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Welfare Reform


Nicole Thomas, a 29-year-old mother of two, has been on and off welfare for years. With a tenth-grade education and a resume that includes jobs in fast food and retail, she knew she needed more education to find the kind of steady job that would enable her to support herself and her family. But when Thomas told city welfare officials she wanted to fulfill her mandatory 35-hour per week work requirement by attending a GED (high school equivalency) program, they informed her she could attend classes only two days a week, and had to spend the other three days working as a receptionist at a nursing home. Frustrated that the city's inflexibility would more than double the time she needed to get her GED, Thomas left the welfare-to-work program and started an internship at Families United for Racial and Economic Equality ("FUREE"), a grass-roots organization that supports increasing welfare recipients' access to training and education. While she worries this may jeopardize her welfare grant, she hopes to pass the high school equivalency examination soon and then find a job so she can leave welfare permanently.

The lives of people like Nicole Thomas were supposed to get easier, not harder under Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Unlike his predecessor, Mayor Bloomberg seemed to understand the importance of addressing barriers to employment rather than single-mindedly trying to reduce the welfare rolls. Advocates talked optimistically about the mayor's more open-minded approach to welfare reform.

But the Bloomberg administration has since reversed course, taking aim at programs to increase welfare recipients' access to education, training, and permanent jobs. That the mayor has done so through litigation is particularly ironic in light of his frequent criticisms of advocates for pressing their claims through the courts.

Last year, the mayor sued over a transitional jobs program law that would have required the city to create 2,500 jobs for welfare recipients at government agencies and not-for-profit organizations for one year to help them make the transition to permanent employment. The suit did not attack the program's merits, but claimed it was "preempted" by existing state legislation granting authority over jobs programs to the city's top social services official, a Bloomberg appointee. In May, a state court judge ruled in the mayor's favor and invalidated the law.

The mayor recently returned to court to challenge the Coalition for Access to Training and Education law, also known as CATE, passed by the city council in April over his veto. This law represents the culmination of efforts to create a viable alternative to dead-end workfare assignments. It allows welfare recipients to satisfy welfare work requirements, which can reach up to 35 hours per week, by engaging in education or training activities, including college classes, GED programs, vocational training, adult literacy, and ESL courses. Previously, participation in these activities remained within the discretion of city welfare officials, who often resisted any alternatives to typical job search and workfare assignments. The mayor's legal complaint does not challenge the basic assumptions behind the law but rather boils down to a turf dispute with city council over who should determine welfare policy.

Experts widely agree that education and job training provide the best opportunity for people to leave welfare for lives of independence and self-sufficiency. Eighty-seven percent of welfare recipients in New York City who graduated from a four-year college stayed off welfare. While conservative policymakers tout the value of even the most menial labor, typical workfare assignments like sweeping streets and cleaning parks rarely lead to permanent employment in today's high-tech, service-oriented economy. In New York City, over 75 percent of employers require at least two years of college for any entry level job. Also, work requirements have previously served as a tool to cut people from the rolls for missed appointments or other forms of supposed non-compliance. While the rolls have dropped significantly in the city since the late 1990s, it is far from clear that welfare reform has actually reduced poverty. Education, along with employment skills and child care assistance, remain leading barriers to permanent employment. Of those remaining on welfare in New York City, over 50 percent lack a high school diploma or GED.

When Ramona Ledesma, who is originally from the Dominican Republic, applied for welfare she felt she understood better than anyone what had prevented her from finding a permanent job. But welfare officials immediately forced her to split her time between a workfare program and job-preparation classes. It never occurred to them, she recounted in her testimony before the city council, that the first step to prepare her for work was to enable her to learn English. To make matters worse, her case was closed twice due to administrative error, requiring her to start the process from the beginning each time.

In part, Mayor Bloomberg's rigid view of work requirements reflects a broader shift at the national level. Even before President Bill Clinton promised to "end welfare as we know it," the federal government had been seeking to reduce dependency by shifting the emphasis from welfare to work. A 1988 federal law imposed a comprehensive scheme of mandatory work requirements on welfare recipients, though the law also favored training and education programs over workfare. The real change came with the welfare reform act of 1996, formally entitled the "Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act." This act replaced the federal entitlement to cash assistance with a block grant to states and imposed a system of strict work requirements on recipients. While it permits states to choose whether college courses and other education programs can be applied towards an individual's work requirement, the act simultaneously prohibits states from counting those individuals in satisfying their mandatory overall state-wide participation rates.

Federal law still allows for innovative programs like the city's access to education and training law because at most 50 percent of the total welfare recipients in a social service district must currently participate in a work program -- and less if, as in New York, a state has earned credit for reducing its overall caseload by a specified level. Still, as a result of changes in federal law and the city's response, the number of welfare recipients in college has declined from over 25,000 in 1995 to under 5,000 today.

Despite the new jargon about "personal responsibility," trying to solve poverty by making poor people work is hardly innovative. Under the poor laws of seventeenth century England, assistance was limited to the "deserving" poor, a category consisting mainly of the old and infirm. Able-bodied indigents who refused to work could be convicted of vagrancy, confined to a workhouse, or publicly whipped. This moralistic and punitive view of poverty helped shape the development of welfare in America. According to Mimi Abramovitz, a professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work and expert on social welfare policy, opposing measures like the access to training and education law, "punishes single mothers for being single mothers." Although today's "work first" initiative portrays itself as inculcating welfare recipients with a good work ethic, it fails to provide the corresponding skills, education, and access to permanent jobs they need to succeed.

Then there is the old unwritten rule that those receiving public assistance must remain worse off than those with jobs. If welfare benefits were competitive even with minimum-wage salaries, so the argument goes, people would lose their incentive to work. By extension, single mothers would be getting an unfair advantage over the working poor if they received a free government handout while taking college courses or learning English as a second language.

Making welfare recipients work rather than improving their access to training and education has a further advantage, at least to the private sector. "By increasing the competition for unskilled, low-wage jobs, work requirements help keep wages down and labor costs low," says Abramovitz.

Mayor Bloomberg, who ordinarily opts for pragmatism over ideology, has recently adopted conservative slogans about the uplifting value of work that bear little relation to the hard evidence about workfare programs. A recent report by the Brookings Institution observes that only nine percent of those who enrolled in New York City's main workfare program found unsubsidized employment.

The mayor has expressed concern that local training and education laws could place the city in jeopardy of losing federal welfare dollars if work requirements are tightened when Congress takes up reauthorization of the 1996 act later this year. Yet the access to education and training law itself explicitly avoids that problem by requiring that participation rates remain within existing mandates. Nor does the city's current fiscal crisis justify the mayor's opposition towards the transitional jobs program, which was overwhelmingly funded by the federal and state government, with the city contributing only $4 million of the total estimated $50 million cost.

While work requirements have become a permanent part of the American welfare system, true reform will rely not on slogans but on innovative policies that address the real obstacles to permanent employment confronting welfare recipients.

Jonathan Hafetz is a public interest lawyer formerly with the Partnership for the Homeless

 

The Mayor's Plan To "Streamline" Social Services


In the relief at Mayor Michael Bloomberg's decision to restore some of the cuts he originally proposed to social services, the spotlight has shifted off proposals that may influence the field long after next year's budget is forgotten.

In his Executive Budget, the mayor proposed to "streamline" city social services by moving a number of programs from one agency to another. The best publicized proposal involved reorganizing AIDS services, by folding the Mayor's Office for AIDS Policy into the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, and contracting out case management services now done by the HIV/AIDS Services Administration. After well-organized opposition and civil disobedience, advocates have approached the City Council about making the AIDS office a permanent unit of city government.

But there are many other units and services that will still move from one agency to another under the plan. This restructuring is meant to save money, but its potential effects on city spending -- as well as on clients and the local economy -- are unpredictable. Since in New York City, only one percent of the social service workforce is on the government payroll, it is the nonprofit social service agencies -- which get nearly two-thirds of their revenue from government grants and contracts -- that are most worried about the restructuring.

"I don't get the feeling that the city has put a lot of thought into the restructuring," says City Project's Bonnie Brower.

EMPLOYMENT SERVICES

Under the mayor's plan, the Department of Employment would be eliminated, and its services transferred to the Human Resources Administration. Public services are shaped by the agencies that control them. When job training comes out of a welfare agency, it is managed by a staff used to making clients prove that they deserve public benefits. This is not the mindset needed to encourage unemployed and underemployed New Yorkers at every level of income and education to use job-related services-the mandated use of funding from the federal Workforce Investment Act, which pays for most job training contracts.

The one exception to this shift is the Summer Youth Employment Program, which would go to the Department of Youth and Community Development. Providers of summer youth employment services may prefer dealing with the youth agency to waiting out the Department of Employment's delays: 96 percent of that agency's contracts were registered late in 2002.There is a possibility that the city will decide to move adult employment services to the Department of Business Services instead, which would demonstrate recognition that a well-prepared workforce is an economic asset. However, the Department of Business Services managed only $25 million worth of contracts last year, and may not have the capacity to abruptly add at least four times that amount to its responsibilities.

HUMAN RESOURCES ADMINISTRATION

The Human Resources Administration would take over many tasks currently performed by other agencies. For example, it would take over substance abuse services from the Department of Health and Mental Health; would take over child support enforcement from the Administration for Children's Services; and would take over the tasks of determining who is eligible for subsidized day care services, assistance with heating bills, and a home care program.

The restructuring plan would thus give the Human Resources Administration control over who receives several services that are not targeted to welfare recipients.

THE ELDERLY

The 105 senior centers that are located in New York City Housing Authority projects, about one-fourth of those citywide, would become programs of the Housing Authority, rather than of the Department for the Aging.

Instead of dealing with the Department for the Aging, elderly people in need of home care and the Home Energy Assistance Program would deal with welfare workers, as would low-income working parents seeking affordable day care.

