City will house homeless in hotels until COVID crisis subsides, Mayor says
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The city housed people experiencing homelessness at Hillside Hotel in Jamaica even before the COVID-19 pandemic. Eagle file photo by Emma Whitford
By David Brand
New York City will continue housing thousands of homeless residents in commercial hotels for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, Mayor Bill de Blasio said Thursday.
The city’s Department of Homeless of Services has moved about 13,000 adults out of congregate shelters and into two-bed hotel rooms to promote social distancing and limit the spread of the illness. They will remain there until the creation of an effective vaccine, de Blasio said — a development he characterized as a “watershed moment.”
“The original impetus was to save lives and that remains an imperative, but this is not forever,” he said of the decision to move more people into hotel rooms. “This is for a limited period of time.”
New Yorkers experiencing homelessness can also leave the shelter system by finding affordable housing.
Roughly 55,000 people reside in DHS shelters and hotels that contract with the city. Families with children account for the vast majority of shelter residents.
Unlike family shelters, which feature individual apartments, single adult shelters typically house a dozen or more people per room. Some shelters resemble barracks, where homeless New Yorkers sleep on beds in cubicles.
“We'll be guided by the Health Department and Health + Hospitals in terms of when it's time to return, but I can assure you, we will return when it is safe to do so,” said Department of Social Services Commissioner Steve Banks, who oversees DHS. “This is not a permanent state of operations to be in commercial hotels. We were working very hard, we have a plan to get out of commercial hotels.”
Prior to the pandemic, New York City rented rooms for homeless residents in 83 hotels. Banks said the city has added another 60 sites to keep people safe during the COVID crisis.
Advocates have called on the city to increase the value of housing subsidies and build more truly affordable housing to end homelessness in New York City.
The city has used commercial hotels to house New Yorkers experiencing homelessness for roughly 50 years. Hotels provide flexible emergency housing options and have remained a key part of the city’s strategy for providing shelter to all New Yorkers under court mandate.
De Blasio pledged to end the use of commercial hotels for New Yorkers experiencing homelessness by 2023 as part of his 2017 “Turning the Tide on Homelessness” plan. At the time, there were about 7,500 people residing in hotel rooms paid for by the city.
Between 2017 and January 2020, before the COVID crisis in New York, the number of homeless people that the city housed in commercial hotel rooms increased by 44 percent, City Limits reported in January.
In January, families with children accounted for more than two-thirds of hotel-shelter occupants — 7,902 people, including 4,087 kids, DHS told City Limits.
During Fiscal Year 2020, families stayed in DHS shelters an average of 446 days — roughly one year and three months — according to the 2020 Mayor’s Management Report.
