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THE CENTER FOR NEW YORK CITY AFFAIRS
BREAKING THE CYCLE: HOMELESS FAMILIES IN NEW YORK TODAY Presented by The Center for New York City Affairs Tuesday, October 1, 2002, 10:00 am to 12:00 noon Moderator and panelists' biographies: Dennis Culhane is a professor at the University of Pennsylvania School of Social Work whose primary area of research is homelessness and housing policy. His current work includes studies of the impact of homelessness on utilization of health, corrections and emergency shelter facilities, and of the dynamics of public shelter use. He also recently completed studies of the housing market and neighborhood factors related to the distribution of homeless persons' prior addresses in New York, Philadelphia and Washington, DC. He is at present leading a national effort to analyze data from homeless services information systems to monitor the prevalence and dynamics of homelessness. Linda Gibbs is commissioner of the New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS), having joined the agency in January 2002. She is currently leading DHS through a strategic planning process that will result in a widely released strategic plan articulating the agency's goals around homelessness prevention, service provision, quality improvement initiatives and permanent housing. Prior to her work at DHS, Commissioner Gibbs served as deputy commissioner for management and planning at the Administration for Children's Services (ACS), where she was instrumental in the formation of ACS as an independent agency, as well as shifting the focus of the agency to neighborhood-based services. Ted Houghton is an independent policy consultant to nonprofit organizations and foundations on issues related to housing, mental health, employment training and program management. He previously served as director of program and housing placement for the New York City Department of Homeless Services, and also worked for the Coalition for the Homeless. He is co-author of Hard Work on Soft Skills: Creating a Culture of Work in Workforce Development (for Public/Private Ventures) and principal author of The Blueprint to End Homelessness in New York City (Supportive Housing Network of New York). He currently advises the Housing First! Affordable Housing for All New Yorkers campaign. Gladys Cruz is a housing specialist at HELP USA. In 1999, during her 18 months of living with her children at the Bronx Morris Avenue family shelter, she began an internship there as a teacher's aide. After securing permanent housing, she quickly graduated to teacher, and now works as a housing specialist at the shelter in which she once lived. In addition to raising her five daughters and her work at the shelter, Ms. Cruz is currently a full-time student in Human Services at Metropolitan College. Jane Velez is president of Palladia, Inc., formerly Project Return Foundation, a human services agency that runs programs addressing drug abuse, housing and homelessness, domestic violence and AIDS, and aspects of these issues as they relate to the correctional system. Ms. Velez has been with the organization since 1977, and has been president since 1982. She has served on Mayor Dinkins' Commission on Homelessness and the City Council Legislative Advisory Commission on the Homeless, and is currently a Board member of H.E.L.P. for the Homeless. Prior to working for Palladia, Ms. Velez worked in education, and spent 11 years teaching in the New York City school system.
More importantly, all of us are here because this issue touches our lives. We want all of you to be part of this discussion. We have some distinguished panelists, including the Commissioner, here, who will help provide context for the issue. But you are all part of it. I just came back from Prague, yesterday. And it's very clear that homelessness is an international issue, not just a domestic issue. There is probably no city or town in the United States that does not have a homeless problem. And if they don't have a homeless problem, that's because they've moved their homeless to some other city, so that city or town can have their problem. This is an issue that involves us in ways that are very deeply personal, because we come in contact with homeless people. Some of us have homeless people as part of our own families, part of our own networks. Some of us have to deal with the homeless issue on a personal level in our own homes, our own communities and so this is an issue that is touching and touches all of us. And I hope that in today's forum we are able to share ideas, share possible structural changes and deal with these issues so we can begin the process of curing the problem rather than putting more band aids on it. We know it's not just a problem of housing. We know it's not just a problem of mental health. Nor is it just a problem of jobs. It's a social problem, a psychological problem and a problem that deals with every aspect of our society, until we take some deep strides in reorganizing our entire society we won't be able to deal with this issue. So I commend all of you for being here. I wish we could accommodate more. But alas we can't and so for those of you who are standing outside, please bear with us. We will try to run this program expediously so that everyone can be part of these important proceedings. And now I want to turn this over to Andrew White, the director of the Center for New York City Affairs, to do the formal introductions. ANDREW WHITE: Sorry to all of you for cramming you