AFTER-SCHOOL PROGRAMS

After-school programs would be transferred to the Department of Youth and Community Development, from both the Administration for Children's Services and the Department of Education. If after-school programs move from the Administration for Children's Services, with only 61 percent of its contracts registered late in 2002, to the Department of Youth and Community Development, with 86 percent of its contracts registered late that year, they may face longer delays.

The Department of Youth and Community Development would have to manage a sharp increase in its volume of contracts, a prospect advocates find unsettling. The logistics of the after-school contract transfer are not clear: many providers have one contract covering both pre-school children -- whose care would remain under the Administration for Children's Services -- and school-age children, whose care would shift to the youth agency. "Now they're going to rip out the school-age part of it, and we're not being told how," says Susan Stamler, of United Neighborhood Houses, whose settlement house members run a variety of human services. "It's wreaking havoc among providers."

Stamler's agency has recommended that the city maintain the quality and comprehensiveness of any after-school programs transferred, and develop an orderly process before any transition begins. "We're extremely concerned about avoiding disruptions during the school year."

Irma Rodriguez of Forest Hills Community House points out that the two agencies operate differently. "DYCD programs are typically based on a calendar year. ACS is based on the parents' year. They [ACS] understand the dynamics of working parents and their schedules."

Amid all the technicalities, the human dimension of contracted services can be forgotten. Susan Stamler brings the discussion back to the purpose of city-funded after-school programs: "Parents need to know their children are getting safe, reliable care that they can get to in their communities." Anything less will mean streamlining has gone too far.

Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.

Threatened Change To HIV/AIDS Services


The drug regimen that has changed AIDS from a death sentence to a chronic disease for many New Yorkers requires patients to follow a complicated daily routine, which they do at a far higher rate than patients with other diagnoses comply with their medical instructions. AIDS and HIV patients do what they are supposed to 70 percent of the time, while other patients do so only about half the time. Unfortunately, to be effective, HIV treatment regimens require 95 percent compliance, a level nearly impossible to maintain without a clear mind, stable housing, adequate food and cooking facilities, and consistent coverage for medical care and prescriptions.

That is why AIDS activists see social and support services as a crucial factor in the health of people with AIDS, and why they so bitterly criticize Mayor Michael Bloomberg for his proposals to change Local Law 49, which governs the city agency known as the HIV/AIDS Services Administration.

WHO USES THE CITY’S HIV/AIDS SUPPORT SERVICES?

The city’s HIV/AIDS Services Administration’s 31,000 primary caseload includes the majority of New Yorkers with AIDS, plus a small number of those with HIV infection only. Over 14,000 family members of people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS also receive certain HIV/AIDS Services Administration services: counseling on daily living skills, housing—if they live with the HIV-positive person —and if their relative dies, bereavement counseling and help in finding non-AIDS-related housing.

Not all people with AIDS need HIV/AIDS Services Administration’s help. With therapeutic drugs, some are able to continue working, maintaining insurance that covers their treatment, including medication. Others receive long-term disability payments through private insurance provided by former employers. However, all but the wealthiest people with AIDS face the possibility that they may eventually become too sick to work, and/or outlive their savings or other resources.

AIDS is most prevalent among people who are already poor, but it also makes middle-class people poor. It forces them to cut back on work or quit their jobs, pay extraordinarily high bills for prescription drugs—which are rarely completely covered by health insurance—and cope with unpredictable symptoms. The diagnosis alone creates emotional turmoil, sometimes requiring mental health treatment. Newly-diagnosed parents must decide whether or not to tell their children, who should care for the children if a parent dies, and how to juggle medical appointments, child care, and financial commitments.

A 1997 study by the national Centers for Disease Control found that people receiving care for HIV-related disease were twice as likely as others to be unemployed, to have household incomes below $25,000 per year, and to have either public insurance, such as Medicaid, or no health insurance at all. For low-income HIV-positive New Yorkers, government benefits (not necessarily health care) can be the most crucial life support system.

BLOOMBERG’S PROPOSALS TARGET HIV/AIDS OFFICE AND SERVICES

Mayor Bloomberg has announced his intention to seek unspecified changes in Local Law 49, so that the city can provide more help for women and more job training for clients wanting to return to work. However, changing the law could also remove legal limits to the number of clients per caseworker, and to how long the administration can take to deliver benefits. Opponents of this proposal believe that the mayor’s real goal is to weaken the law, so that his proposed budget actions would no longer violate it.

Under the mayor’s executive budget for Fiscal 2004, 29 HIV/AIDS Services Administration case manager positions would be eliminated, case management services for all clients would be privatized, and city funds for HIV-prevention services for communities of color would be eliminated, Under the more drastic “doomsday” scenario, each contractor providing supportive housing for people with HIV/AIDS would take a 10 percent funding cut, affecting 4,000 residents with HIV/AIDS. Also, the city would eliminate all government benefits case management, public and private, for people with HIV/AIDS.

AIDS activists are vigorously protesting these policies. “People are disappointed that we have to do the same thing we were doing with Giuliani,” said Terri Smith-Caronia of Housing Works, an AIDS service and advocacy organization. “At least Giuliani came out and said ‘I hate poor people, I hate the disabled.’ Bloomberg is far more disingenuous, more dangerous.”

The executive budget also proposes that the Mayor’s Office of AIDS Policy Coordination be folded into the health department.

“The implications are huge,” explained Smith-Caronia. “Having this office affirms to the world that this city has a commitment to develop a coordinated policy on AIDS. The Mayor’s Office is a hair’s breadth above all the other agencies that deal with AIDS, so it can make sure the city doesn’t waste federal dollars on duplicating services across departments.”

THE NEED FOR MORE COORDINATION IN THE HIV/AIDS SERVICE SYSTEM

In February 2003, the Center for an Urban Future released a critique of the New York City HIV/AIDS service system, in which author Julie Hantman detailed how the lack of coordinated, objective planning has produced a glut of some social support services and a shortage of others, with a disproportionate share of nonprofit services being located in Manhattan. Of the 250-odd nonprofit organizations providing one or more HIV/AIDS-related services, only 15 offer a full selection at a single site. The rest advocate for “one-stop shopping” for public benefits at the HIV/AIDS Services Administration, but are themselves fragments in a labyrinth of community-based social services. It is just as difficult for a person with nausea, fever, and dementia to travel between multiple nonprofit agencies for mental health care, case management, substance abuse treatment, and food pantry bundles, as it is for them to travel between HRA offices to coordinate welfare benefits, Medicaid, and food stamps.

The term “case management” can refer to coordination of different kinds of services. Medical case managers coordinate health care services. Case managers at community-based organizations coordinate services ranging from housing and food to substance abuse and mental health treatment. For consumers who are poor enough, the HIV/AIDS Services Administration’s staff performs government benefits case management, coordinating public assistance, Social Security Disability benefits, Supplemental Security Income, Medicaid, food stamps, and emergency food and housing assistance.

AIDS activists are critical of the city’s use of federal housing funds to pay the salaries of HIV/AIDS Services Administration employees. “This is $50 million that was meant to be used to build housing for people with AIDS,” says Jennifer Flynn of the New York City AIDS Housing Network. However, she does not support privatizing or eliminating HIV/AIDS Services Administration case management in order to free up federal funds for AIDS housing. According to Flynn, the administration’s case managers are unique, in that as city workers, they are authorized to decide whether applicants are eligible for government benefits and to issue checks, food stamp cards, and other concrete benefits.

“State law requires that it be a state or local district employee that decides eligibility,” she points out, noting that this function could not be performed by private agency employees, but would revert to regular welfare eligibility workers. Those workers lack expertise in AIDS issues, and carry far higher caseloads than the maximum of 34 allowed under Local Law 49 for HIV/AIDS Services Administration caseworkers.

THE MEDICAL IMPACT OF UNMET SOCIAL NEEDS

A diagnosis of symptomatic HIV illness or AIDS entitles HIV/AIDS Services Administration consumers to individualized service planning, financial counseling, support counseling, referrals to private service providers, and child custody planning. Staff can make home and hospital visits, and are mandated to try to find consumers who have dropped out of services -- although the administration does not claim to continue searching for them for the full 90 days required under Local Law 49. In theory, applicants with sufficient income are charged program fees and/or part of their rent.

The majority of people with AIDS in New York City rely on the HIV/AIDS Services Administration for financial assistance with their housing costs, often in the form of rent subsidies. The administration receives about 100 requests a day for emergency housing placement. This reflects the findings of a survey by New York City’s HIV Planning Council, in which more than half of HIV-positive people surveyed named housing as their major need.

Researchers interviewed patients at a Bronx HIV Clinic about factors influencing compliance with antiretroviral treatment. In January 2003, Jane Simoni, lead investigator, noted that the most common reasons given for not taking medications were forgetting to do so and negative side effects. Depression and social isolation also made it less likely that patients would comply with treatment regimens.

At least 27 percent of New Yorkers diagnosed with HIV/AIDS as of March 2003 were intravenous drug users. A national study of HIV-positive patients found that over a 6-month period in 1996, over 60 percent used substance abuse treatment or mental health services. But there is a shortage of affordable mental health services and substance abuse treatment for New Yorkers who are HIV-positive, especially for those who need both.

Bloomberg has not announced any changes in his proposed cuts to HIV/AIDS services since the state legislature took action to pass a state budget more favorable to New York City than the governor’s version. On April 30, protestors marched across the Brooklyn Bridge to demonstrate opposition to the HIV/AIDS cuts. Activists were arrested following a demonstration on May 8 just outside the mayor’s “bullpen” office on the second floor of City Hall , and additional civil disobedience is planned.

Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.

Big Stakes for the Elderly in Budget Battles


Many older people rely on assistance beyond medical care and Social Security, but governments are mandated to supply almost nothing else. When the mayor and governor look for places to cut spending, services for the aging are therefore especially vulnerable. The shortage of support services that could keep older people at home sends them to nursing homes instead, where the New York State average cost of $73,000 a year buys a greatly reduced quality of life.

