The chill in the air on October 12 outside the city’s intake center for homeless families was unexpected – it had been unseasonably hot – but perhaps fitting: The administration had announced a day before that it would no longer temporarily house families it determined really did have a place to sleep. The families were getting the cold shoulder, literally. An editorial in the Daily News that morning called them “freeloaders.”
In a church a few blocks from the intake center, several families slept on the floor after the city denied them temporary housing. They had nowhere to go, an attorney from the Legal Aid Society said. The organization is suing the city on their behalf.
" Some families who are staying at the church were being told to return back to their batterer or other unsafe housing,” said Steve Banks, the chief attorney of the Legal Aid Society, in an email. "The Department of Homeless Services reports on its own Web site that one third of the families who are found eligible have to apply multiple times. Therefore, under the new policy, one third of the families who are found eligible for shelter will be left without a roof over their heads while they apply multiple times and eventually overturn initial erroneous ineligibility findings."
News of the change in policy outraged housing advocates, but there was no confrontation. A contingent of police stayed safely out of sight around the corner: A crowd of advocates and TV news reporters milled around the sidewalk.
The new policy on emergency shelter drew attention to how the city deals with homelessness. This policy is one piece of an overall approach that advocates believe is failing. The mayor has pledged to reduce homelessness by two-thirds by 2009. That appears increasingly improbable. When the city introduced a pilot prevention approach in September 2004 called HomeBase, the number of people in city shelters was 36,720; the number now is around 35,940, according to a recent daily report.
The HomeBase centers were introduced at about the same time that the city stopped using Section 8, the federal rent subsidy, to pay for housing for homeless people. The city then introduced a rent subsidy program called Housing Stability Plus, but soon scrapped it and replaced it with a new set of subsidies called Advantage New York.
Increasingly, the city is counting on its HomeBase programs to address family homelessness. Over the last month, I interviewed several HomeBase workers -- people working daily with New Yorkers facing homelessness. They spoke to me on the condition that I not name them for fear of losing their jobs.
Recognizing that treating homelessness was far more expensive than preventing it, the city introduced HomeBase in September 2004. The program began as a pilot project in six communities that send a disproportionate number of people to city homeless shelters: East Harlem; the East Tremont/Belmont and South Bronx areas of the Bronx; Bushwick and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, and Jamaica, Queens.
The city contracted the operation of the centers to community-based organizations with the hope that the organizations would best be able to identify and help those most at risk of becoming homeless. Even with knowledge of the community, that remains a difficult task. “I don’t know that there’s a way to really know if someone is going to a shelter,” said one worker.
Once the program identifies someone as being at risk of becoming homeless, HomeBase centers provide comprehensive assistance. Workers said they deal with everything from childcare to employment training to rent arrears problems. The department and many housing advocates saw the program as a promising new direction for addressing homelessness.
“ When we first came in, the whole idea was to decrease the number of people going into the shelters, at the grassroots where they come from,” one worker said. “That’s a good idea.”
At first, the city reported success in districts with HomeBase centers. But last year, the number of homeless people increased citywide, including in the HomeBase districts, a HomeBase worker with access to the statistical breakdown told me.
Earlier this year, the city decided to expand HomeBase, doubling the budget from $10 million to $20 million for this fiscal year. The work, though, increased much more, said one worker. Instead of the original six community districts, the program will now have to serve 59 ostensibly.
“ If we had $3 million for one district and then they gave us $3 million for three districts and $6 million for six districts, then the money has not increased,” said one worker. “It amounts to a decrease. We’re doing more with less.”
The expansion, though, has been postponed repeatedly. In an email, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeless Services said the agency was finalizing contracts with new organizations that will begin operating HomeBase centers in the rest of the city.
If and when it finally happens, the expansion will make HomeBase the city’s primary homelessness prevention effort, housing advocates said. Every tool the city uses to deal with homelessness – from rent subsidies to new housing programs – will be found in the HomeBase centers.
“ It looks like they are going to use HomeBase for just about everything,” an attorney who works on housing issues told me.
The way it will do this could vary from neighborhood to neighborhood. The organizations running HomeBase have been given some latitude in how they address homelessness in their areas. As long as the number of people entering shelters from the area decreases, the department has not argued strenuously with their decisions, one worker said. All of the workers complimented the department’s willingness to work with frontline workers.