in here like this. We didn't know it would be quite this popular. TED HOUGHTON: Hello everyone, thanks for showing up. It's really nice to see so many people interested. My name is Ted Houghton and like Andrew said, I once worked for the Coalition for the Homeless and I also once worked for the Department of Homeless Services. I think actually I am the absolutely only person ever to do that and I think that's probably the primary reason I was brought in to moderate and I'll do my best. Two weeks ago, I was here to see the first forum in this series, and it was on garbage and recycling. The Commissioner of Sanitation was here and he objected to someone's use of the term garbage crisis. And he said, "Look, when my guys stop picking up the garbage and leave it on the streets that's when it's a crisis. Right now it's just a problem." Right now we've got a crisis. I think I've been using the word a lot in terms of homelessness over the last 20 years but I think more so than ever, we really do have a homeless crisis. We've got 33,000 people sleeping every night in shelters. We've got maybe….the Commissioner is here. Come on in. So we have 33,000 people sleeping in the shelters each night and that's much higher than the 28,000, which was our previous high in 1987, which we always referred to as the peak of homelessness. We've far surpassed that. And this time it's different. We've got families really driving the rise in shelter use. Right now I think we've got, according to the latest statistics, have 8,700 families with almost 16,000 children. That's 29,000 people in the entire family shelter system. Family shelter capacity has increased by 72% in the last 2 years. It's an amazing figure. It's really incredible that it has actually been accomplished, that room has been found for so many people. It's unfortunate that we have to put so many people in emergency shelter, but they are getting places to sleep. That's double the family budget in 2 years, from $123 million 2 years ago to $257 million this year. Part of this can be attributed to families moving out of the system more slowly. In the years '93-97, the fiscal years, we made about 4700 placements out of the system and into permanent housing for families. That's mostly through using public housing from the NYC Housing Authority and using private housing with Section 8 subsidies and EARP bonuses, and Emergency Assistance Rehousing Program that go to private landlords to accept homeless families. In the last 5 years, we only made 3700 placements a year, on average, about 1,000 a year or less. There are a lot of different reasons for this. And part of it is that there is not enough housing out there and there are also various system reasons as well. Because of this, length of stay has increased. 8.5 months was the average length of stay 2 years ago and now it's 10.5 months. And we've seen a lot of system reforms get implemented in the last 9 months or so and a lot more are on the way. There is a very large increase in Section 8 certificates available to homeless families. There's more public housing being rerouted to homeless families and there's also more money to help move them into housing. So we hope to see this speed up the process and a lot of this credit goes to Commissioner Gibbs for securing these kinds of resources. It's not easy. But another reason that the numbers have gone so far up, is that there has been an incredible increase in the number of families coming into the system, about 30% more than entered 2 years before. And that's really putting a huge strain on the system. There are a lot of reasons. There's been a severe economic downturn, which followed on the heels of a real estate boom, which really raised the price of housing. Welfare reform has restricted families' ability to pay, and the only place that families could find affordable housing is through the shelter system. So I think that we need to look at the system as a whole, not just the family shelter system but NYC as a whole and that's where I'm wearing my hat as a Housing First member comes in. The fact is that we have a really bad affordable housing shortage and we've always said this, but it's gotten distinctly worse. We've got a 3.19 vacancy rate, which is the lowest in decades. We've got about 14,000 families coming in to the shelter, applying, twice each. And we've got 1 in 4 households that are renting and paying more than half of their income in rent. We added almost half a million units in the 1990s and we actually lost more rental units than we added. So it's gotten much more severe than we ever could have imagined. And I think we can now call it a crisis. I'm going to turn it over now to our four panelists. We've got the Commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services, Linda Gibbs. We have Professor Dennis Culhane, from the University of Pennsylvania, and Jane Valez, the president of Palladia (formerly Project Return Foundation). We have Gladys Cruz, who is from HELP U.S.A. and is the housing specialist there. We will start with Linda Gibbs and I'm going to ask each presenter to keep their comments to 5 minutes or less and then we will ask a few questions and then open it up to the floor. COMMISSIONER LINDA GIBBS: I thank you and I guess I would sort of reiterate my general feeling after now having been 9 months in the position as Commissioner, which is I really do feel encouraged and hopeful for the future. And if there is any indication of that, it is the fact that we probably need the auditorium rather than this seminar room for this discussion. I think the level of public interest and engagement and willingness to support in really coming up with solutions around this issue is tremendous and it is the thing that gives me hope that we are going to find the solutions that we need. Of course, I thought I was being excessive in the number of copies I brought but unfortunately there won't be enough. But I emphasize very strongly using data and distributing data and getting our information out there. So I always refuse to go to any forum like this without packs of information. So maybe if we can just distribute them around, the one chart that is in lovely color format has a lot of demographic information about who we have in the shelter system over time. Looking at the change in the composition of the families coming into the shelter system over time. The second documents, provides, in chart form, many of the statistics that Ted just went over for you. So I won't repeat everything that he presented so nicely. But the second chart, in black and white, has those most recent demographics and trends. What they really do is they show, by picture the very dramatic increases that we are experiencing. We've had a tremendous increase in the number of applicants coming to the EAU for Shelter Services. When it's all said and done, about half of the families who