Finding a new path home

City steps up shelter strategy

By Michael Clancy

amNewYork City Editor

As the white van pulls alongside the Port Authority Bus Terminal last week, about 80 homeless people jostle to line up near it.  Out reach workers jump out of the van, swing open the back door and pass out chicken soup, oranges, milk and bagels.

Eighty meals are handed out in about 12 minutes.

“Let me get an extra bagel,” a bearded man asked a volunteer to no avail.

This is the first stop of a dozen the Coalition for the Homeless van will make, including visits to the West Side, Harlem and a Park Avenue shelter.

Some of the hungry people are just poor, not homeless; a frail elderly man looking to stretch his weekly budget.  Others like Ray – a young man who said he lost his life savings in a mugging after he stepped off a bus from Georgia last week – don’t plan to be homeless for long. 

But many of the people looking for food last week from the volunteers were the chronically homeless, people who represent the biggest challenge to city officials and advocates looking to help people get off the streets.

According to a census taken in February, there are 3,843 homeless people living on New York streets.  Advocates, however, say the number is drastically undercounted because of flaws in the census methods. 

During the summer, Mayor Michael Bloomberg pledged a two-thirds reduction in street homelessness by the end of his second term in 2009.

Those who sometimes spend years on the street represent a fraction of the homeless population in a city that houses well over 30,000 people nightly in shelters, including 8,800 families. 

Robert V. Hess, the newly appointed commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services, said he wants to make good on the mayor’s pledge. 

“We got a lot of well-meaning, solid professionals doing a lot of good work, but despite that we’ve got a lot of people living out on the streets,” said Hess, who has been on the job six months and is looking for new ways to tackle old problems.

In June, the city started an aggressive plan to pressure homeless people to move out of 73 homeless encampments throughout the five boroughs.

City workers and contractors fanned out to get these homeless people to move to a shelter, a treatment program or supportive housing.

Homeless advocates say the mayor’s ambitions goal is realistic, but only if the city and the state provide supportive housing or affordable apartments with regular assistance.

“The real measurement of whether the city can do this or not—the rubber hitting the road—is the availability of supportive housing for the street homeless,” said Patrick Markee, of the Coalition for the Homeless. 

“If the city goes back to the failed model, a trip to a shelter, it will fail,” Markee said.

Another approach the city is looking at is the “Housing First” model, which was pioneered in New York City by Pathways to Housing.

It approaches homelessness as a separate issue from alcoholism, drug abuse or mental illness.  It helps people living on the street find a permanent place to live, so they can deal with their other problems.

The city also is working on a collaborative project with Common Ground, a social services provider, to tackle homelessness in smaller ways.

During the past 90 days, the city identified 50 chronically homeless people in the Times Square area, Hess aid.  Working with Common Ground, the city has persuaded 25 of those people to enter supportive housing. 

“Those 25 had an average of 14 ½ years of living on the streets of New York City,” Hess said.  “So that’s what we’re talking about here.

“We are talking social service intervention strategy to lift up the people who decided to live on the street.”

Bernard’s world

Bernard has been homeless for three years after a four-month stint in jail.

“We are on Park Avenue.  Park Avenue!  And I have never seen as many homeless people on the street as I do now. … It’s ridiculous,” said Bernard, 54, who would not give his last name, standing last week outside Christ Church at 60^th Street and Park Avenue.

“I just wish they would get affordable housing, something that would fit into my income.  The rent is just too high, especially for the income that the majority of people are getting on SSI,” said Bernard, referring to the federal government’s Supplemental Security Income program.

“They got abandoned buildings.  Buildings that are just standing there—they’re not knocking them down.  Why don’t they ask homeless people if they have a trade and let them renovate those buildings?”

A mission to feed the homeless

With a small staff and many volunteers, the Coalition for the Homeless feeds about 1,000 people a night.

Three vans stocked with food and volunteers fan out each night at 7 p.m. to make a three-hour delivery run to the homeless and working poor.  One van heads uptown, stopping at 60^th Street and Seventh Avenue, the Port Authority, 72^nd Street, Riverside Drive, Harlem and the Upper East Side.  Another van handles lower Manhattan and a third van heads to the Bronx.

For more information, visit coalitionforthehomeless.org.