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The Permanent Emergency For Homeless Families


Families sleeping on the floor of the Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx. Although people no longer stay overnight at the facility, it remains crowded, with parents and children going through long waits to get housing. The people's faces are covered to protect their identities.
(Courtesy, Coalition for the Homeless)
What I remember most vividly about the city's center for the homeless, where my mother brought us after having run out of friends and family to take us in, was how important it was to stay in your seat, if you were lucky enough to have found an empty one. The place was so crowded that people sat all over the floor, and the walls were covered with people leaning against them.

As exhausting as it had been to walk the streets of Brooklyn, we were far more tired during the few days my family and I spent at what I later learned was called the Emergency Assistance Unit. That is because every moment we were there, we were hoping for help. Behind a large door, there were people who could provide us with a place to live. Instead, we had to wait. When they finally called my mother's name, she emerged an hour later and told us that we needed yet another piece of paperwork or another interview with another supervisor.

I was seven years old when my family turned to an Emergency Assistance Unit, then located in downtown Brooklyn.

Eighteen years later, the Emergency Assistance Unit remains the first place families with children must turn to get shelter. In the years since I was there, thousands of families have been forced to spend the night sleeping on the floors of the one remaining "intake unit" in the Bronx. That practice was brought to a halt a few months ago, the city finally complying with city law. It is a change that the mayor cited this month in his State of the City address: "This past summer, for the first time in modern memory," the mayor announced, "no one slept on the floors of the Emergency Assistance Unit."

Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless is not impressed. "This is a bare minimum," he says, "not something to be having a party about." Critics like Markee say that continuing conditions at the facility, along with the strict requirements for emergency housing, discourage many desperate people from getting the shelter they need.

DICKENSIAN CONDITIONS

When my family was homeless, the city had several facilities where families with children could go. Only one remains, on the corner of 151st Street and Walton Avenue in the Bronx. Twenty-four hours a day, 365 days a year, crowds of people stand around its looming double gray doors, waiting to see if they pass muster with the Eligibility Investigation Unit and can be referred to a shelter for the night.

The number of homeless New Yorkers in city shelters every night has reached a record high of more than 38,000 homeless men, women, and children.

Thousands of other New Yorkers, most of them single adults, are homeless but not in shelters, sleeping instead on the streets, in parks or on the subways.

Families without children now go to the Adult Family Intake Center at 29th Street and 1st Avenue in Manhattan. Five centers- three for men and two for women - handle single adults. (See related story by Kristen Hinman on new rules for homeless adults in the shelter system.)

But the thousands of families with children must go to the Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx, a place with a history of crime and violence and a reputation for poor treatment -- abuse by the guards, a cafeteria so unsanitary that it has made many people sick.

Though the city does not allow reporters in, two years ago, journalist Jack Newfield snuck inside. "It was something straight out of Dickens or Jacob Riis," he wrote in The Nation.

The city says it is making efforts to improve conditions and to provide routine maintenance, including "deep cleanings." But it cautions against looking for instant solutions. The unit “is what it is because of years of Band Aid-style quick fixes and court orders,” says James Anderson, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeless Services. “While we’ve made a series of quality improvements around maintenance and safety, and will continue to do so, the thrust of our efforts is focused on deeper, more comprehensive reforms. We’re trying to get it right, rather than get it fast.”

ONE PLACE TO GO

To Ann Duggan, a homeless advocate, one remedy would involve opening more places where families with children can apply for shelter. The Giuliani administration instituted the single entry point, arguing it would improve efficiency.

"Maybe it makes sense sitting in front of a computer screen having everybody go to the same spot to access services," said Duggan, "but from a frontline perspective or from the homeless family's perspective, it . . . actually makes access to the system much more difficult."

Confronted with crowding at the Bronx center, State Supreme Court Justice Helen Freedman in 2002 suggested the city consider reopening the Queens and Manhattan intake facilities. Linda Gibbs, commissioner of homeless services, rejected the proposal, saying she was "sticking to the long-term plan," which emphasizes efforts to put people in permanent housing.

