Posted on July 7, 2020 by Jacquelyn Simone The past several weeks have brought renewed scrutiny to the role of police in communities across the nation, as part of the fight against systemic racism. While the City budget agreement announced last week did not go as far as many had hoped in reforming policing in New York City, it did include a long-overdue shift away from police involvement in addressing homelessness. Coalition for the Homeless has long denounced the criminalization of homelessness. Unfortunately, Mayor de Blasio has increasingly relied on police to address homelessness, such as by launching the misguided Subway Diversion Program last year, which used the threat of summonses to coerce people into services that were often ill-suited to their needs, and touting a new Orwellian surveillance system called the Joint Command Center. These programs failed to recognize that policing homelessness only pushes people further into the shadows and erodes the trust that trained outreach workers try to build with unsheltered New Yorkers. Furthermore, it ignores the root causes of homelessness and diverts resources away from the housing and services people actually need in order to move off the streets and out of shelters. According to the new budget agreement, these counterproductive police-based programs are ending, and police will no longer lead homeless outreach operations or oversee shelter security. We will be closely monitoring the implementation of these reforms to ensure that they signify real change rather than hollow budget maneuvers, but the agreement is a promising first step. Courtney Gross covered the move away from police involvement in homeless services for NY1: As a result of the budget agreement this week, homeless outreach will be shifted away from the police department and be done entirely by the city’s social services agency. This command center, for one, will now be run by the Department of Homeless Services. The NYPD’s homeless outreach unit, made up of 86 officers, is being reassigned. NY1 has also learned the NYPD will no longer oversee security at the city’s homeless shelters. They had taken over that role in 2017 after a string of violent incidents at shelters. All of this is a serious reversal for the mayor, who over the years has become increasingly dependent on the police department to respond to the homelessness crisis. “Homelessness is not a matter that can be solved by policing,” said Jacquelyn Simone of the Coalition for the Homeless. “It can only be solved by housing. And unfortunately over the last several years we have seen an increasing reliance on police.” For instance, last year the city announced a pilot program where homeless people on the subway who commit minor offenses are targeted by police. Police try to convince them to go to shelter by offering to clear them of the offense. That program is now over.