OLD AGE IS DIFFERENT IN NEW YORK

Being old in New York City is not like being old in the rest of the United States: you are less likely to be getting Social Security and much more likely to be poor. The percent of over-65 New Yorkers living in poverty rose to over 17 percent during the 1990's, while nationally it dropped to 10 pecent. Within the elderly population, African-American, Asian and Latino elders are poorer than their white peers. As people of color form a bigger share of the aging population-they are now 43 percent of New York City's elderly-the overall income level of their age group falls. (For more information on the elderly population, see Gotham Gazette's "New York City's Elderly,")

MORE NEW YORKERS LIVE ALONE AS THEY AGE

New York City's elderly are more than three times as likely to live alone as their peers nationwide, even though more New Yorkers have disabilities. Half the senior citizens living alone in the city are surviving on $10,450 or less a year.

Researchers have found that impoverished elders who live in poor Manhattan neighborhoods are twice as likely to live alone as their peers in wealthy neighborhoods, according to a report by the International Longevity Center-USA. This is surprising, because low-income neighborhoods are home to more Latinos and African-Americans, who have traditionally relied on family members to care for their aging. It is possible that the gentrification of nearly all Manhattan neighborhoods is reducing options for low-income families to make room for elderly members. In the outer boroughs, nearly two-thirds of elders live with their families, as they do in the rest of the state, according to one report [pdf file].

THE HOUSING SHORTAGE CREATES A NEED FOR SERVICES

The shortage of affordable housing in New York City is responsible for much of the need for social services for the elderly. In many cases, apartments are too small for aging parents to move in with children, or for old people living alone to offer room and board to an aide in return for everyday assistance. As deteriorating health limits their ability to climb stairs, elderly tenants of walkup apartments can be cut off from shopping, socializing, and other activities taken for granted when they were younger.

Aging tenants can't always move to a larger apartment, or one in an elevator building. Rent regulation protects long-term tenants who stay in place, but penalizes those who move by sharply increasing their rent. Rent-controlled apartments, which are like gold in this city, require tenants to have lived in them since 1969 (or inherited them) in order to maintain their low rents. Most rent-controlled tenants are now old; according to the Eastern Paralyzed Veterans Association, such tenants have an average income of $15,000 a year.

SHIFTING COSTS TO THE MEDICAL SYSTEM

Services for the elderly are concentrated at the two extremes of health. For the healthy, there are group activities at senior centers. If you have a moderate income as well as good health, New York City is an ideal place to be over 65 and retired: you don't need to drive, restaurants deliver meals for no extra charge, and there are free cultural events nearly every day. For the very ill or frail, there are intensive medical care and nursing homes.

In general, people who are over 65 are healthy most of the time. They can usually recover from illness or injury, and go back to their homes, if they receive enough support. The help they need is largely what families and neighbors used to provide: keeping track of finances, cooking meals, buying groceries, and other tasks that require no medical training. A common pattern is for the needs of an elderly person to rise in gradual stages: every year, a few more hours of help might be needed each week.

People aged 85 and older form the fastest growing portion of New York's population of the elderly; they are also the age group needing the most assistance. For those who cannot be completely independent, yet don't need round-the-clock nursing home care, there are few affordable sources of assistance. Most of those are embedded in the Medicaid system, with financial and medical standards of need so arcane that it takes a specialist to fill out the application for services, which come in rigid packages not easily tailored to individual needs. For instance, in-home assistants may be authorized to only do certain tasks: helping with bathing, but not dishwashing; accompanying the client on errands, but not giving medicine. Aides generally work four-hour shifts, up to three days a week, even when clients might prefer an hour of help every day.

It is hard to determine how many people are winding up in hospitals or nursing homes for lack of simple help. Linda Leest, executive director of Services Now for Adult Persons, gives an example. "Transportation is key in eastern Queens," she says. Her agency's vans do more than a commercial car service would. "We'll not only walk people from the van to the door, but we also have an escort program. We'll send someone to go into the bank with them. It can make the whole difference as to whether a person can keep living at home."

SERVICES FOR THOSE WHO DON'T QUALIFY FOR MEDICAID

Assisted living facilities offer a combination of independent apartments with medical and social services. However, the only people who can use them are those who can afford to pay thousands of dollars a month, with no reimbursement from Medicare or Medicaid. Bobbie Sackman, of the Council of Senior Centers and Services, warns potential residents that "There's no legal definition of what they have to provide, no regulations, so people are getting ripped off. They don't know what their money is buying -- how long they can stay, what services they'll get.

"What's really needed is housing with services," she explains. This means funds for home-based care, like that mandated by state law under the Extended In-Home Services for the Elderly Program. This provides case management, housekeeping, personal care, shopping assistance, bill paying, medication management and other forms of assistance to older, frail clients who are not eligible for Medicaid. Governor Pataki has proposed changing state law to end this mandate, merge Extended In-Home Services with another program, and cut the funds for both. The program can't keep up with demand in its current incarnation: it has a waiting list of 6,000 applicants.

NOT GETTING WHAT THEY ARE ENTITLED TO

Like most social workers at senior centers, Edna Souels advises clients about how to get benefits that can solve their problems. "They don't always know they are eligible," she says. Almost half of the seniors who have disabilities making them eligible for Supplemental Security Insurance payments are not receiving them. Two-thirds of the elderly who are eligible for food stamps don't get them. Even the Senior Citizen Rent Increase Exemption is not claimed by two-thirds of low-income elderly tenants in rent-regulated buildings who could use it to avoid rent increases.

Reasons for this include not only lack of information about benefits, but also the stigma attached to programs for low-income people. In 1990, only nine percent of Latino seniors used senior centers, 12 percent used home care, and four percent used visiting nurse services. Only one-half of eligible Latino elderly receive Supplemental Security Income, and 41 percent use food stamps. They are more likely to use Medicaid --- 74 percent of those eligible do -- because there is less stigma attached to it, since family members often use public hospitals. This is much higher than the use of Medicaid by all eligible elders in the city, which is just 40 percent.

The 1996 welfare reform laws added a new complication: the need to prove citizenship or legal immigration status to qualify for most benefits. Older people born in the United States, as well as those who are naturalized citizens or legal immigrants, may not have the right kind of records and be unable to prove their status. Individual senior citizens may have lost vital papers over the years, or forgotten where they are stored.

OUT OF SIGHT, OUT OF THE BUDGET?

When the city proposes closing senior centers, most people think of lunchrooms and bingo games. These are the visible side of the centers' work; they also care for elders who cannot leave their homes to attend group activities. Meals on Wheels, a joint public-private effort, delivers food to the homes of 17,000 low-income seniors a year; most of its meals are cooked in the kitchens of senior centers. The New York Public Interest Group has estimated that for every two elderly clients receiving Meals on Wheels, another nine qualify for this service, but are not getting it. The waiting list consistently averages about 500 people.

Older people can easily become socially isolated. Edna Souels, of Crown Heights Senior Services, spends much of her time counseling troubled clients. "Some of them have family problems-; their children aren't so good to them. A lot of them have depression." They rely on Souels for the understanding that younger people might get from a psychotherapist. "They don't go to mental health services much," she says.

Some senior centers send volunteers to visit clients who are unable to go out; others offer "telephone reassurance". Linda Leest, at Services Now for Adult Persons, is making innovative use of telephone conference calls for the homebound elderly. "We'll get eight to ten of them on the line, and they'll have a discussion group," she says. "We also have specialty groups: one is for bingo, and another is a choral group. They sing songs from when they were in high school."

This kind of activity doesn't lend itself to counting and evaluation; it's not tangible, like a bed in a nursing home. However, the lack of a rational system of in-home care is responsible for much of the huge cost of Medicaid today. If the few services that have taken root are cut off now, we will soon feel their absence in higher medical bills, not to mention the price that will be paid by those who end up in nursing homes.

Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.

Governor's Proposed Budget Bad News For Low-Income New Yorkers


The budget proposed by George George Pataki for the state fiscal year that starts on April 1, 2003 is bad news for low-income New Yorkers.

The state predicts a 5.3 percent increase in the public assistance caseload; the increase may be much higher unless the State Legislature makes major changes to the governor's proposals.

Ron Deutsch, of the Statewide Emergency Network for Social and Economic Security, notes that the Pataki budget "eliminates a variety of initiatives that the governor has credited with helping people transition off of welfare and into the workforce."

KEEPING PEOPLE OUT OF JOBS

The shortage of affordable child care discourages parents from working, results in lost jobs due to child-care emergencies, and prepares the next generation for failure in school and the job market. The governor's budget maintains the current number of subsidized slots -- 183,400 -- but does nothing for the 29,000 families on waiting lists for child care placements. Day care subsidies for students at city and state public colleges would be eliminated, giving low-income parents a strong incentive not to continue their studies.

It costs an average of over $8,000 a year to send a four-year-old to a day care center. A parent working 40 hours a week at minimum wage can earn $10,712 a year. Without subsidized care, children in low-wage families miss out on the educational experiences that give their richer peers a head start in school.

Even for adults, basic education has become a controversial topic. Studies show that half of the adults on welfare have no high school diploma, and that this limits their ability to earn a living wage. Last year, the New York State legislature passed a bill allowing public assistance recipients to spend 16 hours a week in basic educational activities, while counting that time toward their 35-hour weekly work requirement. In December 2002, the governor vetoed this bill, in part because Mayor Michael Bloomberg lobbied against it. On March 13, 2003, the mayor vetoed a similar bill, Intro 93-A, offering education and training activities to welfare recipients.

With New York City's unemployment rate at 8.6 percent in January 2003, more local residents are competing for low-paying positions, increasing the need for affordable day care, and raising the bar for jobhunters' qualifications. Unemployment is not a major concern in Albany: last year, 97 percent of the net statewide job loss occurred within the five boroughs of New York City.