apply to us for emergency shelter assistance, are in fact eligible. Because we've had an increase in the number of applications there is a corresponding increase in the number of eligible families that are staying with us in shelter, looking for assistance, as we work with them to move to permanent housing. So the shelter population has expanded. There have been, in fact, fewer placements to permanent housing with rental assistance from the city and so a greater number coming, fewer leaving, which means two things. Those who are there are staying longer and the shelter system is expanding. It's stunning, absolutely stunning, that since I started in January, I have been responsible for the addition of 1,800 new family shelter units in this city. So that our current shelter population of 8800 just in this short period of time, has been the expansion of 1800. I certainly hope that I don't have to continue to increase at that pace. I will see it as a success when we are closing shelter facilities. I want to be helping more people to stay in their homes and not need to come to the homeless services system for assistance, to successfully support them before they become homeless. I want to do a much better job of helping those who are homeless move on to permanency. So with that as the general introduction, I would say really 2 things that I want to share. One is that when I started at the Department of Homeless Services, I am new to the system. I don't have a background in this social service. I came from the Administration for Children's Services and have worked in the social service field in the city for the past 6 or 7 years. But Homeless Services was new to me. And I started knowing that I wanted to develop a plan that really lead the road map, where do we think we are going to be going, taking the system from where it is now into the future? I did a lot of site visits and meetings and convened a number of forums that really identified…given all of the progress that has been made in the homeless service system, where do we need to go next? And 3 critical things emerged for me. This is on top of the fact that the shelter system is fundamentally strong and sound and is providing very good services, homeless services, to those who are homeless, within the confines of the shelter. The 3 things that emerged on the top of that observation is that there was an inadequate focus by the Department of Homeless Services on preventive services. Preventive services are run for the city by 3 agencies, none of which are the Department of Homeless Services. At the same time, the Department of Homeless Services, did not have a strong conversation going, between itself and those other provider agencies, in order to appreciate what services were being provided and whether or not those service providers were aware of what were the needs of the current families and singles who are homeless. So one very strong emphasis that we have put in our strategic plan, is to have a much stronger dialogue with those agencies and to really do an assessment that will tell us definitively whether or not the preventive services that the city is providing are the right preventive services and avoiding homelessness for as many people as we possibly can. The second important element that we emphasize in the strategic plan, is really an added focus on permanency. The shelter system, as I said, is very strong and it's one that the city can be very proud of. We are providing very good strong supportive services to people who are in the homeless shelters. Within the shelter system, there is not a sufficient focus on the steps that are necessary in order to assist people to move from homelessness to permanency. And by that I mean 3 things. The resources that are necessary to support people in that task were not sufficient. The city had not kept up in terms of the number of housing assistance resources that were being offered to homeless families in a way that could ever meet the current size of the population. So the first task was really to increase resources that are being applied to assist individuals and families who are homeless. Most significantly, on the family side, this is demonstrated as Ted mentioned by a very substantial increase that the city has made in the Section 8 vouchers. That is our primarily source of support to move folks into permanent housing, but also by an increase in the number of NYCHA units. Of the vacancies that turn over every year, a portion of those are devoted for families who are in the homeless system and so there has been a doubling of the number of units that are available through NYCHA. We have been successful just in this past week to create a new housing assistance program for folks who are, in fact, ineligible for various reasons for NYCHA and Section 8, and had no path to move from the homeless system to permanent housing. So we have now created with the state's support, a new rental assistance program for those individuals. Thus we now have a vehicle that can support them to move to permanent housing. Obviously, resources are one critical issue. The second issue is data information and accountability. In speaking about whether or not we were being successful, I couldn't tell what successful meant. The agency hadn't defined for itself a goal or a target or how many people do we, in fact, believe we can move to permanent housing this year? What are the numbers? And the agency also hadn't used all of their data that it had, in order to assist our providers to understand where they stood in this challenge of moving people to permanent housing. So what we've done is established a report card that really looks at the 4 or 5 critical tasks that need to be accomplished in order to assist, somebody to move to permanent housing. We are providing that information through our providers so that they know for the first time how the system is doing as a whole. I can learn how I'm doing within the system. Whether I'm doing good or bad. And maybe I'm really good at these three things but boy I'm not doing good on those and I wonder about those guys over there. I convened everybody in meetings and we talk and it's the theme of the meeting is steal all the