“ They don’t come to the meetings telling us what we need to do,” one worker said. “They tell us our parameters. But they leave the how up to us. And they listen to what we say and often they will implement what we suggest.”
The department retains some control through an approval process, a worker explained. For example, if a worker proposed that the center help a client pay back rent in order to remain in an affordable apartment, the department must approve the payment if it exceeds $1,000. And according to a worker, “virtually all” of the situations involving overdue rent involve amounts above $1,000.
The HomeBase workers expressed frustration about their work. While trying to help people facing homelessness is difficult and often draining , the workers said their frustrations stemmed from the homeless services department’s policies and approaches to the homeless problem.
In emails, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeless Services acknowledged HomeBase’s limitations and defended the program. Last year it was nominated for an award for innovation in government given by Harvard University.
“ Prevention programs of any kind face targeting challenges, and (homeless services) has been continually working to target prevention services so that those most at risk of homelessness engage with HomeBase and receive services,” a spokesperson wrote. “Also, while the HomeBase program does an excellent job providing long-term comprehensive services to those facing imminent risk of homelessness, some applicants are not enrolled in HomeBase because their housing problems have not yet reached the critical stage or they are not in need of long-term or intensive casework.”
Workers said problems with HomeBase became evident early on. Anderson Fils-Aime worked at the organization that operates a HomeBase center in East Harlem that has recently expanded its services to all of Manhattan.
At first, he said, the homeless services department wanted to target doubled-up people – that is, people living with friends or relatives in overcrowded apartments. Shelter surveys showed that many people seeking shelter were living in such situations.
“ They were asking â€Why are you seeking shelter?’ and people were saying â€Because I’m doubled up,’” Fils-Aime said. “They were not asking, â€Why are you doubled-up?’”
To discourage such people from seeking help at city shelters, homeless services told HomeBase providers to offer mediation for families and grants to buy bunk beds, Fils-Aime explained.
“ The reasons people are facing homelessness are things like I lost my (rent) subsidy, I lost my apartment due to a rent increase, I’m a victim of domestic violence and I lost my job,” he said. “They needed to attack those problems.”
Fils-Aime said his agency explained this to the department. “We told them folks are telling us, â€If you can find me a place to live, I’ll not go into shelter,’” he said. “You’re talking about people who are making $20,000 (annually) with families. Landlords wouldn’t take them. We couldn’t get them any money if they were paying more than 30 percent of their income to rent.” Over a year later, the department gave in and allowed some exceptions, Fils-Aime said.
The department also suggested using rent subsidy vouchers issued under the federal Section 8 program to help doubled-up tenants. But this approach, Fils-Aime said, ignored some basic realities.
“ We were told we could use Section 8 to help doubled-up families,” he said. “But the conditions they had to meet were that they needed to have the lease in their name. The first thing about doubled-up families that is obvious is that the lease is not in their name. We’d sit in meetings and say, â€Who came up with this?’”
In an email, the department called Fils-Aime’s account “inaccurate.” Homeless services “has negotiated more flexible criteria to ensure that vouchers can go to those HomeBase clients who are most at risk of housing instability,” the department’s spokesperson wrote. “HomeBase programs can apply [for Section 8] for individuals who are in a doubled-up situation, who do not have a lease and are not currently employed.”
Fils-Aime said he left the program when he learned that the department was turning a blind eye when his HomeBase center began approving rent payments for rooms in public housing apartments. It is illegal to rent out individual rooms in public housing apartment.
“ We were using city money to put people in illegal rooms,” Fils-Aime said. “We were contributing to a fraudulent act. Everyone knew about it. I told them I can’t be a part of this.”
In its response, the department said, “The HomeBase programs do serve clients who come to them already doubled up in [New York City Housing Authority] housing, but HomeBase does not promote subleases or rental situations in NYCHA housing, as this would obviously put the tenancy of the primary tenant in jeopardy.”
City officials were not oblivious to the problems with HomeBase, the workers said. In fact, maybe they were thinking about them too much, one worker told me.
“ They change policy about every week,” the worker said. “The changes areso great that if you took a two-week vacation you’d come back and say, â€What the hell is going on?’”