And so the homeless must make the trek to the Bronx, no matter how inconvenient. Kim Berrios worked as a dental assistant in Staten Island, and her son Jonathan Garcia attended a school there that provided him with a special education program. But they had to go to the Bronx to get shelter. In a documentary made by the Coalition for the Homeless, Berrios explains how she had to take two trains, the ferry and a bus to get to Jonathan's school and then take another bus from the school to her job. At the end of the day, they had to reverse their steps to return to the Bronx. Such treks force children to miss school and adults to be away from work.

And the trip is not just a one-time thing. The city places many families in temporary housing night after night, requiring that they return to the Emergency Assistance Unit repeatedly before they are assigned something more permanent.

SLEEPING ON THE FLOOR

Though now the practice has stopped, for a long time, the emergency assistance unit, unable to accommodate all those seeking shelter, had reportedly allowed families to sleep on chairs, benches and floors in the Bronx office. This was in clear violation of the law, a fact the city acknowledged by reportedly agreeing to pay each of the estimated 12,500 families who slept at the unit since January 1995, at $150 for each night they were forced to stay at the facility. According to the New York Post, the payout could total as much as $10 million.

THE BUREAUCRACY

When a family turns to the assistance unit for help, they meet with a worker who begins processing the family's application. All family members must be present or the family must go through the process all over again.

The Department of Homeless Services suggests that families provide documentation to explain why they are homeless, such as eviction papers, letters from landlords or documents from doctors indicating that a former apartment may no longer be appropriate. They must also prove that they are indeed a family by showing documents such as birth certificates, legal custody papers, marriage licenses, or certification as partners. To be eligible for housing, families must receive or apply for public assistance, and workers are on hand to help with the application process if necessary.

In 1995, the city narrowed its definition of homeless, according to the National Housing Law Project. As part of this, the assistance unit deems ineligible families that have been doubling up with friends or relatives. The city made this move to prevent families that already had a place to live from using the system to get new housing.

At the end of the process, the family should be told whether they have been found eligible for service. Attempts are then made to place them first in a shelter and finally into permanent housing. To stay in the system, families must apply for programs such as housing subsidies, actively seek permanent housing and accept suitable housing if and when it is offered.

Many families do not meet all the qualifications, at least in the view of the Department of Homeless Services. About half are denied shelter, according to Markee.

"The policy of restricting access to the shelter system, " said Duggan, "is based on the premise that people are accessing shelter who don't need shelter. And so you make it very, very difficult for people."

Anderson says the city is looking to ways to make lasting reforms that will “fundamentally improve . . . intake and eligibility process.” Key to this effort is the report of a Special Masters panel, appointed as a result of a settlement between the city and the Legal Aid Society. The panel, whose report is expected within a few months, will look at ways to prevent homelessness and to provide housing. It will also consider ways to improve the Emergency Assistance Unit – and to correct problems that have existed for decades.


Related Articles:
New Rules for the Homeless by Kristen Hinman
Grand Central Winter: Stories From The Street

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Is Congress About To Shake Up Job Training?


Since 1999, 235,000 would-be workers have entered the New York City workforce. The city has lost 240,000 jobs since 2000. As a result, at least half a million New Yorkers could have used help in getting a job since the Workforce Investment Act was passed in 1998. Instead, the law has expired without making a dent in the city’s economic problems, in part because the city dragged its feet on job training and employment services until Rudolph Giuliani left office in 2002.

New York City’s “wildly inconsistent policy swings have given ammunition to critics of job training across the country,” according to the Center for an Urban Future (in pdf format). Until last year, New York City had only a single “one-stop center” located in Queens. Unlike other cities, our Workforce Investment Board plays a minimal role in determining the use of federal job training funds, which are tightly controlled by the mayor.

Congress is about to pass a new version of the Workforce Investment Act, after separate bills already passed by the House and Senate are reconciled in conference. The decisions embodied in the final reauthorization bill could change the lives of New Yorkers who lose their jobs or move from welfare to work, young people trying to find their first jobs, and employers dealing with staff turnover or the need for workers with scarce skills.