For city teenagers, unemployment is much higher, preventing most from getting work experience during and after high school. Last year, the Summer Youth Employment Program paid the salaries of 36,000 young workers. The governor has eliminated all funds for summer jobs from his proposed budget.

DARING THE STATE LEGISLATURE TO FIND DOLLARS FOR EMPLOYMENT AND TRAINING SERVICES

Every year, the legislature adds money to the governor's proposed budget to pay for programs it considers particularly important. A year later, the governor proposes a new budget that cuts out much of what was added by the legislature. This exercise contributes to the perennial lateness of the adopted budget.

Governor Pataki would prefer to give money for employment and training directly to local officials, without requiring them to fund any specific programs. In recent years, the legislature has diverted some of the governor's lump-sum proposals into specific employment-related programs which, once again, the Pataki budget proposal eliminates. They include transportation assistance, screening and services for domestic violence victims, wage subsidies, training in technology and English as a Second Language, basic education and literacy programs, and job training for people with AIDS/HIV infection.

According to Margaret Stix of the New York Education and Training Coalition, over the past three years, the city's share of the New York State block grant for employment and transitional services has dropped from $68.7 million to $2 million. The city has been slow to spend this money, first because the Giuliani administration preferred not to use it, and now because city contracts with nonprofit service providers require long-term goals to be met before providers are paid.

Stix points to wage subsidies, which have dropped from $45 million three years ago, to $5 million last year. The governor's budget cuts them out entirely. "This is a great program," she says. "How else are you going to get people like ex-offenders hired in this job market?" Subsidies pay 80 percent of an employee's salary for the first three to six months on the job. It has been shown that, after the initial period, two-thirds of the people hired under the program remain at their jobs without a subsidy.

MANUFACTURING HOMELESSNESS

People on public assistance receive a "shelter allowance," which has been stuck at $312 a month for a family of four since 1988. This amount falls far short of the "fair market rent" of $993 per month for a two-bedroom apartment, as calculated by the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, and even well below the median Bronx rent of $620 per month found by the Census of 2000. So many families were being evicted because of this shortfall that a 1987 lawsuit, Jiggetts versus Dowling, produced a stopgap solution of court-ordered subsidies, known as "Jiggetts" payments.

The state recently proposed a revised schedule of shelter allowances, with modest increases such as raising the allowance for a family of four to $450 a month. "The new allowance would be a good thing for New York City," says Susan Bahn of the Legal Aid Society. "It's not enough to be adequate, but it's a step in the right direction. It would help those families who might be evicted because their rent is only a hundred dollars more than the allowance they're getting now."

The governor's 2003-04 budget proposes that the new shelter allowances should become a state law, and implies that this would end the need for Jiggetts payments to prevent renters from being evicted.

Bahn recognizes the pattern: "Every year, back to Cuomo, they propose this, and every year the Assembly stops them from doing it," she explains. "There's no need to do anything as far as the statute, as long as we have the Jiggetts process." Bahn expects the Jiggetts case to continue for at least two more budget cycles.

"It's a cynical move on the governor's part," says Jonathan Hafetz, staff attorney at the Partnership for the Homeless. "Jiggetts has helped to redress the state's failure to increase the shelter allowance to reflect the true cost of housing." As of December 2002, Jiggetts payments of up to $775 a month were keeping about 14,500 families in their homes. The governor's proposed budget legislation would permit local governments to create their own supplements to the shelter allowance, suggesting that the Pataki administration recognizes the inadequacy of the new schedule.

Housing advocates admit that the Jiggetts mechanism has many flaws: families must be on public assistance, include children, be legally facing eviction, and apply for assistance through a few specific non-profit agencies.

However, Bahn credits the process with benefits beyond preventing homelessness. "We see many people whose lives have been stabilized by the subsidy," she says. "It allows the crises to stop, and I've seen moms get jobs because they were able to stop running to court all the time."

TAKING MONEY FROM THOSE LEAST ABLE TO WORK

Elderly and disabled New Yorkers were expecting to get $13 more each month in federal Supplemental Security Insurance starting next year, but Pataki has proposed keeping that increase for state expenses to administer the Social Security program. Supplemental Security Insurance recipients with disabilities were supposed to be allowed to maintain their Medicaid coverage if they went back to work; this change has been indefinitely delayed by the state's inability to finish adapting its computer system to accommodate the new policy.

PUSHING THE ELDERLY INTO NURSING HOMES

Senior citizens have not been exempt from additional cuts. Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities would lose the state funding that supports critical services keeping elderly apartment dwellers out of nursing homes. Subsidies for adult day care and for respite care would also be eliminated.

UNDERFUNDING THE ADULT HOME IMPROVEMENT INITIATIVE

In response to a New York Times expose of the appalling conditions in adult homes, the governor appointed an Adult Homes Work Group, which recommended both short-term measures to correct the worst abuses in the homes, and long-term expansion of the housing supply to enable residents to return to the community. Pataki has proposed spending $8 million on the short-term measures -- far short of the $58 million needed, according to the New York State branch of the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill.

The Work Group called for 6,000 new community housing beds for residents leaving the adult homes. Pataki's 2003-04 budget offers 1,000 new beds, to be split among adult home residents, patients leaving state psychiatric hospitals, and homeless people. The new beds require a $52 million match from local government, at a time when the city is calling on the state for help with its own budget gap. The governor's budget fails to fund new scattered-site placements, in regular apartments where tenants receive case management services, as a faster, cheaper way to expand the supply of community housing.

MORE CUTS FOR THE MENTALLY ILL

For years community-based mental health services were expanded using the money saved by closing beds at state psychiatric centers. Pataki has recognized the value of the Community Reinvestment Act, which guided this activity, by proposing a new reinvestment bill. However, he wants to delay the bill's implementation until 2004; meanwhile, the savings from six more facility closings would go toward the general fund.

The new Mental Health Court in Brooklyn depends on a variety of supportive services to divert mentally ill, non-violent criminals from prison. Without new community-based housing for people with psychiatric disabilities, New Yorkers will continue to pay more than is necessary to keep these individuals in prison, the least appropriate setting.

JOB-KILLING SERVICE CUTS

The proposed 2003-04 budget uses familiar tactics: It shifts some costs from state-funded programs -- like state mental health facilities -- to areas with more federal and local financial support, like homeless services. It delays other costs, such as nursing home bills for seniors who can remain independent for months or years after community-based supports are taken from them. It transforms the price of subsidized day care centers into costs that never take financial form, such as single mothers worrying about what happens after they leave their children with an untrained babysitter.

In this period of economic stagnation, social service is one of the few industries for which demand is growing. Unfortunately, by choosing not to fill that demand, Pataki is closing down existing and potential jobs, and preventing thousands of welfare recipients from qualifying for the jobs that are left.

If he gets what he is asking for, Pataki's third term will be the worst yet for low-income New Yorkers.

Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.

9/11/01-02: Charity Began At Ground Zero, But Where Will It Wind Up?


The American public responded more generously than ever before when the World Trade Center was destroyed on September 11. As of September 5, 2002, over $2.2 billion was raised, according to New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer.

One unintended effect of these gifts has been controversy over their distribution among victims of the attack and their families. If the nation had applied free-market philosophy to this situation, no charitable assistance would have been necessary. Victims' involvement in the attack would be attributed to bad luck and individual choice. Employees of businesses in the trade center buildings would be seen as having chosen to take their chances in a building complex bombed by terrorists in 1993. Police officers and firefighters would be seen as having chosen dangerous careers, with extra financial rewards in return for the risks. Even airline passengers could be seen as having chosen a form of transportation in which there is little hope of survival if the vehicle suffers damage.

Fortunately, people across the nation applied a different standard to this tragedy, one of mutual aid. According to a poll by the Independent Sector taken in October 2001, about 70 percent of Americans gave blood, donated money, volunteered their time, or in some other way tried to help the victims of the attack and their families.

However, the unity expressed by these donations does not extend to how they should be used. The resulting dissension reveals the diversity of meanings attached to words like "fairness," "victim," "family," and "need".

WHO QUALIFIES AS A "VICTIM"?

It was understood at the start that "victims" were people killed or injured in the attack, and that their "families" were their wives, husbands and children. The public was also eager to see help given to workers involved in the rescue and cleanup efforts.

Other relatives of the deceased soon made their claims on assistance clear. Parents, siblings, and domestic partners were added to a broadened definition of "family". Some charities gave help to anyone financially dependent on the victim, including former wives and their children.

Because so much money was collected, charities were able to stretch the meaning of "victim" still further, to cover others harmed by direct results of the tragedy: the 70,000 people who lost their jobs, the 6,000 downtown residents who had to leave their homes, and neighboring small businesses and nonprofits whose offices were thrown into physical or functional disorder by the event.

For some purposes, the definition of the disaster itself was extended to include anthrax attacks and post 9/11 hate crimes. The Uniformed Firefighters Association extended payments from its relief fund to families of all firefighters killed in the line of duty since 1980, and in the future.

TO EACH ACCORDING TO HIS OR HER NEED?

"Fairness" is another ambiguous term; its interpretation goes to the heart of our inconsistent convictions about how people should treat one another. There are many methods for dividing up September 11 funds, and each has been championed by one or another constituency.

Distributing funds according to financial need would give more money to a family that was poor before the disaster, and less to one whose breadwinner earned a high income and maintained life insurance. According to Shawn Pattison of the Robin Hood Foundation, their September 11-related relief fund follows this principle. "Robin Hood wants to make sure no one falls through the cracks, particularly low-income people," he says. Robin Hood targets its relief efforts toward groups like immigrant communities isolated by language barriers and fear of deportation, and low-income people with mental illness. "There were Central Americans working as day laborers cleaning up the site," he explains, "and they were not given proper protective equipment. A number are quite ill now." Robin Hood supports the Latin American Workers Project, which provides health services and financial help to these victims.