The department said each organization that operated a HomeBase center implemented programs in its own way, although the department audits them to ensure the contractor adheres to city policies, procedures and practices.
“ The flexibility of the HomeBase program has always been an important strength,” the department added.
The emphasis on helping people stay in doubled-up situations began to diminish. The city then tried using its then-new Housing Stability Plus or HSP rent subsidy. The subsidy was used to help people on public assistance and in homeless shelters find apartments. It would cover the total rent for a year and then decrease by 20 percent each successive year until it finally ran out in the fifth year. Thousands of families were placed in apartments with HSP, the city said.
But landlords soured on the program. For one thing, the subsidy would be cut when recipients broke a public assistance rule – like failing to come to an appointment – and landlords would not get paid. The payment would also be cut if the recipient found work and the income disqualified him or her for public assistance. For another, it was not clear to landlords how they would get the rent if the tenants could not pay their 20 percent share after the first year.
“ HSP was pure garbage,” one HomeBase worker said. “For the life of me I cannot imagine how anyone allowed that to be implemented. They created a program where you had to go to work but the minute you went to work you lost your benefits. What kind of fool allowed that?”
The city scrapped Housing Stability Plus last year, introducing a new set of subsidies called Advantage New York. And it has started using Section 8, the federal rent subsidy, to pay for apartments. Eliminating the use of Section 8 to help the homeless was one of the main reasons the city changed policy in 2004. Ironically, using Section 8 three years ago might have worked, one worker said, but now it might be too late. Suitable apartments simply may not exist.
“ It would work if you could find the apartment,” he said. “I would bet that 15 percent of the Section 8 we issue will ever get used.” The rest – or some 85 percent – “can’t find the apartments. Section 8 is not worthless, but it’s close to worthless,” he said.The lack of affordable housing is the crux of the problem, the HomeBase workers said. They said they now try to use a grant to pay a client’s rent arrears and then put the person or family on a “fast-track” to get Section 8.
“ That’s the goal in most cases,” a worker said. “It would work if you could find the apartment.”
Yet another new strategy has many housing advocates deeply concerned: having HomeBase workers focus on diverting people, who may already be homeless, from city shelters rather than focusing on keeping them from becoming homeless in the first place. That approach is simply making things worse, Fils-Aime said.
“ They are trying to divert people who have been evicted and now gone to the shelter for help,” he explained. “But they’ve already lost the apartment. If you spend all your time trying to divert people you are not doing prevention. They should be getting these people before they end up at shelters, not after.”
This policy might be attributed to what the HomeBase workers see as a disconnect between the daily work they do and the policies implemented by City Hall.
“ The farther away from the action you get the more distorted the picture becomes,” said one worker. “The farther away from service delivery, the priorities change.”
Another worker was optimistic, however, that the department would fix the problems with the HomeBase programs.
“ It’s still in a settling-in phase,” he said. “They’ve finally gotten around to utilizing employment as an incentive rather than as a punishment. If you’re working we can work with you because if you have no income, housing is not your issue. Ability to pay is your issue.”
To many housing advocates, though, the underlying problem is the city’s overall approach to homelessness, exemplified by the new policy on emergency shelter. With that in mind, Picture the Homeless has organized a rally on October 30 at City Hall to protest the new policy. Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations. Â
About 30 years ago, living in a city housing project had its advantages.
“ I remember when I was in middle school and elementary school everyone wanted to come to my house to do homework or come and play,” City Council Member Rosie Mendez, chair of the council’s Subcommittee on Public Housing recalled recently. “People in tenements had worse conditions.”
Now, though, the tables have turned. Declining government subsidies along with soaring operating costs have put New York’s massive public housing projects into what Daily News columnist Errol Louis has characterized as a “civic emergency.” Today, residents complain about the elevators being “out of service,” garbage going uncollected and broken intercoms. In many of the projects, conditions may be worse than those in comparable private housing.
Governor Eliot Spitzer’s signing of a bill last week that would allow the housing authority to collect higher rent from people on public assistance who live in the projects is a step in the right direction, advocates said. But experts on public housing add that much more remains to be done.
