People sleeping on the streets, subway stations, parks, ATMs and other places in the five boroughs with tents or makeshift dormitories have become part of daily life in the Big Apple. And although the Administration of the mayor, Eric Adams, claims to be working hard to help homeless people who are picked up from public spaces without their consent, have shelter, said program has been a total “failure”, according to a report of the Municipal Comptroller.
The report indicates that 99% of the inhabitants who “made a home” or “cambuches” in public areas, and who were raised in the midst of “sweeps” by the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), were not placed in homes permanent.
And it is that after an audit carried out by the office of Comptroller Brad Lander, with data collected between March and November of last year, it was established that of a total of 2,308 people who were removed, only 3 secured permanent housing.
This was stated by Comptroller Lander, after noting that the sweeps completely failed to meet their main objective of connecting the homeless with services and shelter, also mentioning that only 90 of the more than 2,000 homeless moved from the streets, they stayed in shelters for more than a day and, as of January 2023, only 43 of those people were in shelters.
“Another way of saying the same thing is that 2,305 people out of 2,308, that is, 99.9% of them, remained homeless,” said the municipal official, at a press conference in Tompkins Square Park, where they have been removed. various shelters for the homeless. “The evidence is clear: By every measure, the homeless sweeps failed.”
The Comptroller took the opportunity to request the local Administration to implement on a larger scale the program known as “Housing First”, where the provision of permanent roof is prioritized without first requiring the homeless to enter a shelter or other requirements, since After analyzing the effectiveness of this plan, they saw that between 70% and 90% of the beneficiaries remain with stable shelter two or three years after receiving the services.
“A decade ago, New York City piloted Housing First policies to bring homeless veterans into stable housing with remarkable success, reducing veteran homelessness to almost none. With a Housing First approach to homelessness on the streets, combined with advocacy for the right to housing, New York City could dramatically reduce homelessness on the streets. The city that never sleeps must aspire to ensure that no one sleeps on the street,” added Lander.
Another relevant fact from the report is that the Comptroller’s Office found that the daily cost of housing people in supportive housing is significantly less than traditional shelter, hospitalization or incarceration settings.
“Housing a person in supportive housing costs approximately $68 per day, less than the approximately $136 per day for shelter and much less than $1,414 per day in jail at a Rikers Detention Center, or $3,609 per day for hospitalization” said the audit.
Dave Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, called on Mayor Adams not to ignore the findings of the Comptroller’s report and asked him to take action to create real options for homelessness in the Big Apple, not just kick people out of public areas and streets without guaranteeing permanent housing.
“Mayor Adams must face the facts in this report: criminalizing homeless New Yorkers and removing the homeless from sight is not only profoundly inhumane, but also demonstrably counterproductive. The only solution to homelessness is housing,” said the activist. “The Housing First model has been shown to work. Until the Mayor fully embraces and properly funds this model, countless New Yorkers will continue to be relegated to sleeping on our streets and in the transit system.”
Joshua Goldfein, supervising attorney at the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project, joined the call and criticized the advancement of the plan for sweeps and homeless uprisings from the cambuches.
“The findings of this audit underscore that the Mayor’s homeless ‘sweeps’ are ineffective and inhumane, and we are proud to join with the Controller in demanding that the City immediately cease these overly punitive and coercive operations. We must move toward solutions that limit police presence, such as existing homeless outreach teams and expansion of safe haven shelters and Housing First programs,” the advocate said.
After learning about the Comptroller’s report, far from admitting that its initiative has failed, the Adams Administration assured that the sweeps have been successful and highlighted that thanks to the “solid shelter system and other efforts to help homeless New Yorkers,” the Greater Manzana has a much lower homelessness rate than any other large city in the country.
“Despite the inherent difficulty of this work, our efforts have been indisputably successful. In the first year of this initiative, homeless New Yorkers accepted services six times faster than under the previous administration’s approach, and a vast majority of sweeps have not resulted in the re-establishment of a shack,” said a spokesperson for the Bureau. from Mayor Adams, who mentioned that the Controller is ignoring the context and did not accept information from other agencies. “We’re also glad the Comptroller agrees with us on the importance of innovating to get more people into housing faster, which is why our administration embraced the housing-first model last year and launched our ‘Street Street’ pilot program. -to-Housing’ that has already placed nearly 80 homeless New Yorkers right off the street in an apartment.”