Comptroller: NYC Rejected Vast Majority of Homeless Families Looking For Shelter
Amidst an unprecedented number of homeless people in New York, the City's social services are still very good at keeping people homeless.
9:04 AM EDT on August 22, 2023
Inception Grand Central. (Hell Gate)
As thousands of migrants continue to arrive in the city each week, advocates have called on the Adams administration to speed up the process by which families leave the City's shelter system and are placed in more permanent housing. But the Department of Homeless Services also has another tool in its pocket to try to keep people out of City's shelters—just denying them entry in the first place.
According to an audit from Comptroller Brad Lander's office, during fiscal year 2022, only 20 percent of families with children who went to DHS intake centers were eventually deemed eligible for a family shelter placement. Eighty-two percent of those families were turned away because of bureaucratic issues like failing to complete housing history forms, failing to cooperate with DHS employees, or not meeting "family make up" requirements. The other 18 percent were denied because DHS said they had other places to live, like with families or friends. A previous report by Lander's office found that DHS intake workers were often doing inadequate investigations of a family's housing history, arbitrarily denying them placement in the City's shelter system. The new report also found that it's harder for adult families (without children) than those that have families to get into the shelter system, but both types still remain unlikely to be accepted into the shelter system.
https://hellgatenyc.com/comptroller-nyc-rejected-vast-majority-of-homeless-families-looking-for-shelter