Some have suggested that, like other cities, New York City should consider demolishing or privatizing its public housing. Others counter that that would only make the city’s affordable housing crisis worse and force thousands of lower income New Yorkers out of the city. Instead, they say, the city, state and federal governments must all fund public housing adequately so it remains a good place for working New Yorkers to live and raise their families.
“ Preserving this housing is so fundamental to making our city work and ensuring that so many people can continue to live and work here,” said State Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh. “We’re not on the brink of bankruptcy – we don’t want to alarm people unduly. But at the same time it’s a long-term problem that needs long term solutions.”
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The New York City Housing Authority provides homes in public housing to over 400,000 New Yorkers and, through the nation’s largest Section 8 rent subsidy program, helps another 255,000 afford their housing in privately owned houses and apartments.
“ It’s the best source of housing for truly low-income people,” said Judith Goldiner of the Legal Aid Society, who has worked on legal issues related to public housing for over 15 years. “I know that if I can get my client into NYCHA, they’re pretty much set. They’ll have a decent place to live. Compared to everything else, it’s much, much better than anything else out there.”
Simply put, public housing makes living in New York possible for thousands of low-income families. The average family income in public housing is about $20,000 annually and the average rent is $320.
New York was the first American city to build public housing, 73 years ago. The federally funded projects were built first on the Lower East Side, replacing notoriously ill-lit and poorly maintained tenement buildings. Today, public housing’s 343 developments include almost 2,700 buildings. The waiting list to get in is long, with over 130,000 people.
The projects are located throughout New York City. Public housing has preserved economic diversity in many parts of the city where skyrocketing rents have forced low-income people out. Without the projects, neighborhoods like Chelsea would be more homogenous, at least economically: High income people surrounded by Whole Foods, Starbucks and other shops that cater to them.
Public housing contributes to the social and cultural fabric of the city in many ways. In the Highbridge section of the Bronx, for example, Highbridge Houses holds an annual community fair that attracts hundreds of people from throughout the community. Other projects present similar events. Beyond providing shelter, the public housing projects operate senior centers, community centers and youth programs. Public housing “is the foundation of many neighborhoods,” said the housing authority’s spokesperson, Howard Marder.
Most of the projects were built with federal money, 15 were constructed by the state and six by the city. The housing authority manages the whole system with about 13,000 full-time employees and a total budget of $3.4 billion. Of that, about $2.7 billion pays employee salaries and building maintenance. About $700 million goes for capital expenses, such as major renovation work on the buildings.
Rent payments bring in about $700 million annually. Up until the 1960s rent covered the building’s operating costs. But that began to change when it became obvious that rents collected would not suffice to maintain and run the buildings.
Since the 1980s, significant cuts to the federal housing budget have caused problems for public housing in the city. Analysts estimate that the city government now receives only 83 cents for every dollar it needs to operate its federally financed buildings. To make matters worse, in 1998, then Governor George Pataki eliminated the state’s operating subsidies – about $65 million -- for its 15 buildings. And in the wake of 9/11, Mayor Michael Bloomberg did away with the city’s contributions to its five developments, about $25 million.
“ Over the past decade, funds have been drying up from every source,” said Victor Bach, a housing policy expert at the Community Service Society. “Washington has cut funding … and the city and state have turned their backs on NYCHA. The operating deficits accumulate and add up and at some point you can’t continue them. And I think NYCHA has reached that point.”
All the cuts – and significant increases in the costs of operating the public housing system – have led to the current crisis, which is growing more severe each year. The mayor and the City Council responded in 2006, appropriating $120 million for the housing authority’s fiscal year 2007 budget, up from nothing the previous year. “The city has stepped up,” the mayor’s office said in a written comment, adding that, beyond the $120 million, it provided $50 million in operating dollars along with $100 million in capital monies for the next four years. And this year, the state will provide $3.4 million. But, despite this infusion, NYCHA is facing a shortfall next year of about $225 million, almost a third higher than last year’s $168 million deficit.
The authority’s fiscal crisis has sparked anger among its tenants and others. At a public hearing in late July, about 300 public housing residents sharply criticized the board and the authority’s general manager, Doug Apple. The residents had long lists of complaints, from police harassment to broken locks on the doors to their buildings. One speaker called for Apple to resign.