What The Workforce Investment Act Was Supposed to Do

The 1998 law was meant to centralize access to employment and training services in “one-stop centers” where jobseekers could find all the services they needed, and to make sure that training matched the needs of employers by giving business a strong role in shaping it. Certain eligible clients could choose an educational or training program, with advice from a career counselor, and the government would pay their tuition.

How The Workforce Investment Act Has Played Out in New York City

In 2002, New York City spent about $97 million in federal workforce development funds. Its Workforce1 program offers 97 career centers, of which three are full-service one-stop centers. In April of 2002, the city launched an advertising campaign to publicize the centers and their career services. The city also operates a hotline (1-866-JOBS-NYC) and website for job hunters and employers.

These efforts have been hampered by the economic downturn accentuated by the World Trade Center disaster. The unemployment rate for the five-borough area averaged 7.7 percent from July 2001 through June 2003, meaning that in any given month between 200,000 and 300,000 residents were unemployed. During the same two-year period, the city’s Department of Employment enrolled 21,644 new adults in its dislocated worker program, and placed 10,042 participants in jobs. Over one-fourth of the participants hired had lost their jobs within three months.

Sequential Eligibility Limits Training For Experienced Workers

Under current law, participants in one-stop activities must exhaust job placement possibilities before they can receive training. This policy encourages jobseekers to take low-paying jobs requiring minimal skills rather than upgrade their skills to qualify for better jobs. Neither the House nor the Senate explicitly eliminated “sequential eligibility,” in their reauthorization bills, but each of them modified the language of the bill to allow a broader interpretation of which clients can be approved for training services.

Workforce Investment Boards Have Not Been Guiding Employment Service Decisions

Members of these boards have found themselves bogged down in administrative details, and thus unable to concentrate on substantive policy decisions, which are instead made by government officials. The House and Senate bills do not address this issue, except in reducing the number of mandatory members who must be represented on local boards. Eliminating one-stop partner agencies as voting members may reduce the amount of time that boards devote to discussing day-to-day operations.

One-Stop Centers Do Not Get Their Own Funding

Each center has to negotiate written agreements with 17 mandatory partners, such as trade organizations, colleges, and community organizations, that they will provide money or other resources to support the center’s activities. Potential partners are not always willing or able to commit resources to one-stop centers.

Both the House and the Senate have addressed funding for the one-stop centers by giving governors power to redirect funds from partner agencies to one-stop centers. The Senate bill also gives localities the option to negotiate agreements with partner agencies spelling out their financial commitments, as long as agreements are signed by July 2004.

Reporting Requirements Keep Competent Providers Out Of The System

To be certified to receive funding from the Workforce Investment Act, education and training providers must collect a bewildering array of data about their students. If tuition for one student in a program is paid for by the law, a school must report on all students in that program, including those not funded by the law. This is a costly process, which includes following up on graduates months after they have left the program. For some organizations, such reporting also violates their students’ right to privacy.

The Senate bill relieves trainers of the responsibility for tracking outcomes for program participants who are not funded by the Workforce Investment Act. Both the House and the Senate bills reduce the number of mandatory performance indicators that must be collected, and modify their use by taking into account economic conditions and characteristics of participants that might hold them back from finding good jobs.

The House bill uses an efficiency measure—the average cost of serving each participant—as a factor in certification of training providers. Unless cost measures take into account the varying needs of clients, they may shut out trainers serving the very people who require the most assistance to get and retain jobs. The Senate bill does not consider cost efficiency in the certification process.

Employers Are Not Using The System To Hire Or Train Staff

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce found that only 35 percent of small businesses knew about their local One-Stop center, and four out of five employers surveyed by the Chamber of Commerce had not used the system in the previous year. The majority of the same employers reported that they had a hard time finding qualified people to hire.

The Senate bill requires a dedicated business liaison at each One-Stop center; this was one of the practices recommended by the General Accounting Office in a study of successful centers. Both the House and the Senate bills would allow centers to place more emphasis on services aimed specifically at businesses, such as training for their existing staff.