Other cases inspire more disagreement as to what constitutes need. Does it include making monthly mortgage payments on a million-dollar house? Families of the victims expect donations to enable them to maintain the standard of living they had before the disaster. However, the Internal Revenue Service has explicitly barred charities from distributing money to families of victims based on their living expenses before September 11. The large nonprofits that control most of the September 11 donations have decided not only how much cash to give victims for paying bills, but also what kinds of services victims need. The major ones turned out to be mental health counseling and employment services, which are not what might be expected by viewers of news coverage of relief efforts in response to earlier man-made and natural disasters.

EQUAL SHARES FOR EQUAL DISASTER

In the most literal interpretation of a distribution of aid based on equality, you would give the same amount to each victim. This would mean giving the same amount to a person whose store was closed for a week due to roadblocks, as to a widow with young children.

A more nuanced interpretation of "equality" gives equal shares to all people in the same situation. The Uniformed Firefighters Association gave $50,000 to the family of each married firefighter who was killed, but did not initially extend this policy to beneficiaries of single firefighters. After protest by the excluded relatives, the firefighters' union gave $50,000 to domestic partners, parents and other beneficiaries of deceased unmarried firefighters. The Robin Hood fund did not distinguish between levels of need when it sent $5,000 one-time payments to each family of the victims killed on September 11. "By late November, it was clear from talking to many of our families that the money was just not getting through," says Pattison. In this situation, all families were subject to the same bureaucratic delays in releasing aid; later and larger distributions could be expected to adjust the total aid to each family according to a yardstick of need.

The September 11th Fund, a joint project of the United Way of New York City and the Fund for the City of New York, collected $501 million, more than any charity other than the Red Cross' Liberty Fund. The September 11th Fund set the value of emergency cash assistance at two levels, depending on the degree of loss. Injured survivors and victims' families would get $10,000 each; people who lost jobs or homes as a direct result of the attack received $2,500 each. The same amounts were given in a second round of cash assistance.

COMPENSATION FOR FINANCIAL LOSS: THE TORT-BASED MODEL

The court system calculates the value of human lives as it goes about its everyday business. The wrongful death of a young person counts as a greater loss than the death of a retiree, because of the years of future work that are lost. Higher salaries at the time of death mean more lost income. Higher levels of education imply the possibility of career advancement leading to higher salaries. This method of determining the amount of assistance is favored by many of the victims' families. Those whose deceased relatives would have earned the most have the greatest incentive to call for this model of assistance, and it forms one element in the federal government's calculation of awards from the Victims Compensation Fund.

Financial loss also decides the size of loans and grants being given to businesses and nonprofits in the vicinity of Ground Zero, many of whom were unable to function normally for weeks or months. The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is offering both nonprofit and for-profit enterprises federally-funded grants and loans based on their annual revenues.

RECOGNITION OF EMOTIONAL LOSS

Most of the help being offered in recognition of emotional loss takes the form of mental health services or tangible gifts. The web site of the Twin Towers Fund "recognizes the importance of families spending time together in a fun and relaxing environment," and offers a variety of special events to the relatives of uniformed officers killed on September 11. They include sleepaway camp for children, golf camp for adults, free tickets to Mets games, sailing lessons, and sightseeing cruises from New York Waterways. Both the Uniformed Firefighters Association and the Twin Towers Fund are planning holiday parties in December for the families they serve.

MEASURING A PERSON'S VALUE TO THE COMMUNITY

The sacrifices made by police officers and firefighters inspired intense sympathy in the general public, which gives extra weight to the death of a member of these forces even in normal times. A study of 37 relief funds serving September 11 victims showed that nearly half of the cash paid directly to victims and their families went to relatives of police officers, firefighters, and court officers.

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation is offering payments to downtown residents, implying that people who remain in the neighborhood for the long term are more valued than those who leave or have recently arrived. Their web site offers a minimum grant of $1,000 to households, within specific boundaries, whose residents who lived at their present address last September 11. At least $750 more will be given to families who commit to staying in the area for at least one year, if they have one or more children younger than 18.

WHAT DO DONORS WANT DONE?

According to Barbara Bryan, president of the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers, many charities were "overcome by the size of the generosity and by the size of the need, and all the different levels of need." At the end of October 2001, the Red Cross announced it had collected more than enough to meet the needs of the victims -- so much more that its Liberty Fund could start underwriting some of the agency's more routine costs for services to American troops on active duty; community outreach to encourage neutrality, unity and tolerance; and telecommunications equipment, computer systems and accounting services. It also intended to set aside about half of the Liberty Fund for future needs of the WTC victims or for victims of future terrorist attacks.

This plan made the Red Cross the target of a growing sense of frustration and distrust among donors, victims' families and Ground Zero workers. Chief Executive Bernadine Healy was forced to resign; the organization was questioned by the United States Congress. The Red Cross had to revise its plan, promising to give out about half of the Liberty Fund by the first anniversary of the World Trade Center attack.

The September 11th Fund chose a different route. It conducted surveys of the general public in October and November of 2001, polling both donors and non-donors to September 11-related charities. The results supported the fund's decisions to expand services to the broad range of victims described above, and to provide a variety of short-term and long-term services in addition to cash assistance.

UNDERLYING ASSUMPTIONS OF CHARITABLE DISTRIBUTION METHODS

Even with public opinion polls, it is not possible to aid disaster victims in a way that pleases everyone. Each method of dividing up disaster relief funds reflects a conviction about what makes a good society; the subject stirs up almost as much passion as the idea of the World Trade Center disaster itself.

Distributing charitable aid based on financial need implies that charity should even out economic differences between recipients. Giving equal shares to all implies that charity does not have to take into account the different situations of recipients before the event that created their shared need. Giving charitable aid in proportion to the recipient's economic loss implies that charity should honor victims' property rights by preserving the existing hierarchy of wealth. Using non-monetary aid to compensate victims for emotional losses suggests that such suffering cannot be measured and is best addressed symbolically. Basing levels of aid on the victim's value to society implies that charity's purpose is to benefit society as a whole. And leaving the decision of how to use donations up to the donor means that their right to control their money trumps the greater experience of charitable professionals in determining the best use of assistance.

Barbara Bryan believes that charities will have to change in response to the disputes over disaster relief for the victims of September 11. "You have to be very clear about what you're asking for, " she says, but she is not sure of the specific steps that will have to be taken. "People are still trying to take lessons from all of this."


Sites For Beginners:

  • Social Services Hotline for New York City Agencies and Services - Who to contact if you have no food, if your gas is about to be cut off or if you need information on HIV or AIDS; how to find an emergency shelter; what a battered woman can do--and more.
  • National Coalition Against Domestic Violence - Setting up a Safety Plan and Crisis Hotlines; Workplace Guidelines; Legal Guidelines; Public Policy which includes articles on Predictors of Domestic Violence and Barriers to Leaving a Violent Partner.
  • New York City Department for the Aging - Good resource for finding senior centers in your neighborhood. Where to turn for help with Legal Assistance, the Home Energy Assistance Program and Elderly Crime Victim Resources. Bilingual help in Spanish is available.
  • Center for Mental Health Services - Good resource for finding information on dual diagnosis problems of mental illness and substance abuse; Emergency Services; Children's Campaign; Mental Health Statistics. All information also available in Spanish.
  • Coalition of Voluntary Mental Health Agencies - Contains a neighborhood agency locator to find what services are available in your neighborhood; policy information and newsletters.

Other Recommendations:

  • Resources for Social Workers - NYU's social work library: key in any topic of interest and you are presented with a comprehensive listing of articles from government, not-for-profit groups and professional journals.
  • National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information - Extraordinary site, filled with alcohol and drug treatment information. Data archives include international articles on educational, political and social research on this topic. Go here for a primer on including persons with disabilities in a prevention or intervention program.
  • National Association of Social Workers, NYC Chapter - Social workers reporting on every issue: welfare reform, HIV/AIDS, addiction, mental health, families & children and health care
  • New York city Lesbian & Gay Community Center - Youth Enrichment Services, Gender Identity Project, AIDS Bereavement, Mediation Service, in addition to being cultural, political, educational and recreational mecca.
  • Mt. Sinai Adolescent Health Center - 312 East 94th Street, NY, NY 10128 (212) 423-3000 Confidential services for teens (ages 12-21) that do not require parental consent, including medical services, condom distribution, AIDS prevention & treatment, and counseling.

9/11/01- 02: Lower Rents, But More Homelessness, Fewer Vacancies, Canceled Plans For New Affordable Housing


September 11th significantly altered the city's housing landscape for many New Yorkers -- from Lower Manhattan residents who evacuated their homes, to city officials who crunch budget numbers, to advocates who devote themselves to the plights of the poor.

Immediate effects of the terrorist attacks included temporary homelessness for thousands of downtown residents. Dozens still have not been able to return to apartments closest to the World Trade Center site.

Vacancy rates in the buildings closest to the site reached 45 percent, according to a study of 7000 apartments in the area by the New York Times, though they have since returned to their normal rates of just under five percent.

Other housing economic activity, including new rentals, housing starts and applications for building permits, came to a virtual standstill after the attacks.

By October, economic activity rebounded, but home insurance costs were rising and they remain high. Rents in Lower Manhattan dropped because tenants wanted out. Rents elsewhere in the city softened too as real estate brokers experienced lower demand. The loosening of the housing market had actually begun months before September 11th, but the attack seemed to accelerate the recession and its effects on housing.

"9/11 was the kick in the gut to an already weak economy," said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for Coalition for the Homeless. And just as a rising tide lifts all boats, a retreating one leaves many more boats stranded.

The number of homeless families had been increasing for some time before the terrorist attacks, and has risen drastically since. Currently, the city's shelter system is strained beyond its capacity, sheltering about 8,600 families and 7,500 single adults each night.