Later Apple was diplomatic about the harsh criticism. “It comes with the territory,” he said. “Residents feel strongly about public housing and they have a right to criticize.”
On a more positive note, residents, advocates and elected representatives have come together to fight for more funding for the housing authority. Councilmember Mendez called on her City Hall colleagues to act a press conference in July, and State Assemblymember Kavanaugh rallied state legislators in early August in support of the housing authority.
The spectacle of public housing residents and their supporters joining with the authority is somewhat unusual. “NYCHA doesn’t have a good reputation because it’s a big bureaucratic organization and they don’t respond” to even simple requests, Goldiner said. “They’re pretty arrogant and they’re not very responsive and people don’t like it. Who wants to help them? But “this housing is too important and the money issues are too important,” she said.
Chloe Tribich of Housing Here and Now, which has worked on housing issues citywide, agreed. “NYCHA’s such a huge source of affordable housing,” Tribich said. “If you lose that, it’ll be very different.
“ It’s hard enough for people to find affordable housing now,” she continued. “A lack of funding for NYCHA means there’ll be more competition for other affordable housing. It would just add to the number of people who are seeking low-rent apartments.”
A Search for Funds
The authority has sought ways to make up the financial shortfall. Since 2003, the authority has reduced spending by half a billion dollars. Last year, it released a Plan to Preserve Public Housing. Among other things, it called for rent increases and sought relief from Washington. It has also imposed much higher fees for replacing doors, faucets and even light bulbs.
This year, it has proposed using 8,400 Section 8 vouchers, normally used to help low-income people pay rent on privately owned apartments, to pay rent on apartments in the 21 non-federally funded buildings – the buildings built by the state and city. That proposal was widely criticized by advocates who said it would effectively rob Peter to pay Paul; it would reduce the number of rent-subsidy vouchers available to low-income families who qualify for housing help but who, because of a shortage of apartments, cannot find room in public housing.
Service Cuts
The authority has also proposed cutting its staff by another 500 people -- on top of 1,600 layoffs since 2003, Errol Louis reported in the Daily News.
The tenants see the effects of the cuts. Rosia Wyche, who has lived in the Coney Island Houses for 31 years, says she has seen the deterioration since the authority reorganized the management of her building and reduced trash service. “It’s not as neat as it was, it’s not as clean as it was. People are beginning to complain about mice,” Wyche, chair of the housing authority’s Citywide Council of Presidents district for southern Brooklyn, said. “We never had mice. In all the years I lived here I’ve never heard talk of mice before, until lately.”
On a visit to several projects, Louis said he saw many signs of the tough times for public housing: “A damaged, blackened hallway marked the still-unrepaired site of a fire back in June ….The woman in Brooklyn's Gravesend Houses whose damaged, leaky apartment grows mold that triggers her daughter's asthma. The piles of uncollected garbage in front of the Drew-Hamilton Houses in central Harlem.”Overall, Louis has written, “The cuts are causing a sharp decline in basic services. Intercom inspections will be replaced with â€service on demand,’ and $406 million in security contracts are being terminated - moves that will thrill criminals….Repairs of leaky roofs and the authority's ever-failing 3,334 elevators will take even longer.”
“ Our goal is to maintain every single public housing unit,” Apple said. But “if we don’t get increased funding, it becomes very challenging. Every city in the country has eliminated or demolished public housing. We’re not going to do that.”
In other efforts to generate funds, the authority has struck a deal with the city to develop affordable housing on some vacant land that will bring in about $50 million. The new homes would be part of the mayor’s $7.5 billion plan to build 165,000 apartments by 2010. And, with the federal government’s approval, the authority is using $100 million meant for capital spending as operating money.
Legislative Remedies
Residents, advocates and elected representatives are pushing for other policy changes beyond the housing authority’s immediate control. At rallies, they urged the governor to sign the bill to allow the housing authority to collect the same shelter allowances from recipients on public assistance as private landlords do. By agreeing to that and signing the bill, Spitzer effectively added almost $100 million to housing authority’s budget over the next three years.
U.S. Representative Nydia Velazquez and Senator Charles Schumer have introduced legislation in Congress that would have the federal government pay the operating subsidies for the state- and city-financed housing projects. That could bring in $100 million annually. A spokesperson for Velazquez said 10 of the city’s 12 congressional representatives support the legislation, and it will be “moved on” in the next congressional session.