good ideas. Everybody shares their strategies and their thoughts and it's really trying to bring all of those best practices to each other and stealing all of each other's ideas so that we can really use the data to help us to manage to reach the outcome that we want to achieve. And to the extent that there are folks who are falling behind, to bring them the support that they need in order to bring them up to the level of performance. The third thing, which is something that we need permission from the courts to do, is to adopt standards of client responsibility within the shelters. The right to shelter does not enable us to impose any consequence for the failure of a client to undertake necessary actions to move to permanent housing. And we have a system that is overwhelmingly defined by clients who want to move to permanent housing. They do not want to stay in the shelter system. At the same time there is no incentive for them to act with urgency in their search and toward accepting permanent housing. At this point, we will need the permission of the court to move forward on this regulation and we are seeking that permission. We will be working with our providers to shape this policy and to plan for its implementation. We don't have it finalized, but the goal, essentially, will be to have the clients understand that they too have a role in this process of ensuring that everybody moves with urgency toward permanent housing. The third focus, I really don't need to say that much more because I think it's sort of obvious perhaps by some of the explanation I've given, which is really to emphasize the use of data to do evaluation. To do monitoring and accountability. And on this, I think over the past decade NYC, through all of the providers in the homeless service system, our Department of Housing Preservation and Development, has been a leader in 2 things. We are, I think, the world's leader in providing homeless services and having a service approach that is addressed to the particular needs of the homeless and it varies, based on the populations but we are the leader and we have developed the service approach. At the same time we are also perhaps the world's leader in supportive housing. And many, many strong successful models have built up over this past decade. During this time, we have not built strong evaluations that demonstrate the success. We have numbers of move-outs. We have numbers of people served. But we do not have a strong array of evaluation tools that help us to really go a little deeper in saying for what people, in what circumstances, do various things work best? When we think about moving forward, we really have our own strong experience to build on, in making policy decisions but we don't have that demonstrated research. All the voices that came together around this, really emphasized that desire to bring greater use of the data for evaluation, program development, needs assessment and accountability. So that's a key element of the strategic plan. I think that's really the 2 things I wanted to focus on mostly. The focus of the strategic plan with a little greater in depth on some of our thinking around permanency. TED HOUGHTON: Thank you. We will try to keep this moving. And call on Professor Dennis Culhane. His work as really informed a lot of where housing and homeless policy is going so we are really lucky to have him. DENNIS CULHANE: Thank you Ted. It was really a great honor to be here and to be among a very bright crowd with lots of interest and hopefully that might translate and we can solve the problem today. I want to applaud Commissioner Gibbs because I've worked with the City of New York for 13 years now with all the different commissioners and folks who have sat in her chair, and I have to say I find Commissioner Gibb's leadership very, very exciting, a very different attitude has been brought to the City's thinking about this problem. Her candidness, solution-oriented approach and of course what warms the hearts of a researcher is her interest in data and making accountability a major part of this. I am also a major fan of the accountability component of this because I think that the homeless service system has evolved without a lot of careful thinking and I think it's surrounded by a set of incentives which are very counterproductive to good public use of the public dollar. And I think that many, many more families….and I think this is the thing to keep in mind when we hear about accountability….many, many more families could be served, even with the resources that are spent today, if there was some rethinking about how that was done. All that said, I would also note that I don't think that this problem is going to go away and I wish that myself, as well as the other members of this panel could say that there was a solution. Unfortunately, the pieces right now are not on the chess board for us to try to get to a solution. We have 2 long-term trends, structural trends that have no sign of reversing. One is that incomes among low income people, particularly the lowest income people, people dependent on minimum wage and in and out of the part-time marginal labor force. And people dependent on public assistance, their income has been declining against inflation for 25 years. State legislatures have not shown great interest in reversing that trend and that's not just unique to New York. And secondly, of course, housing costs have been moving in the opposite direction and that's not something that the City of New York or the state or the federal government, for that matter, is able to control. I would say that the focus on the homeless system may seem appropriate because that's where the evidence of these problems coming to a head seems to show itself. Particularly as we know, in the EAU. But I think that that focus really may be limiting us from putting our attention on alternatives to the shelter system. Alternative ways of thinking about what is an endemic problem. We have an endemic problem, not just here but throughout the country, that there is a certain proportion of the poorly population, living in overcrowded and unaffordable housing that will have a housing emergency each year. Predictably, just like