the Bronx and Brooklyn.