Unlike other non-profit housing providers, advocates point out, the housing authority pays the city $23 million in lieu of taxes. These fees should be eliminated, they said, as should the $73 million the city charges the authority for special police services.
Advocates question the effectiveness of those police services, too. Councilmember Letitia James of Brooklyn is leading an effort to sue the police department for the discriminatory way it polices the projects, she said. (See sidebar.)
Before: A view of the backyard at First Houses prior to the construction.
After: The back of First Houses as workers put on the finishing touches.
Going Private
The authority’s proposed sale of vacant land to the city is the closest it has come to privatization. Other cities have gone much further, demolishing public housing buildings and auctioning properties. It is the most realistic solution, asserted Julia Vitullo-Martin, a housing policy expert at the Manhattan Institute.
“ What an ordinary property owner with NYCHA’s assets and that kind of deficit would do is obvious,” Vitullo-Martin said. “An ordinary property owner would look at what assets are very valuable but are a drain but could nonetheless be sold for substantial profit.”
The simple reality is that public housing has lost public support, Vitullo-Martin said. “Political support for public housing all across the country has evaporated and is not coming back in the near term. Even with a Democratic landslide, support for public housing is not coming back. NYCHA has to do what other systems did: Rethink what it’s doing with its assets.”
But most city officials and politicians reject “semi-privatizing” NYCHA, as Vitullo-Martin calls it. They say it would only make the city’s affordable housing crisis more acute. “Public housing is not being privatized,” the mayor’s office said in its written comments. “We intend for it to remain in good condition for current and future generations of New Yorkers.”
Bach considers any privatization a last resort, albeit one that might please some developers. The authority could “take parts of the inventory that are most marketable and sell them off so that the operating load is lessened,” said Bach. “I think (developers) are prepared to move in just as they were prepared to move in on Starrett City and Stuyvesant Town.” Other cities have taken that path, demolishing public housing buildings and auctioning properties, but this plan is the closest the authority has come to privatizing..
For now, the authority’s main hope is government. If the city, state or the federal governments do not come through with adequate funding, residents will see reduced services at the very least. The authority might shut down senior centers and end community programs, for example.
Still, authority officials express optimism. “NYCHA has been here for 73 years,” Marder said. “It plays a vital role. And it’s going to continue to do so. The question is at what level of services.”
Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations. Â
This article was corrected on June 7, 2007. For more information, see our Corrections Page.
Less than three years after the city implemented its Housing Stability Plus rent subsidy program, the Bloomberg administration is set to eliminate it. In its place, it will launch Advantage New York, a new rent subsidy targeting homeless New Yorkers.
A lot of advocates are saying good riddance to Housing Stability Plus, better known by it is initials, HSP. At a recent forum, recipients recounted horror stories of bad apartments, opaque rules and confusing administration of the program. In some cases, beneficiaries complained that landlords asked them for extra money on the side.
“No one wants to deal with HSP,” said Bronx advocate Betty Robinson. “It’s very stressful. It’s hard to reach the caseworkers (to resolve problems). The rents are ridiculous for the conditions that people are working in.”
But while advocates are pleased to see Housing Stability Plus go, many question whether Advantage New York represents a substantial improvement.
The End of One Program…
The Department of Homeless Services designed Housing Stability Plus to replace using the federal Section 8 rent subsidy to pay for permanent housing for people in city shelters. Housing Stability Plus, city officials said, would reduce the record number of people in city homeless shelters.
But according to the numbers, the homeless problem is worse today than it was two years ago, at least for families. In 2004, when Housing Stability Plus was introduced, 8,832 families and 8,650 individual adults were in city shelters. While the adult shelter population has decreased slightly to 7,313 people, the number of families in shelter has increased to 9,189.
The administration claims the subsidy helped 10,000 families move into permanent housing, with four percent of them eventually returning to city shelters. But the city has acknowledged faults in Housing Stability Plus, and Commissioner of Homeless Services Robert Hess, barely a year into his job, has been working to modify it. The commissioner could not be reached for comment.
