Most street homeless NYers say they first tried the city shelter system: report

Lukasz Ruszczyk stays near the train tracks that separate Ridgewood and Glendale. He told the Eagle he was robbed multiple times in a city shelter before deciding to leave. Eagle photo by David Brand

By David Brand

The majority of homeless New Yorkers bedding down in public spaces first tried the city’s shelter system, but found the spaces too dangerous or the services inadequate, according to a new report.

The Coalition for the Homeless surveyed 200 street homeless New Yorkers to learn why they decided to stay on the sidewalk, in the park or on the subway instead of inside a shelter. More than three-quarters of the respondents said they left city shelters and moved outside as a last resort, typically because they found shelters too unsafe, too degrading or too constricting. Others said they saw no path to housing.

“People bedding down on the streets are not there by choice, they are there because they lack any meaningful choice,” said report author Lindsey Davis. “Many of these individuals have significant physical health and mental health issues, and the systems currently in place simply fail to meet their needs.”

Nearly three-quarters of respondents said they had lived on the street for more than a year and 84 percent said they had been approached by outreach workers offering support. The majority of respondents were over age 45 — older than the average city shelter resident — and two-thirds experienced mental health issues, the survey found.

Davis, the senior director of crisis services at Coalition for the Homeless, urged the city to create an immediate pathway to housing for street homeless New Yorkers, who are particularly vulnerable to health problems. 

Survey respondents agreed, with the majority saying they wanted to move into housing.

One man sleeping near a train overpass at the Glendale-Ridgewood border said he left a shelter after he was robbed several times. “I’d rather freeze than go back,” Lukasz Ruszczyk told the Eagle last month. 

During the conversation, Ruszczyk pulled up his shirt to reveal a large bruise on his side, near his lower back. He said someone had repeatedly kicked him while he slept a few days earlier.

Still, he said, he would only leave the sidewalk if he were guaranteed safe and private permanent housing.

The Coalition for the Homeless report calls on the city to eliminate bureaucratic barriers and rapidly move more street homeless New Yorkers into supportive housing or single-room occupancy Safe Haven sites, which have fewer restrictions than traditional shelters. 

“Especially now, during the pandemic, what more evidence do we need that housing is health care?” said Davis, the report author. “The only way to address this crisis is for the city and state to show moral leadership and dedicate the resources necessary to create true housing options to help individuals to come in off the streets and remain indoors.”

The report also urges the city to change its outreach strategy by meeting the acute needs of street homeless New Yorkers and taking a harm reduction approach, like providing food or hygiene products.

In a response Wednesday the Department of Homeless Services said the report contributes to stigmatizing shelters and invalidates the role of essential workers who staff the shelters 24 hours a day.

DHS spokesperson Isaac McGinn said the city has tripled the number of outreach workers to 600 since 2013 and increased the number of special beds reserved for street homeless New Yorkers to 3,000, including 1,300 beds opened since January 2020.

“This administration has made vital progress addressing decades of disinvestment/underfunding, which resulted in the haphazard shelter infrastructure that we inherited and have had to reform,” McGinn said. “From strengthening shelter and phasing out the ineffective stop-gap measures of prior administrations, to improving services with creative new approaches and investments, to rebuilding rental assistance and rehousing programs which have helped more than 160,000 people obtain or secure housing, to spearheading the first-in-the-nation right-to-counsel initiative helping tenants keep their homes which has driven down evictions by more than 40 percent, we continue to use every tool at our disposal to ensure New Yorkers can access the resources they need to get back on their feet.”