The reasons for homelessness are complex, but the economy is among the usual suspects. Between the recession and September 11th, the city has lost more than 125,000 jobs.

"Clearly that is a big reason you see more and more families and individuals becoming homeless. It's a direct result and there doesn't seem to be any let-up," said Markee.

The softening economy has eased rents for the city's more expensive apartments, but it has also contributed to fiercer competition for apartments that rent for less. New York City's vacancy rate remains low. It was last measured by the 1999 New York City Housing and Vacancy survey at 3.2 percent, and it decreases along with rents, meaning that vacancies are lowest among the most affordable apartments.

The recession is creating other unpleasant realities for housing. Both the state and city budget are facing shortfalls which will mean less money available for housing programs.

In January, Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked all city agencies to trim their budgets by 20 percent. The city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development obeyed and slashed its expense budget, although it managed to replace much of the lost funding with federal money.

This past year, "all of our housing production continued as planned," said Carol Abrams, the agency's spokesperson. The agency even instituted a new program to distribute federal rental assistance vouchers for certain eligible individuals who lost, or are at risk of losing, their housing as a result of the events of September 11th.

Still, the agency has had to refigure its plans for the coming years. In response to less available city funding for its capital expenditures, 4,630 units of affordable housing that were supposed to be added to the city's housing supply over the next five years will be delayed, if not completely lost.

Affordable housing advocates bemoan such news.

"We are in a very difficult economic climate and we understand that there have to be cuts everywhere," says Bernie Carr, executive director of the New York State Association for Affordable Housing, a trade association for the for-profit affordable housing community. "But obviously, affordable housing, especially in a difficult economy, is a very important issue."

There were some silver linings to the sad cloud that rose in Lower Manhattan last year. The Rent Guidelines Board authorized lower than usual rent increases for the city's 1 million regulated apartments. And residents of the Lower Manhattan are eligible for more than $300 million in federal subsidies meant to encourage tenants to move into and/or stay, in the area.

But for many other housing indicators, the statistics are not yet in. Will foreclosures and evictions rise as more unemployed New Yorkers can't make their monthly rent or mortgage payments? Will rent levels come down from their heyday heights? Will cuts in city programs further restrict the city's supply of affordable housing and lead to even greater problems for the city's poor?

These and many other questions won't be answered for months, or even years, until statistics are gathered and studies completed.


Sites For Beginners:


Other Recommendations:

  • The Rent Guidelines Board - Comprehensive apartment-hunting guide for beginners or old hands. Great links to research and data on NYC housing, including the 1996 Housing and Vacancy Survey.
  • City Limits - Investigative reporting about housing and other issues facing New York's low-income communities for 22 years. Archives available to 1996.
  • The Cooperator - Free online magazine for co-op and condo dwellers. Articles on current news affecting co-ops and condos, such as utilities deregulation or indictments of corrupt management companies, change monthly. Includes helpful Q&A sections in which tenant questions are answered by lawyers and accountants, and a reference library of detailed advice on topics such as building finance or selling your unit.
  • NYU Law School Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy - A detailed summary of the NYU Law School Center for Real Estate and Urban Policy's report "Reducing the Cost of New Housing Construction in New York City." Also features links to other research and the Center's programs and events.
  • Homelessness: Programs and the People They Serve - HUD and the Urban Institute's new survey of homeless people and the service providers who work with them every day provides an intimate portrait of homelessness across America. Those surveyed revealed that more than 40% of homeless people work at least part time, 39% struggle with mental illness, and about a third of the homeless are now or were once child runaways. Only 8% are panhandlers.
  • Mr. Landlord - The Internet Resource for Landlords and Landladies. This comprehensive site offers a wealth of resources and free advice on do-it-yourself rental property management. Visitors can find help with setting up a webpage for their own rental ads or locating sample rent agreement forms. Its services also include a Q&A interactive discussion among fellow landlords; tax, mortgage and rent calculators; and a free weekly e-newsletter on management techniques.
  • Realty Times - This archive of free articles from the Realty Times, a realtors' professional publication, offers advice on issues of concern to apartment dwellers. Articles cover many legal concerns such as how to rent with roommates and tenants' rights to minor repairs, plus simple ideas on interior dicor or what to do if neighbors are noisy. The main page, http://realtimes.com, contains links on other residential real estate topics of interest to consumers, including mortgages and "The Truth About Condo Living."

How Welfare Reform Affects People With Disabilities


He hears voices and has been diagnosed with depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, and a learning disability. But these are not his only nightmares. There are also the ones he encounters in his dealings with the city's welfare agency. His welfare benefits, food stamps, and Medicaid coverage have been repeatedly cut off. Once he went to a Job Center and waited all day, four days in a row, because he couldn't find his way through the crowds and waiting lines to someone who would help him file an application.

Identified only as J.V., his story was included in a complaint filed with the federal Office for Civil Rights about the treatment by the New York City Human Resources Administration

The Americans with Disabilities Act requires state and local governments to make "reasonable modifications" of their programs to ensure that people with disabilities receive the same level of service and benefits as everybody else. This includes programs providing income support, food stamps, and Medicaid, which are disproportionately needed by disabled Americans. (Federal agencies, plus private agencies receiving federal funds, have their own law requiring similar modifications: Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.)

MANY LOW-INCOME PEOPLE HAVE DISABILITIES

Nationwide, people with disabilities are poorer and less likely to have jobs than other Americans. A survey by the National Organization on Disability found that 72 percent of people with disabilities wanted to work, but only 29 percent were doing so. According to the Census Bureau, 46 percent of single-parent households getting public assistance in 1997 included a mother or child with a disability.

Poverty can combine with even minor disabilities to produce major barriers to employment. Employers are not required to provide personal equipment, such as artificial limbs or hearing aids; jobseekers on Medicaid may not be able to afford equipment that is good enough to enable them to work. When a mother herself has a disability, she may need extra time to get her children ready for day care and to drop them off by public transportation.

"Most of the consumers I see have more than one disability," says Placida Wilson of Bronx Independent Living Services (where I work part-time). She often accompanies consumers to hearings about their eligibility for benefits. "Depression is the most common, plus a physical disability like arthritis, heart disease, or fibromyalgia. They're poor, can't work, feeling sick, and they may also have kids, can't get child care?A person without a disability would be depressed in that situation." She pointed to a box of tissues on her desk, and another on a shelf above it. "Some of them sit down here and before I can open my mouth, they start to cry."

WHO PAYS THE BILL FOR BENEFITS?

The responsibility for people with disabilities who live in poverty is split among the federal, state and city governments, who pass it around like a hot potato. For those who can meet the stringent requirements, Social Security Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income payments are slightly higher and more secure than welfare; the city and state are eager to shift their caseload into these entirely federally-funded programs. However, it can take years for applications to be processed; not all disabilities covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act meet the Social Security definition of disability. That definition requires that applicants prove they are completely incapable of working because of a disability that either is considered fatal, or has lasted (or is expected to last) for at least a year.

States always knew that many public assistance recipients had disabilities, but it took welfare reform to motivate them to hire private agencies to help people apply for Social Security. New York is particularly eager to reclassify families in its caseload before they reach their five-year lifetime limit for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, so that the federal government will pick up the tab.

DETERMINING DISABILITY STATUS

Non-disabled welfare recipients were the first to be channeled back into the workforce by welfare reform, leaving a higher concentration of recipients with disabilities on the rolls. Yet in November 2002, the city classified only 30 percent of its public assistance caseload as ill, disabled, or caring for a family member. This figure is much lower than the Census Bureau's 46 percent of single-parent households found to have a member with a disability.

The discrepancy suggests that the city may be either not identifying the disabilities of those on its welfare rolls, or failing to provide public assistance to eligible people with disabilities. Many common physical illnesses, like diabetes, asthma, and hypertension, become disabilities for people with severe cases, yet few welfare recipients or caseworkers know that such cases are covered under the Americans with Disabilities Act.

For the past twenty years, New York City has hired HS Systems, Inc. to examine welfare applicants and recipients and determine their level of disability. This contractor plays a leading role in the complaint filed last April by Brooklyn Legal Services, MFY Legal Services, the Urban Justice Center, and the Welfare Law Center. The complaint describes people whose psychiatric symptoms were treated by HS Systems staff as deliberate violations of program requirements, causing recipients to have their benefits cut off because of their disabilities. In an article in the Village Voice, ill and disabled applicants were discovered waiting outside HS Systems offices in the snow during the winter of 2000. Since then, HS Systems has followed a court order to open additional sites and provide more room for waiting indoors.

ACCESS TO EQUAL SERVICES REQUIRES ACCOMMODATIONS

Any welfare recipient with or without disabilities may be harmed when poorly trained, overworked, and unmotivated city employees give incorrect or incomplete information, record the wrong facts in case files, or make arbitrary decisions. The damage is compounded for those who have physical disabilities that make it hard to travel to and from multiple appointments, or mental or learning disabilities that turn complex requirements into insoluble riddles. Wilson of Bronx Independent Living Services recalls a consumer who knew he had to mail a form to Social Security, and did so on time. "What he didn't understand was that he needed to fill it out and put a stamp on the envelope."

When someone tells the Human Resources Administration that he or she has a psychiatric disability, according to the April complaint, the agency does not adequately assess the disability, does not accommodate the disability when assigning a work activity, and may sanction them for behavior caused by their disabilities.

One of Wilson's cases involved a mother with schizophrenia who was summoned to HS Systems for an assessment. Her husband went with her and refused to leave her alone with the doctors, because she was acutely ill and he feared she would act inappropriately if she were alone. "He didn't understand that that was exactly what she was supposed to do," Wilson said. The doctors would not examine the woman with her husband in the room. The family was sanctioned, losing Medicaid and food stamps as well as welfare. They turned to Bronx Independent Living Services when the mother was running out of medication, she could not see a doctor without Medicaid, there was no food in their home, and the rent was due. Wilson arranged to get their case re-opened the next day, but if they had not already been her consumers, they might not have found help before the wife required hospitalization, or they lost their home.