the rate of heart attacks will be fairly even this year as it was last year and next year. The rate of housing emergencies will be predictable. I'm also afraid that we may be boxing ourselves in. I think that the legal client in particular here in New York has boxed the city into a costly and very inefficient response and that in the long term that is ineffective in terms of its potential reach. I just want to note a couple of facts that I think support some of this thinking. Number one, we have been doing some research just looking at the factors that seem to be associated with the trend in shelter admissions among families. This research we've been doing primarily in Philadelphia. We looked over an 8 year period and found that the 2 factors driving the variation in shelter admissions, although as I say there is this endemic rate of about 10% among poor families per year, was unemployment and housing costs. We are in an unusual time perhaps but unfortunately it may continue where both unemployment has been going up and housing costs are going up at the same time. And so those two things don't usually correspond, as you probably know. Most of the two big recessions in the last 20 years, the housing market and the collapse of the housing market was a big part of it, which did provide ironically, perhaps, some relief for people on the low income spectrum. And the opposite is occurring here. I would also say some of the research that we have been looking at and other researchers have been doing, I think raises important questions about the approach to family homelessness. A sort of emerging ideology, if you will, in the field, that I don't think was ever articulated or was ever put forth as a framework, a conceptual framework for how we should deal with this problem, but which has been sort of backward justified onto the problem. What I mean by that is that, I think, a presumption on the part of some, particularly in the provider community that the emergency shelter, transitional housing, has sort of a dose response with respect to these families. You give more up and you'll have a better outcome at the other end. And if more service intensity, which has really driven a lot of the costs in the homeless family system, not just here but around the country, has some kind of tangible payoff. Unfortunately, I don't think that the evidence supports that. We have been looking at family readmission rates from shelters of a tremendous variety and we do not see a lot of variability with respect to families who stayed for 6 months versus families who stayed for 2 years. Their readmission rates look similar. The main factor is whether or not they have a permanent housing placement, subsidized housing placement at the other end. Our own research at Penn and other research has reflected that 92% of the families leaving the NYC system with such a subsidy do not return over the next 2 years. Also Professor Shin's research, which looked at poorer families who become homeless and those who do not, did not find any distinguishable differences of great import between those families who become homeless and those who do not. So I think the things point to the fact that it doesn't mean that services don't matter. Let me point out that the 3rd study that was done that once families were placed, randomly assigned to an intensive kind of case management services or not, and the case management had no impact on the return to housing. Basically this is the reason why these families have very high rates of success. Doesn't mean it solves all of their problems. Families have lots of problems. But families who aren't homeless have lots of problems too. But it means that the key ingredient of the housing subsidy and the focus of services, I think, has been misguided. What does all this point to? I think it does indicate that more rapid reattachment to housing should be our focus. There are varying philosophies around the country. I work in some states where the idea that a family would be homeless for more than a month is very puzzling, because when a family becomes homeless they sort of have the Red Cross approach. You come in, we'll provide you with a hotel or whatever, for a few days. But the focus is getting you another place to live, getting you back where you are. Whereas other parts of the country, "Oh you're homeless, oh my God, that's terrible, come on in. Stay a while. You can stay here for a year and we'll get you all trained and educated and we'll teach you beautician and work skills and all these other things and you'll be ready for life." And I think that the evidence I am trying to sum up supports a more rapid reattachment. It doesn't mean that families couldn't benefit from a lot of services, even when they are in housing but there is no reason to link the services to the housing. I also think this raises a more troubling problem for the city, which is the fact that one way out of this current problem with high census is to discharge families with a housing subsidy as quickly as possible. The very fact which I am supporting. This is problematic because, of course a lot of families who would like to get into public housing and get Section 8, often do not, because there is priority given to families in the shelter system. And although there are many reasons families will have a housing emergency, it is undeniable that families come to the homeless system in part because they know they will get a subsidized housing placement. And this puts the city into a catch 22 situation and I personally believe there is no way out of an expanding shelter system unless there is a delinkage between eligibility for subsidized housing and enrollment in the shelter system. And I think that there are many families with housing emergencies, not all of which get expressed in a shelter admission. We now know that on an annual basis, about 10% in some ethnic groups, African Americans 12% of the poor families are in a shelter each year. Over the course of a several year period, about 40% of some families, particularly low income families without high school education… mothers without high school education, 40% of them, almost half of them, will stay in a shelter in a 5 year