As with so many other cities in this country and across the world, Homelessness in NYC, has been a problem for many decades. One mayor after another would try to tackle this social issue and yet it would continue unsolved.

Yours truly can remember the late 1980s’ as it existed at the Grand Central hub. I’d exit the Graybar Building into terminal and, like clockwork, I’d find the homeless commandeering the phone booths within the terminal every day at the onset of rush hour. Then there were the days when you’d walk along within Penn Station and there they’d be lined up against the walls on the ground.

Just the other day, in the midst of New York City’s experience with the COVID-19 crisis, I walked through the streets around Penn Station. We needed a bathroom and headed down below only to find them congregating outside, inside, along the stairs and at locations all around. I counted maybe 20 or so vagrants within a one block radius.

This page takes a quick look at the problem. With additions to be made in days and weeks ahead.

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NYC’s Mayor Bill de Blasio and the Homeless Crisis

During the week prior to the date of this writing, both the Mayor and NY Governor Andrew Cuomo would take steps towards further protecting our first responders, and in turn looking out for our homeless in the midst of the COVID-19 Crisis.

Known for being a champion of affordable housing and the homeless, Mr. de Blasio would state the following during his 2020 State of the City Address:

“For folks who unfortunately are not even able to conceive of a place to live, folks who are homeless on our streets, we have to commit ourselves to the ‘Journey Home’ plan that I announced in December and I want to be clear, this is way out on a limb, but it’s what we have to do. We have to end homelessness as we know it in New York City.”

“And we truly believe for the first time ever because of ‘HOME-STAT’, because of an initiative that’s reaching people like never before that we can end this horrible phenomenon of a person who’s on the streets for one year, two years, five years. We can end that once and for all. Are you all ready to be a part of that? Because we can do it.”

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Annual Homeless Assessment Report to Congress (AHAR) and the Definition of Homelessness

Put forth by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development is the AHAR. The first one, dated February 2007, outlined the following within its Foreword:

This first-of-its-kind study provides important baseline data on homelessness and will allow HUD and local communities to get a more complete understanding about how many persons are homeless, what their needs are, and how we can meet their needs so they no longer have to live in shelters and on the streets.

That first report would have taken several years to be created. Thereafter, there would be a report every year.

The 104 page 2019 AHAR, dated January 2020 has an extraordinary, would reveal (amongst many statistics) the following:

To be considered for the following statistics, ‘Homeless’ means one can be in a sheltered location (emergency shelters or transitional housing programs) as well as in an unsheltered locations such as on the street, in an abandoned building, or in other places not suitable for human habitation.

On a single night in January 2019

• Almost 568,000 people were homeless on a single night, with nearly two thirds (63%) found in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs.
• The number of people experiencing homelessness nationwide increased by nearly three percent between 2018 and 2019, or 14,885 more people.
• Nearly half of all people experiencing homelessness in the country were in three states: California (27% or 151,278 people); New York (16% or 92,091 people); and Florida (5% or 28,328 people).
• California and New York had the largest numbers of people experiencing homelessness and the highest rates of homelessness, at 38 and 46 people per 10,000.
• Nearly one-quarter of all people experiencing homelessness in the United States (24%) did so in either New York City (78,604 people) or Los Angeles (56,257 people). A majority of New York City’s homeless population were people in families with children, while a large majority of people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles were individuals (or people in households without children).

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Coalition for the Homeless: Governor and Mayor to Blame

as New York Enters Fifth Decade of Homelessness Crisis.

The Coalition for the Homeless’ 53 page 2020 State of the Homeless Report would begin with its Executive Summary:

Modern mass homelessness in New York is now entering its fifth decade. New York’s catastrophic affordable housing crisis continues to fuel record homelessness throughout the city and state, devastating the lives of tens of thousands of men, women, and children. The number of single adults sleeping each night in New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelters increased by a staggering 143 percent, from 7,700 in December 2009 to 18,700 in December 2019. While the number of families sleeping each night in DHS shelters has levelled off in the past three years, that figure remains stubbornly high: In December 2019, 14,792 families slept in shelters each night, a 7-percent decline from the all-time high of 15,899 in November 2016, but a 46-percent increase compared with December 2009. Shockingly, 1 in every 100 babies born in New York City last year was brought “home” from the hospital to a shelter.

Further along in the report would be the following:

Even as tens of thousands of New Yorkers struggle to avoid or overcome homelessness every day, Mayor de Blasio and Governor Cuomo seem content with minimalist, symbolic, and too-often harmful actions made under the pretense of attempting to manage the problem, rather than taking the substantive steps needed to solve it by fully embracing proven housing solutions on a scale commensurate with the enormity of the crisis.

Their 2019 report would be titled, THE TALE OF TWO HOUSING MARKETS: How de Blasio’s Housing Plan Fuels Homelessness

As record homelessness persists on New York City’s streets and in its shelter system, it is critical to ask: Why does the homelessness crisis remain unabated after Mayor de Blasio has had nearly six years to implement his much-touted “progressive” policy blueprint? The answer is unfortunately simple: The Mayor’s signature housing plan exacerbates the city’s bifurcated housing market by creating a glut of high-rent units instead of investing precious resources in the production of desperately needed extremely low-rent apartments. Equally lamentable is the plan’s inadequate investment in new apartments to be built specifically for the nearly 61,000 New Yorkers who sleep in shelters every night: Only 6,000 are planned through 2026.

This stark disconnect between Mayor de Blasio’s ineffectual affordable housing plan and the reality of record homelessness explains why, well into his second term, his approach is failing to reduce mass homelessness in New York City. The plan, which is cavalierly defended by the Mayor whenever it is questioned, is the object of widespread criticism for offering too little too late for a problem that will undoubtedly define his mayoralty.

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Right to Shelter Mandate – Historically Speaking

Late 1930s:

Section 1 of ARTICLE XVII of the Constitution of the State of New York

[Public relief and care]
Section 1. The aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such of its subdivisions, and in such manner and by such means, as the legislature may from time to time determine. (New. Adopted by Constitutional Convention of 1938 and approved by vote of the people November 8, 1938.)

1979 – 1983: Callahan Consent Decree – Legal Right to Shelter for the Homeless

Callahan v. Carey class action suit brought on by Coalition for the Homeless with Robert Callahan as the lead plaintiff against the City and State of New York (Governor Hugh Carey & Mayor Ed Koch). The decision in favor of the plaintiffs would result in the Callahan Consent Decree: Establishing a Legal Right to Shelter for Homeless Individuals in New York City.

1993: Department of Homeless Services (DHS)

Dept. of Homeless Services (DHS) comes into its own existence, in 1993, out of the Human Resources Administration (HRA) during the Mayor David Dinkins administration; with the aim to more extensively alter NYC’s homeless policies.