Posted on 09/16/2002 5:58:08 AM PDT by A_perfect_lady
Shelters Seek to Oust Families Who Keep Rejecting Housing
Sara Kelly, a lively, articulate mother of six, was explaining why she and her family have stayed in a homeless shelter for more than a year instead of moving to an apartment.
It's hard to find a three-bedroom apartment she can afford. Landlords don't like single mothers, teenage boys and homeless people, and they lie about making repairs. She does not want a neighborhood that is "druggy." She must live near a hospital because two of her children have asthma.
"I am choosy about where I live," said Ms. Kelly, who is unemployed and on public assistance, but studying to be a home health-care worker. "When you have kids, you have to look out for all sorts of things."
It may seem strange that a homeless person would describe herself as choosy about where she will live, but in New York City, which is under court order to provide free temporary shelter to all those who say they have no place to live, families in the shelter system can refuse available permanent housing with little penalty.
Now, as part of a larger effort to move families out of the system faster, the Bloomberg administration would like to make changes. It has decided to pursue a policy, begun by Rudolph W. Giuliani when he was mayor, that would allow the city to eject families who repeatedly refuse to take apartments that meet government standards.
New York is under strong fiscal pressure to change its shelter system, which currently houses a record 8,696 families, an increase of roughly 33 percent from September 2001. Each family costs the city about $2,800 a month. If the number of families in the system continues to grow at the present rate, the city will exceed its emergency shelter budget for the current fiscal year by $27 million, according to an analysis released last week by the Independent Budget Office.
The Department of Homeless Services does not collect data on how many apartments families turn down before leaving the system, but its research shows that the average length of time a homeless family spends in what is supposed to be emergency shelter has grown to 315 days, from 285 days in September 2000.
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The city also arranged for a reporter to talk to housing specialists from five of the city's shelters. The specialists, shelter workers who function mainly as real-estate agents, work directly with families to look for and visit apartments. They estimated that 50 to 75 percent of their clients were unreasonably picky.
"They don't want to live in Bushwick or Crown Heights," said one specialist, who insisted on anonymity. "They want to live in Park Slope or Midtown Manhattan."
Before the end of the month, the city hopes to ask a court to allow officials to remove such families from the shelter system for 30 days and place their children in government-supervised care.
The city's commissioner of homeless services, Linda I. Gibbs, is adamant that hers is a kinder, gentler version of the Giuliani proposal, which has been blocked by a ruling in State Supreme Court in Manhattan since January 2000.
The most controversial part of the Giuliani plan was a provision that would allow officials from the foster care division of the Administration for Children's Services to investigate any family that was evicted from the shelter system with no place to go.
Under the Bloomberg administration plan, such families would have the option of temporarily placing children in respite care, which is run by a different division of the children's service agency and does not involve an automatic investigation into possible abuse or neglect, as foster care does.
In addition, Ms. Gibbs said in an interview, although state regulations allow the city to start eviction proceedings after a family turns down just one suitable apartment, she would rely on shelter operators to say when a family had turned down an unreasonable number of apartments.
There would be at least four levels of appeal before such an eviction would take place, Ms. Gibbs said, adding that she did not expect any family to actually be ejected.
Still, she said, the city needs the eviction option to make homeless families and the government workers who serve them understand that inaction has consequences. "There is a culture of passivity," she said, "and we need everyone in the system to act with more urgency."
Advocates for the homeless say there are far too few suitable apartments at rents that low-income families can afford. They argue that eviction is inhumane.
"Dangling the threat of eviction over the heads of homeless clients will not cause them to change their behavior," officials from a coalition of nonprofit groups that contract with the city to provide shelter for families argued in a statement opposing the policy....
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
This is insane...that is more that I spend (or can earn) on my family and I live very comfortably in the suburbs of NYC!
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