period. This is a systematic…this is not an isolated population. It shows a systematic pattern of utilization and really suggests that we have to take a much more broader and substantive look at how we deal with housing emergencies and the predictability of housing emergencies among a large population segment. I don't know if we really know all of the solutions on this but I would say that the TANF program, which is now a time limited program and which most of the families, although I know a decreasing proportion, most of the families are coming from and are involved in the TANF system, it seems that there could be an emergency housing relocation and emergency housing assistance program that is built into that program. That also has a limited number of cash…an amount that gets allocated for each family that is usable over the course of the 5 years of eligibility. Most of these families are very young that are coming into the system. We know that when their kids leave pre-school age years, that they also leave welfare at high rates and they also show up in the homeless shelter system at much lower rates. So we are talking about a group that I think is definable, a period of their life that is very much at risk, a time of risk. And for which there could be an entitlement, essentially, within that benefit that would sidestep the use of the homeless system as the conduit for getting into those programs. Is it affordable? I personally think it could be. Someone needs to do the actuarial analysis on that. But you have to assume that a given family will not be using….not all families would use the program in any given year. Maybe 25-30% would be using it in any given year. And if you start to say that and you say, "Well, 10% of our families are already in the emergency shelter system and the cost of this program we probably could….for the cost of the emergency shelter bed for a year, we could probably serve 6 or 7 families for the cost of what we are paying for shelter. I think the numbers may come to work out, although I don't have access to all of the numbers to do that modeling. It seems to me that it's a possibility. I will close by saying that there are a number of states that are moving in this direction. Who faced with the prospect should we increase our emergency shelter system or should we start to rethink how we approach the problem of housing problems, particularly for poor families in transition? At least 8 states are trying to rethink that and not expanding their shelter capacity. Some are actually trying to shrink it and come up with alternative programs. They are coming up against some federal laws that limit what can be done with the TANF money but I think those are political hurdles that with some focus could be overcome. That's it. Thank you. TED HOUGHTON: Jane Velez, I think, would be good for you to answer because I know that the Palladia has recently focused on services to single adults and families. And I think you know that you understand that there is a need for certain kinds of services, so maybe you could talk about supportive services and what you do. JANE VELEZ: I think to put this in the context, you need to understand how we got to where we are. How Palladia became a housing provider. We started out and we are a social service agency. Our core program was, and still is, a residential drug-free program, one of the larger ones in the country. It still services at our main facility, over 400 adults. And around that we built a series of programs. We have 15 locations. On any given day, I'm not talking about our housing one, we see about 1300 people. We have 2 domestic violence programs and we are about to do a domestic violence housing. We have a homeless shelter up in the Bronx through the city, which is 130 women. We have large residential drug-free program and several outpatient programs. We provide a good deal of HIV and AIDS services. We provide a healthcare unit. We do work within the criminal justice system, particularly with parole violators. The core of the program is the clinical treatment and voc/ed, medical/legal, family services and finding a place to live when you get out. And that's how we got to housing. Although we started as a drug program, over 30 years ago, we began to see that the same people we were seeing in our drug program, were now showing up in other people's other programs like domestic violence and within the criminal justice program. And you could pretty easily pick up somebody from one program and put him down or her down in another and the only difference would be the primary reason they were there and what the funding stream was. About 8 or 10 years ago, we started to look at what was happening and it is what you said. The two biggest problems for people coming out of programs like this are a job and a place to live. And at that point, other people weren't doing this so we said, "Okay, we've tried other things, we are going to try doing housing for our own people." And that's how we got into this. And I think now that we are one of the largest providers in the city of family, permanent family housing, we have….I don't think this is right, the figures that I got but….we've placed at least 142 families, of which at least 266 people are children in those families. And they are in 5 different locations. Our largest facility just opened, which has 60 families up in the Bronx. I do believe in services. But I also believe that you need the housing first. I am a woman and I am a mother. And I know…and I actually was an elementary school teacher in another life but you cannot look at these families and what is happening to them and not look at these children and know…you have to know that you are looking at the next generation of this city. And if we don't give these children some hope and some feeling that they are going to make it, we are going to see these children in the same programs and the same shelters and whatever that we saw their parents, a generation ago. And believe me, I have seen some of the parents of these children since I've been with the agency. I do think that we need more housing. We need probably more transitional housing. We certainly need more permanent housing. But I do