For people with AIDS/HIV infection, the city has a special division, the HIV/AIDS Services Administration, whose caseworkers coordinate emergency housing and other public benefits for this population. The division was found in violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 2000, when understaffing made clients wait too long for services. Thanks to the success of new treatments in prolonging life, the HIV/AIDS Services Administration's caseload continues to rise: in the two years leading up to November 2002, the number of HIV-positive clients rose by over ten percent. City law limits the average number of clients served by caseworkers or supervisors to 34, meaning that the division was required to hire nearly 100 new caseworkers to serve the 3,300 additional clients. Current government budget gaps jeopardize the division's ability to maintain an adequate staff-to-client ratio.

FUTURE EMPLOYMENT OPTIONS LIMITED

The city's public assistance recipients with disabilities may be getting less than their fair share of other services besides income support. Welfare-to-work programs provide employment-related services designed to help recipients move from public assistance to work. Employment-related services are rarely made available to people with disabilities Vocational training and job placement are as useful to people with disabilities as to anyone else who is unemployed and has little work history. For high school dropouts with sensory or learning disabilities, high school equivalency "GED" classes accommodating their disabilities can be the key to lifetime employment.

The federal Office for Civil Rights is still investigating the April 2002 complaint against the Human Resources Administration, according to Cary LaCheen of the Welfare Law Center. Meanwhile, there will be more cases such as M.F.B. whose claustrophobia prevents him from using elevators. He missed one appointment at HS Systems because a security guard would not let him use the stairs. He only made it to a second appointment because a different guard helped him sneak into the stairway. HS Systems found M.F.B. to be employable with limitations. One of the jobs they indicated he could perform was that of elevator operator.

Linda Ostreicher, a former budget analyst for the New York City Council, is a freelance writer and consultant to nonprofits. She is currently on the staff of Bronx Independent Living Services.

Public Housing


To Fiorello LaGuardia, housing the poor was a personal crusade. The diminutive mayor blamed the damp squalor of the tenements where his first wife grew up for the tuberculosis that eventually took her life and that of their child. And for the rest of his life, LaGuardia dedicated himself to razing New York's dank slums and replacing them with modern, sanitary housing. By 1941, under his guidance, New York had already erected 13 public housing projects with 17,000 apartments, more than any other city in the country.

Fast-forward to late 2002. Another "fusion" mayor, Democrat-turned-Republican Michael Bloomberg, unveils the city's most sweeping housing initiative in more than 20 years. Like LaGuardia, Bloomberg hopes to replenish the city's housing stock at a time when New York is struggling through an economic downturn. For Bloomberg, however, towering housing projects are not part of the mix. Instead, reflecting current thinking on low-income housing and the political realities of his era, Bloomberg proposes a combination of government and private initiatives aimed at creating or rehabilitating 65,000 units for people of various income levels. The objective, according to Bloomberg, is "to jump-start and complement private sector investment."

Even though the city may never build large public housing projects again, the existing developments contain 9 percent of the rental housing in the city and are home to more than 400,000 people. And while nationally such projects have fallen into disrepute, in New York, tens of thousands of people clamor to move in. Can these projects continue to survive in an era when federal support for housing is dwindling and cities are increasingly turning to private and community-based housing programs?

THE RISE AND FALL OF THE HOUSING PROJECT

The notion that the problems of the poor could be eased by improving their environment has a long history in New York. Starting in the 1850s, charity-minded New Yorkers began setting up "model tenements" in slums such as Five Points -- with only mixed success. In 1891, Jacob Riis's powerful "How the Other Half Lives" spurred further efforts to end the squalor plaguing some New Yorkers.

In the LaGuardia years, New York decided to get into the housing business itself. The city's first housing project was, appropriately named the First Houses on East 3rd Street near Avenue A, built by the New York City Public Housing Authority and opened in 1936. A year later, the city dedicated the first federally subsidized housing in the United States, the Harlem River Houses, at 153rd Street and the Harlem River.

The post-war era brought about a huge boom in public housing construction. Title I of the federal Housing Act of 1949, which sought to provide "a decent home in a suitable living environment for every American family," sent torrents of housing money into New York and other cities. This money created public housing - projects built largely with federal money and managed by a housing authority, such as the New York City Housing Authority, Cities remade scores of neighborhoods, razing slum districts and building landscaped, high-rise developments. Robert Moses, the planner who reshaped so much of New York City, funneled billions of those federal dollars into New York, giving him another tool to rebuild the city in his image.

But the heyday of the housing project in the United States lasted just a few decades. By the mid 1960s, policymakers were becoming disenchanted with housing projects. Stacking low-income families in isolated, expensive-to-maintain apartment buildings no longer seemed like reform. Planners began to understand that the neighborhoods they were bulldozing in the name of slum clearance, although crowded, were vital and vibrant. In Chicago, authorities conceded that the projects they created were as bad, or worse, than the slums they replaced.

Other ideas, such as creating mixed-income developments, rehabilitating older buildings, and encouraging community-run redevelopment programs began to take center stage. Programs such as Section 8, which provides rent subsidies in the form of vouchers to qualified low-income families, supplanted the great public housing construction initiatives of the 1940s and '50s.

New York was always the greatest exponent of public housing and it remains one of the last holdouts. Unlike other cities across the country, which emptied their worst projects in the 1980s and '90s and demolished them, New York never gave up on its public housing. Today, the city's Housing Authority, though undoubtedly troubled, enjoys a reputation as the nation's most successful public housing agency, carrying on despite drastic reductions in federal support and widespread disdain for the traditional housing project.

"It's ironic," says Joseph Weisbord, director of Housing First!, an alliance of organizations that promotes investment in housing. "Now that we've learned the lessons of how to do public housing, we've pulled the plug on the federal resources."

A RELATIVE SUCCESS

The Housing Authority runs 345 developments containing 2,702 apartment buildings that house 174,195 families or 418,810 residents, more than the entire populations of Atlanta or Miami. New York's public housing stock dwarfs that of its nearest rivals, San Juan and Chicago. Queensbridge Houses is New York's biggest development. It alone contains 3,101 apartments. Among the city's developments, 42 are exclusively for senior citizens.

"New York's Housing Authority is so extraordinary in size and scale and scope that it really stands alone," says Sunia Zaterman, executive director of the Washington-based Council of Large Public Housing Authorities (CLPHA), an association representing 55 of the nation's largest housing agencies. "They have a policy of not demolishing units but of trying to preserve units. I think clearly it's viewed as a high-performing agency that is innovative in a lot of ways and different in a lot of ways."

There are a number of reasons projects have retained a place in New York's housing mix. For one thing, Zaterman notes, New Yorkers are used to living in apartments: "High-rise living doesn't have the stigma it does in Chicago or Baltimore or other cities where if you were living in a high-rise you were clearly low-income."

Moreover, the Housing Authority for a long time has carefully screened prospective tenants. In addition, the city's tight housing market has made rent vouchers less attractive than in other cities, where there are more vacant private apartments available at a decent price.

In housing projects, residents pay no more than 30 percent of their family income as rent. Because of the combination of low costs -- the average housing project rent is $302 a month - relatively attractive apartments, and the city's chronic housing shortage, there is a long waiting list for public housing. As of last July, 144,988 applicants awaited apartments in city housing projects and another 148,748 were on the list for the Section 8 voucher program, which subsidizes rents in privately owned buildings. To be placed on the waiting list, applicants must earn less than 80 percent of the area's median income. They must also submit to an interview.

New York's housing projects never fell into the disrepair that plagued other cities. Residents of some developments, along with Housing Authority employees, might not agree (a publication called NYCHA Spotlight, run by a former Housing Authority employee, regularly exposes problems at the agency), but the city's projects enjoy a reputation for being among the best-maintained in the country. Even in the face of declining federal support, the authority has continued to invest in public housing, winning praise from analysts and advocates for doing what it can to keep the buildings in good shape.

PERSISTENT PROBLEMS

But while many people seek to get into the projects, some of those already there say conditions are far from perfect. Many projects present a forbidding face to the rest of the city, leaving residents cut off from surrounding communities. Some projects are in remote neighborhoods such as Coney Island and Far Rockaway, leaving their residents far from jobs and educational opportunities. Throughout the public housing system, maintenance and safety continue to be concerns.

"Best housing authority -- I think that depends how you define it," says Ethel Velez, who has lived in the James Weldon Johnson Houses in East Harlem for more than 50 years.

"Personally, I do think that the Housing Authority tries its best to manage these buildings the best they can, but we have problems just like everyone across the country with maintenance, management and standards of materials," says Velez, the director of the Public Housing Residents Alliance. "The good about these buildings is they are built very well and in spite of the vandalism that goes on in these buildings the housing authority does try to maintain them. But it's like trying to patch a hole with bubble gum instead of cement."

Velez says that over the years she has seen her project suffer ups and downs depending on budget considerations and the crime rate in the city as a whole. The advent of social and support programs for residents has helped improve conditions, she says, and tenants have made efforts to build a sense of community and make their buildings safer. Still, Velez says, project residents also have to battle perceptions that crime is rampant: "Folks who live in public housing are labeled."

And indeed, across the country, housing projects remain more dangerous than other neighborhoods. A federal government study issued last year reported that project residents are more than twice as likely to be shot as Americans in general.

During the late 1980s and early 1990s, crime rates in public housing in New York developments rose more sharply than in the city as a whole. Since then, though, crimes rates in public housing have been falling even faster than in the city as a whole. A Housing Authority report last year said that while serious crime in the city fell 5.6 percent from 1999 to 2000, it dropped 6.2 percent in the projects. In 2001, major crime was down 11.2 percent in New York's public housing.