…And the Beginning of Another
The new subsidy program will go into effect shortly before the administration expands its HomeBase homelessness prevention program. Once serving just six community board districts, HomeBase centers will go citywide July 1. By all accounts, the city will heavily rely HomeBase in an effort to prevent homelessness, rather than treat the problem after it occurs.
Advantage New York on the other hand will help homeless families leave shelters. To accomplish this, it will pay their rent, but require them to work at least 20 hours per week to receive the subsidy. The program includes job training and will assist families in getting other public benefits, like food stamps, Medicaid and child care. And the program requires that families save some money and that the city match the savings at the end of the program. This is intended to help families have some additional money when their benefits run out.
“We think we have crafted the most substantial and generous work incentive local subsidy program ever,” Hess told a hearing of the City Council’s General Welfare Committee recently. “And we think many people will do very, very well, after a year, more after two years. Some will need support after that and therefore the HomeBase aftercare support program” is available.
What It Does – and Does Not -- Do
Work Advantage addresses some of the issues advocates had raised concerning Housing Stability Plus. To deal with the concerns about apartment quality, the homeless services department will apply federal housing quality standards to Work Advantage apartments. And the administration has expanded eligibility for the program to the working poor, not just homeless families who receive public assistance benefits. But like Housing Stability Plus, Work Advantage does not provide an answer for all families on public assistance who cannot work. It would provide help to some of them -- people on disability, with cases before the Administration for Children's Services or who need “one-shot” assistance to get back on their feet.
About 80 percent of people in shelters are on public assistance, according to homeless services. But the department hopes the Advantage program will encourage more of the shelter residents to find work.
And the program would provide benefits for two years only, compared with the maximum of five years in Housing Stability Plus. Councilmember Bill de Blasio, chairman of the General Welfare Committee, questioned this change, probably the biggest difference between the old and new programs.
“The administration didn’t make HSP a five-year program by accident,” de Blasio said. “It was five years for a reason and I think there was recognition of the time it can take.”
Hess said the city would address each case separately. “To the extent the families are successful after a year of Work Advantage, great,” he told City Council. “To the extent they are successful after two years, super. The families after three years that still need support, we will figure out how to get them that support through HomeBase, using the aftercare workers. And if that means some of those families need a longer term subsidy, that will be our job how to figure out how to get them that subsidy.”
But advocates fear the city’s latest approach will not be effective, partly because significant elements of it require approval from state and federal agencies.
More significantly, the city’s numbers simply do not add up, advocates say. One analysis by Victor Bach of the Community Service Society showed that families on public assistance, whose first jobs pay an average of $7.80 an hour, would have to get huge raises to afford to pay their rents after one year or two, even with the savings Advantage New York would help them amass.
“The administration’s belief that most people won’t need help after one or two years flies in the face of its own research,” said Mary Brosnahan Sullivan, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless.
Steve Banks, chief attorney at the Legal Aid Society, said the city’s approach amounted to social experimentation on homeless people.
“There are real problems with the operation of this program,” Banks said at the council hearing. He pointed to the subsidy’s proposed time limit and the fact that families with no income beyond public assistance will not be eligible for it.
When it introduced Housing Stability Plus in 2004, the administration said it wanted to reduce the number of people who were going to shelters primarily so they would become eligible for Section 8 vouchers or public housing. But critics of Advantage New York believe Section 8 vouchers and apartments in public housing remain the most effective tools for finding permanent housing for homeless families.
“All three previous administrations used a combination of prevention, shelter and referrals to Section 8,” Banks said. “For whatever reason, the current administration has chosen not to do that. Now it’s coming back and proposing a new program.”
Brosnahan Sullivan said the mayor seemed to be giving up on resolving the homelessness problem, after pledging last year to reduce the number of homeless people by two-thirds before he leaves office.
“In essence Mayor Bloomberg is punting this enormous problem to whomever takes his job in 2009,” she said.
At the town hall forum on Housing Stability Plus, Archdeacon Mike Kendall of the Episcopal Diocese of New York, was more cutting. Helping the homeless “does not mean more government bureaucracy and all sorts of tricky sounding programs,” Kendall said. “It means to care.”
Joe Lamport is the assistant director of the City-Wide Task Force on Housing Court, a coalition of community housing organizations. Â