not believe and we do not believe that for many of these families, housing can stand by itself. Or you are going to end up with what you have in the housing projects. Which in short order changed from being working class housing into a nightmare. Partly because they are so big and I also think that is an issue. But I think for many of these families, they are ill equipped to understand, to be able to function on a day-to-day level in the same way that the people in this room understand. Many of these women are being reunited with their children for the first time in a long time. We had one family where this woman came through our women and children's program with one child. She had four other children in foster care. Four different foster homes. In one afternoon, after she got the….this is true, honestly….in one afternoon…and these four children did not know each other very well. They knew each other but they had never lived together. This woman was now not a recovering addict. Actually, in this case MICA, Mentally Ill Chemical Abusing woman with her one child, she now had 5 children all of a sudden in a brand-new apartment and luckily there are services. She got scared. She picked up the phone and she asked for help and she got it. And I think that part of what I don't agree with Dennis, obliviously about services, but part of what you're saying is absolutely true. What it's costing in all these other services, like foster care. And some of this money, like the TANF money, which we have an awful lot of, to do some of this. If you cost this out, over any period of time, you see that doing the kind of thing that the Commissioner is talking about makes sense. It makes sense for taxpayers. It saves money. But it isn't going to happen tomorrow and I think one of the reasons that we have such an issue here, is there is little or no place physically to go for housing. Those of you that have looked for apartments lately know New York is as bad as things get, the market just keeps going up. It's getting harder and harder to get into those neighborhoods where we used to be welcomed. It is becoming increasingly impossible to find space even from private landlords, except at exorbitant prices. What I do think is helpful and what I was really so glad to hear you say is that the city agencies are starting to talk to each other. And it isn't DHS trying to do their piece and HRA is doing whatever that is and HPD is doing their piece. But it's people sitting down at a table and on Thursday I understand we are going to have a meeting about how we can better use Section 8 vouchers. Well, good. Because it isn't going to be just HPD or NYCHA, the Housing Authority, but it will be DHS and it will be some of the providers. I'm not exactly sure that I answered what you wanted me to answer. I do think it's an issue that needs to be looked at in the long term as well as the short term. And I think we are trying to do that. I think there are a whole lot of young, exciting people in this room, and maybe you can be helpful. But please, the services really are necessary. But you have to have a house to live in first, before you get the services. TED HOUGHTON: Our last speaker is Gladys Cruz and she is a Housing Specialist at HELP U.S.A., one of the shelters in the family shelter system. And if you use the phrase "Housing first," you get an extra minute. GLADYS CRUZ: Hi, my name is Gladys Cruz, good morning everyone. I'm formerly homeless and with the total support that was provided to me from HELP Morris I gained the confidence to start an internship as an intern teacher, working closely with the children that we are talking about today. I was promoted to an assistant teacher, working with the homeless children up close and very personal. And was promoted to housing specialist to assist the actual parents of these children. It wasn't enough for me to work with the children anymore. I wanted to work closely with the parents and advocate for them and give them the confidence, help give them the confidence we all already have within ourselves, but sometimes we need a little help to grasp. And I needed that for myself because I was formerly homeless. And with the help and support I received from HELP U.S.A. I needed to give that back to my community. I needed to give that back to the children of our future, and I needed to give that back to the parents that need the help. I am here also to inform you of the main problems that are affecting the families being placed into permanent housing. As I was a victim, so that same values when I was homeless and I think we can all help each other on how to help deal with the issues and what the homeless system needs for families and their children. Remember, children are our future and that's all I have to say right now. TED HOUGHTON: Thank you very much. What I think I'm hearing is while there is some disagreement, I'm hearing that there is a consensus that we need more housing and that we need services to a certain extent and I think that what it points to, to me, is community-based services whenever possible. And emergency services only when you have to. There is going to be some housing emergencies every year. Whether or not those need to be prolonged for 10-25 months or whether or not there may be a way to move those services into the community and get people into housing better, I think is probably the challenge. What is the city doing to both provide prevention services and what direction are you moving there and how are you moving….how are you going to make the system smaller and get more people into housing and get the services they need out there in the community? Are there ideas out there? LINDA GIBBS: What is the solution? A couple of things. I mentioned earlier, just on the focus that I feel it's necessary for the homeless service agencies to be much more focused on the preventive services that are in place. The city actually spent over $100 million on homeless prevention annually. It's a staggering amount of money. What we have started with is 2 major things that will help to inform the strategies. One is that we are actually working together with those agencies, HPD, criminal justice coordinator and HRA. And getting