1 in 100 newborns go from hospital to homeless shelter
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Homeless New Yorkers called on the city and state to take drastic action to end the crisis at a City Hall rally in January. Photo by John McCarten via City Council/Flickr
By David Brand
One in every 100 babies born in New York City go from the hospital directly to a homeless shelter, according to an annual report published Wednesday by the state’s leading homeless advocate.
More than 1,300 babies were born to a mother living in a Department of Homeless Services shelter in 2018, the Coalition for the Homeless’ 2020 Annual Report finds. Last year, the number increased to more than 1,350 — a five-year high.
As in past years, the organization called on the city and state to take sweeping action to end the historic, decades-long homelessness crisis. Roughly 60,000 New Yorkers — mostly families headed by a single mother — sleep in DHS shelters last night. Hundreds more stay in shelters operated by other city agencies, including the Department of Youth and Community Development.
“New York City’s homelessness crisis will not improve until Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio treat homelessness like the urgent humanitarian crisis it is and acknowledge that it is fueled by the massive lack of affordable housing,” said Coalition for the Homeless Policy Director Giselle Routhier. “Homelessness is not an issue that can be pushed into the shadows.”
On average, 14,792 families slept in shelters each night in December 2019.
The report grades the city and state on several measures for preventing homelessness and helping currently homeless New Yorkers find stable housing. The Coalition gave Fs to Cuomo on homelessness prevention and housing subsidies and called on the state to implement the Home Stability Support program introduced by Assemblymember Andrew Hevesi in 2016.
The initiative would raise the value of housing assistance subsidies to people receiving family assistance who are at risk of eviction or homelessness related to domestic violence.
The Coalition for the Homeless’ Annual State of Homelessness report card. Image via the Coalition for the Homeless
The Coalition also calls on the state and city to drastically increase affordable housing stock, create thousands of supportive housing units and raise the value of existing housing vouchers to meet market rent.
In addition to its focus on newborns and families, the report sheds light on the burgeoning homelessness crisis among people 65 and older. At least 7.1 percent of people sleeping in DHS shelters in 2018 were 65 or older, up from 4 percent in 2018.
Homelessness, the report makes clear, is also an issue of race and ethnicity. More than 86 percent of all homeless single adults identify as Black or Hispanic.
New York City received a C- on most aspects of the report, but did receive an A- for its efforts to prevent homelessness, including through the use of emergency cash assistance and the introduction of a right to counsel for low-income New Yorkers in Housing Court.
“This Administration has made real progress helping our neighbors in need get back on their feet,” said Department of Social Services spokesperson Isaac McGinn.
The city, he said, has driven “evictions down more than 40 percent through our first-in-the-nation right-to-counsel program, helping more than 140,000 New Yorkers remain in or move into housing through the programs we rebuilt from scratch, transforming a haphazard shelter system decades in the making, and assisting thousand of unsheltered neighbors in their transition off the streets onto a pathway to permanency.”
“We remain focused on taking that progress further in every way as we begin 2020,” McGinn said.
