Housing Poverty & Homelessness Housing poverty is pervasive in New York City. It isn’t just that the rents are too damn high, it is also that a steady good-paying job with reliable hours and benefits are not available to many workers. In New York City 1.4 million adults lived in poverty in 2018 – roughly 20 percent of the population.77 An unexpected expense, a health crisis, unplanned time off work, reduced hours of employment and a myriad of other common life interruptions can have catastrophic consequences for families living pay-check to pay-check. When living in housing poverty, families are barely holding onto the roof over their heads, enduring the stress of financial insecurity. In 2017 building owners filed over 230,000 eviction petitions and 20,800 evictions were carried out.78 Breaking the cycle of housing poverty is not easy. Research has found that parents who experienced childhood homelessness are more likely to have repeated or persistent homelessness in adulthood.79 In addition, 49% of families and 40% of single adults that entered shelter in 2019 had a previous shelter stay.80 Preventing the negative impact of homelessness on children is a moral imperative. In 2018-2019 school year 114,000 NYC public school children experienced homelessness each year, either living doubled up or in shelters, where research shows that homeless children are more likely to be chronically absent, missing 10 percent of school days or more, which leads to worse education outcomes.81 Families with children stay in shelters 443 days on average,82 which means they are in a shelter for more than one full school year. New York City employs solutions to support housing stability, and while they help many families and individuals, they are insufficient to meet the need. NYC’s investment in the “Right to Counsel” has paid dividends in preventing evictions through legal representation, but some tenants need financial assistance in addition to a lawyer. NYC’s “one shot” program helps pay rent arrears to avoid eviction and prevent homelessness, but deep poverty causes many families to return again and again for assistance. Rental assistance programs provide ongoing steady support on making rent more affordable but even with the vouchers families and adults have trouble finding housing and the vouchers have fallen short on providing widespread access to “higher opportunity” neighborhoods. Mass homelessness has been an evolving catastrophe in New York City for decades. Substantially reducing the number of New Yorkers experiencing homelessness and committing to the proposition that housing is a human right – that every New Yorker deserves a home – must be a top focus for the next mayor.
The present situation is dire. New York City
Department of Homeless Services’ shelters housed
over 17,800 homeless single New Yorkers each night in the fall of 2020, a 156% increase from the number in
FROM THE GROUND UP | 2021
December 200983 and 12,500 homeless families—up
48
23% from 2009, despite the fact that homeless families often face steeper barriers to entry into shelters.84 In
addition, at least 3,850 New Yorkers lived unsheltered
in January 2020 according to the city’s HOPE estimate, although this is a significant undercount.85