The Block Grant Threats Funding Levels

The White House sought to combine three workforce development funding streams into a single block grant. Opponents argue that block granting these funds would make it easier to quietly reduce them in future years, and would set the target populations of the three programs in competition with one another. The House bill incorporated the block grant proposal, while the Senate bill preserved separate funding streams for the 5-year life of the bill.

Will Extended Unemployment Benefits Be Renewed?

Even before the Workforce Investment Act is reauthorized, New York’s Senator Hillary Clinton has pledged to bring before Congress an issue of more immediate concern to her unemployed constituents. The Temporary Extended Unemployment Compensation program expired on December 31, 2003, meaning that continued benefits are no longer available to job hunters still unemployed after 26 weeks. Clinton is urging Congress to authorize an additional 26 weeks of unemployment benefits, but is also supporting a bill that would limit the extension of benefits to 13 weeks.

Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Food Stamps Not Reaching Everybody Who Deserves Them


Over 800,000 New York City residents who are entitled to food stamps are not receiving them, according to a leading community-based advocate for the poor, the Community Food Resource Center. Some of the fault for this lies squarely with the city itself, according to several recent reports. New York City’s food stamp offices are not complying with federal law or even with the city’s own policies.

Working people, for example, must take time off of their jobs to apply for food assistance

Investigators from the Office of Public Advocate Betsy Gotbaum posed as applicants for food stamps, and were told that if they did not submit paperwork themselves, in person, it would probably be lost. This represents a failure to carry out federal law, which provides a number of ways that working people are allowed to apply for food stamps to avoid having to take time off of work. Interviews can be conducted by phone, another person can file the worker’s application, and applications can be submitted electronically or by mail or fax.

“At the front-line staff level,” explains Anat Jacobson of the Public Advocate’s Office, “it is not clear that the message has filtered down to do whatever you need to do to get food stamps into people’s hands.”

For example, one investigator was told that because she lived in Manhattan, she could not meet with a Bronx caseworker, although applications from residents of all boroughs are accepted at all centers.

UNPLANNED SHRINKAGE OF EXTENDED HOURS

The city attempts to provide evening and Saturday hours at four food stamp offices for people who work nine-to-five. However, staff do not always follow the official schedule at these sites. Investigators visited the four offices a total of ten times and found offices already closed, at least an hour ahead of time, on three visits. On the other visits, investigators were consistently told that they could not schedule evening appointments, and that evening appointments were never scheduled. At the Queens extended-hours site, an investigator was told that to enter the building after 5 p.m., an applicant needed to be accompanied by an employee, unless he or she had a referral slip from a caseworker.

Applicants cannot easily call ahead and verify that a center will be open, because investigators found that two out of three phone calls are not answered. Each borough has only one Human Resources Administration office that is open during extended hours (except for Staten Island, which has none), so for most applicants, these offices are not close to where they live or work, and it is inconvenient to make repeated visits until they catch the office while it is still open.

Once they enroll in the food stamp program, participants must re-certify four times a year, a process that the city insists on doing through face-to-face interviews. This poses more difficulties for working people who cannot schedule an interview during their off hours. Nearly two-thirds of employed New Yorkers with income below the poverty line receive no paid sick days or vacation days, according to a recent survey (in pdf format) by the Community Service Society.

OTHER BARRIERS TO ACCESS BY WORKING FAMILIES

The second report released recently, an audit by the United States Department of Agriculture, examined a sample of case records at a Bronx office. Auditors discovered several applicants who had been wrongly denied benefits, for such reasons as ineligibility for welfare—which is no longer required to get food stamps--and lack of a Social Security number.

A third report was released in September 2003 by the City Council, which also sent investigators posing as applicants. They found that some city workers failed to use a shortened application form that has been required under state law since June 30, 2003. They also found incorrect addresses and nonexistent offices listed on the city’s web site, and lack of applications and posted information about food stamps at several sites.

A check of New York City agency web sites on December 9, 2003 showed several errors that could make it hard for applicants to file paperwork. On the Human Resource Administration’s site, the list of Manhattan offices did not indicate which one has evening and Saturday hours. More problematic was the site for the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, which did not even tell viewers that there were offices with extended hours. The list of food stamp offices there was quite different from that of the Human Resources Administration; of the 20 addresses given, 8 had been identified as being incorrect in City Council investigative reports.