Still, the city recognizes that projects remain potential sources of crime. Last year, the Housing Authority finished installing closed-circuit monitors at 15 developments. The Bloomberg administration's new Operation Impact is flooding high-crime areas of the city, among them housing projects, with 1,400 rookie officers in a bid to keep a lid on violent offenses. Police officials have said that shootings and robberies are increasing at certain projects in the Bronx and Brooklyn even as homicides continue to decline.

The crime rate in public housing may be linked to who lives there. Beginning in the 1980s, the Housing Authority began admitting the very poor and homeless, a change that some critics link to a deterioration of the buildings and increase in crime. New York had previously favored working families.

In the '90s, the Housing Authority instituted what it calls the Working Families Preference, under which it set aside half its vacancies for low-income but employed residents. Federal legislation in 1998 that gave housing authorities greater flexibility in setting admissions standards bolstered the city's position. The Working Families Preference is credited with boosting the number of working families to close to 35 percent of all housing authority tenants.

But minority groups sued, saying the policy was slowing the desegregation of the city's housing. In January 2002, a federal appeals court agreed, ruling that New York City cannot give working families preference in housing projects where more than 30 percent of residents are white. Fourteen of the city's housing projects are affected by the ruling.

HIGH MAINTENANCE

Despite its large presence in the city, public housing in New York faces an uncertain future. A February 1999 report by then-State Comptroller H. Carl McCall noted that while New York manages its properties better than most other cities, it only has money to fix the most dire problems. The Housing Authority, McCall said, faces a repair and maintenance "time bomb" unless it gets more capital funding. He estimated that the Housing Authority would need to spend $43,000 per unit to make repairs and upgrades to all of its apartments.

A second report issued by McCall in July of that year said that buildings visited by his staff a decade earlier had deteriorated markedly and were in need of serious repairs. Victor Bach, a senior housing policy analyst with the Community Service Society of New York, says that not much has changed since then. If anything, the problem has grown. "NYCHA is almost entirely funded by Washington, and the federal commitment to public housing and to subsidy programs keeps shrinking," he says. "As it stands now, the [Housing Authority's] capital budget is insufficient to meet backlogs and the operating budget is under pressure as well."

The shortage of capital funds mirrors the situation across the United States. Between 1993 and 2002, the housing authorities council contends, the federal government underfunded the capital needs of housing authorities by a total of $16.7 billion.

In fiscal 2001 and 2002, the Housing Authority received more than $1.2 billion a year from Washington under various grant programs. The amount of money for operations rose in '02 while capital funding fell 4.4 percent.

Just last month, public housing agencies were dealt an additional blow when the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that it faced a budget shortfall and would cut funding for public housing and Section 8 up to 30 percent. The department has since backed off and said the cuts would be smaller, but local agencies are bracing for more belt-tightening in the wake of the budget presented to Congress early this month.

UNCERTAIN FUTURE

Some insist that public housing only exacerbates New York's housing shortage and saddles taxpayers with the costs of maintaining a vast and expensive infrastructure. In other cities, such as time Charlotte, North Carolina, public housing authorities have set limits on how long tenants can remain, transforming government-run housing into a temporary benefit, like welfare. Elsewhere, the Department of Housing and Urban Development has focused on programs aimed at turning Section 8 recipients into homeowners through programs that allow low-income people to use their vouchers to pay mortgages instead of rent. In New York, tenants tend to remain in public housing for a long time. The average length of stay in New York public housing is 17.7 years versus 7.7 years nationally, according to the federal government.

Many housing authorities have begun to seek other forms of financing, Zaterman says. The 1998 Quality Housing Act, for example, allows housing authorities to develop "mixed-finance" housing in partnership with the private sector. The HOPE Program (Homeownership and Opportunity for People Everywhere), begun under the first Bush administration, was designed to sell off public housing to its residents.

The Bloomberg plan announced in December calls for affordable housing, even for units for homeless and poor families. However unlike in the 1940s and '50s, this housing would not be built entirely with federal funds, and the Housing Authority would run little of it. Instead city money would go to private developers - both for profit and non-profit - who would build and then either manage the homes or sell them to the residents. There could be large apartment houses in some places, smaller scale developments in others.

While the private sector will play a big role in the plan - much as it did in the Koch housing plan -- widespread privatization of existing housing projects is unlikely, in New York, where public housing retains strong political support.

But new roles for the Housing Authority are a possibility. Bloomberg discussed having the Housing Authority work with the Department of Housing Preservation and Development to develop affordable housing on the large tracts of relatively inexpensive vacant land that the NYCHA owns. Weisbrod calls the proposal "a watershed" because the housing authority has long denied that it had any property on which to build.

Despite the national trend away from government-run projects, New York is likely to continue to rely on public housing and Washington will continue to support it in some form, experts say. "I may be naive but I don't think Washington is going to completely walk away from public housing," Bach says. "I don't think it will disappear -- that would be politically difficult to accomplish. But it may get slowly starved."

 

City Takes New Approaches to Solving Homeless Problem


This winter has been especially cold and snowy, highlighting the plight of New York’s homeless population. Almost 38,500 people are currently in the city’s shelter system, including well over 16,500 children. These numbers mark an all-time high.

Recently, the Bloomberg administration has taken several steps to address the problem. It has increased the budget for homeless services, created a new way for homeless advocates to air their concerns about city policies without going to court and ordered a survey of street homeless, which is scheduled for later this month.

The Funds

At a time when the city is facing a $3 billion deficit and most agencies have had to slash their budgets, the Department of Homeless Services is getting more money for its mission. This fiscal year, the agency will spend $632 million according to figures released by the city comptroller . Next year, the agency’s budget is set to rise to $667 million.

The new funds will go toward preventive services, rent subsidies and other measures, said Jim Anderson, spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services. Much of the money will come in the form of federal housing vouchers that can help homeless families pay rent.

The Panel

The administration has also made remarkable progress on a problem that has plagued the Department of Homeless Services for two decades: litigation.

Advocates for the homeless have regularly gone to court to protest city policies. The Legal Aid Society has battled for homeless families’ rights, while the Coalition for the Homeless has spearheaded the effort to protect homeless single adults. The court cases established every New Yorker’s right to shelter in the early 1980s, and numerous other rights since then. But the litigation has created persistent problems for the Department of Homeless Services.

"The lawsuits brought almost two decades ago . . . deserve recognition for their role in helping to create today’s strong shelter services system," reported the department’s strategic plan , released in June 2002.

"However, the litigation that helped to generate the current system now pervades system operations. The department, constantly facing litigation or court intervention has become reticent about discussing the challenges it faces."

Some advocates disagree. "There’s an exaggerated and cartoonish view of this litigation that there is an enormous amount of meddling by the court in [the Department of Homeless Services,]" said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless. "We feel that historically the court has acted appropriately to address issues for homeless families and individuals."

Still, Mayor Bloomberg hoped to change the pattern, once remarking, "Every single thing we do, we seem to wind up in court. We’re trying to find a way out of that conundrum."

Several months ago, the administration proposed that families that engaged in "gross misconduct" or refused placement in permanent housing be ejected from the shelter system. The policy would have divided families – placing children into temporary foster care and sending adults out to fend for themselves. Advocates challenged the proposal, arguing it would violate people’s right to shelter. The issue seemed destined for court, but the night before the scheduled court date, a surprise settlement was announced.

The two sides agreed that families who reject suitable permanent housing can be discharged from the shelter system. However, the family would still be able to move into an appropriate apartment selected by the city.

The agreement went beyond that to address the larger issue of ongoing litigation. The parties agreed to the formation of an independent panel that will review city policies for homeless families and mediate disputes between the advocates and the city. Both sides agreed to withdraw pending court motions, withhold new motions and allow the panel to attempt to resolve the issues over the next two years.

The three individuals on the panel were already quietly working to solve the conflict. They are John Feerick, professor of law and former dean of the Fordham School of Law; Daniel Kronenfeld, senior fellow for the Fund for the City of New York; and Gail Nayowith, executive director of the Citizens’ Committee for Children.

"Today’s agreement is the dawn of a new era for those working to serve New York City’s homeless families," said Bloomberg. "The introduction of standards of client responsibility, a new commitment to avoid litigation, and a strong and thoughtful panel to advise [the Department of Homeless Services] will dramatically improve the delivery of services to those in need."

The new agreement only applies to homeless families and not to homeless individuals. The city has proposed a similar eviction policy for them, which the Coalition for the Homeless has appealed, but the group is heartened by the recent agreement.

"We’re hopeful that this settlement sets the tone for a similar resolution," said Markee of the coalition.

Linda Gibbs, the commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services said of the settlement, "We look to this as a new beginning, one where we can move forward together to end family homelessness as we know it."

The Survey

In an effort to improve service to homeless single adults, the agency will conduct an overnight survey on the streets of Manhattan in late February.

Up to 1,000 volunteers will canvass sections of the borough and ask the people they encounter whether they are homeless. The data is intended to enable Department of Homeless Services to estimate the true number of homeless.

"No one has an accurate sense of how many individuals remain unsheltered or continue to choose the streets," said Anderson of the Department of Homeless Services. "What we want to do is establish an accurate estimate."

Some homeless advocates doubt the value of the endeavor.

"These sorts of surveys and street counts have proven to be enormously flawed in the past," said Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless. "The 1990 Census attempted to enumerate people on the streets, and an independent study by academics found that they missed as many as 40 percent of the people they meant to count. Our feeling is the time and resources would be much better spent improving the system and finding out what homeless people need and want."

But Anderson argues that the survey will enable the agency to do just that. "We stand to gain so much through this effort in terms of better understanding who is out there, where they are and how we can better meet their needs," he said.

Rebecca Webber is a journalist who has covered housing issues for Gotham Gazette since July 2000.



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