MAJOR IMPROVEMENTS IN THE PAST TWO YEARS

For individual applicants who are turned away from the food stamp office, each error, however minor, can mean days of hunger. However, the big picture shows that the Human Resources Administration has made substantial improvements in the last two years, which are acknowledged in all three reports.

The city fought for and welcomed the federal restoration of eligibility to many immigrants cut off from food stamps by the 1996 immigration reform legislation. The Human Resources Administration has translated program materials into nine languages, and hired 29 community-based organizations to help enroll immigrants.

When clients with disabilities leave welfare for Supplementary Security Income, food stamps can now follow them automatically. Similarly, when beneficiaries leave welfare because they have started working, they automatically continue receiving food stamps for five months, at which point they must file a new application.

A leading community-based advocate for the poor, the Community Food Resource Center, is under contract with the city to spread the word about the availability of food stamps. The center runs a Food Stamp Media Campaign that advertises food stamps through bus and subway signs, radio spots, and pamphlets. The agency also offers potential applicants a computerized pre-screening to find out whether they are likely to be eligible.

MORE NEW YORKERS ARE RECEIVING FOOD STAMPS

These efforts have paid off, with the October 2002 enrollment in food stamps up to 918,298, nearly a 10 percent increase over the previous October. Enrollment is finally back to levels last seen in 1999, when welfare reform was stripping people of food assistance when they lost cash benefits. This is still far below the 1995 peak enrollment.

Today, many welfare recipients have been replaced by the working poor on the food stamp rolls, as was intended by policy makers. Yet less than 17 percent of food stamp recipients in New York State are employed. In the United States overall, 28 percent of food stamp households report earnings. In some states the rate is much higher: 40 percent of Texas participants are employed, and the state actively encourages working families’ participation by conducting enrollment and re-certification interviews by telephone.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR CONTINUED IMPROVEMENT

The Public Advocate has made several recommendations to help low-income families get the food assistance to which they are entitled. Two would change current city policy: that food stamp applications be posted on the Internet, as federal law requires as of November 12, 2003; and that the city actively publicize alternatives to missing work to apply for food stamps.

Her other recommendations involve improved administration of existing policies: making sure that evening and Saturday appointments are truly available, retraining food stamp personnel in the alternative ways of accepting applications, and making sure that food stamp office employees working on Saturdays are qualified to meet client needs.

The City Council recommends that food stamp applications be made available in more government offices used by low-income people, such as public schools, Medicaid offices, and the drop-in centers run by the HIV/AIDS Services Administration.

BLOOMBERG ADMINISTRATION’S RESPONSE TO RECOMMENDATIONS

In December 2002, after a previous City Council report, the Executive Deputy Commissioner of the Human Resources Administration, Seth Diamond, testified that, “We regularly ask undercover workers to go to Job Centers, often late in the day, to seek to obtain an application and ensure that they will be seen that same day. While in the overwhelming number of cases individuals are told they will be seen the same day they apply, in the cases where the potential applicant is told they will not be seen, we have taken disciplinary action against the worker. This information is also used in our JobStat process for evaluating the performance of center directors.”

The Administration did not respond to an inquiry about whether its own investigators reported the same shortcomings as did the Public Advocate, the City Council, and the Department of Agriculture. The Office of the Public Advocate has not received a response from the Administration regarding its findings or recommendations. City officials did not attend a City Council hearing on food stamp access on November 24, 2003, and have not yet responded to written questions from the Council.

LOST OPPORTUNITY FOR ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

“The main point is that there are lots of people who could benefit from wider use of food stamps,” says Jacobson. “It’s not just for the people who need food on the table. They’re also an economic stimulus.”

The 800,000 New York City residents who are entitled to food stamps but not receiving them represents, at an average annual benefit of $1,100 per person, nearly a billion dollars in lost federal aid – money not spent in bodegas and local grocery stores.

Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



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