together in routine workgroup of agencies that are going to be talking about and working on these issues and sharing data. And right now there are not evaluations that tell us which of these services are working best and why. And some of the providers have done their own evaluations and that's very helpful so that they can really help to understand, of their interventions, what they find to be successful. But the city has not really looked at the entire array to find whether or not these vehicles are working as powerfully as they need to be working, and whether it's sufficient. $100 million is an awful lot of money and I can't say whether that's enough money or too much money or not enough money. So since we really need to share the data, share the information, convene people to talk together and understand what we are doing and whether it's working. The other thing is that we do not have a routine way of understanding where homelessness is coming from in this city in order to understand why it is happening, in full. There are the 7 theories of homelessness and all of them are partly true. The question is which is the predominant? Which is the most likely indicator? Which one is really an indicator of all other things? And there is not a strong understanding of that, nor is there not enough information about to what extent it is present among our population in what proportions. So what we are going to be doing is what we call homestat. Everyone has a stat of something. We have homestat. And this will be a neighborhood-based predictor. And I know Dennis can give me a researcher's smack any time you want, if I use a word too…because I don't know if you can predict homelessness. What we can do is at least describe where it's coming from. A community-based picture of where homelessness is coming from. For instance, we don't get the housing court data. What is going on with evictions? Where are evictions coming from? What neighborhoods in what proportions? Where is it growing? Where is it shrinking? Is it from particular landlords? Is it from particular types of buildings? The city doesn't collect that data, doesn't share it and quite frankly, I don't know that we've ever asked for it so it's just another indication of the need to establish much more information and the need to share knowledge so that we can really develop strategies. So I will say that I do not have an answer on what I think the new or different preventive strategies ought to be because I can't tell you right now whether what the city is doing is right, I can't. So we need to start with that foundation. And that's a frustrating place to be, quite frankly, because the fact of the lack of knowledge, to me suggests that there are a lot of answers that we don't know and they are just waiting to be found. And so that's on the prevention. On the community based, I actually agree and feel very strongly that the more community based the services can be, the better it will be. To be successful in your interventions and to ensure that folks who are in need of services can be maintained with as great an amount of stability as possible. This is not a factor that is right now given a lot of attention in the provision of homeless services. There is an effort when a child and their family is first placed in a conditional placement, to match that family close to their home community. But then when the family moves on, if they are to stay in the shelter system, in our Tier 2 shelters, there is not currently an effort to match the family to community, which is remarkable. And at the same time in moving to permanent housing, the Section 8 program is actually called Housing Choice Voucher Program. The concept of Section 8 was it would put the power in the hands of the consumer to find an apartment where the consumer chooses to live. What we have done is, we have taken the choice out of Section 8, in the Department of Homeless Services, because we have one big list of apartments that landlord will register as available for homeless families and then each housing specialist in each agency gets that list and really the clients, in looking at it, if they work off that list alone are limited to where those apartments are. And what we are trying to do is to reinstate the choice in the Section 8 program by really emphasizing that list is there as a resource and a support and you can turn to it. But by all means you have the Section 8 authority in your hands. Go to the community that you want to live in and do your housing search there. It is tough and you have to be really competitive. And waiting for a pre-registered list that is going to be weeks old by the time you get it, is only going to disadvantage you further. Your search is in those communities and be the first person across the doorstep of that apartment when it is available. So these are two things. I'm trying to restructure our placement, our shelter placement policies, so we place children with their families, in the communities that the families are from, so that their schooling is not disrupted, and their other community ties are not disrupted. And that we introduce more strongly into the housing placement process that element of community choice, as well. TED HOUGHTON: Gladys, since you are right on the front lines, maybe you could talk a little bit about some of the barriers that families face when they are searching for housing. GLADYS CRUZ: The number one barrier is the broker and the landlord. Unfortunately, because of the bonus that we provide to these landlords, many of my clients….I have a caseload of 80 and there is 212 families in my shelter. My shelter is one of the largest shelters in the 5 boroughs. 8 out of 10 times, 9 out of 10 times, when my family goes out to look for an apartment, the family size is not big enough for the broker or the landlord, because the bonus will not be as big. For a family of 4, I believe you get $4,500 one-time bonus, as opposed to a family of 2 or 3, which is $2,000 or $3,000. Back when I was homeless, I remember when brokers used to call my housing specialist and ask "How is the family? Is the family a good family? Is the family in good conduct in your facility?" These are not the questions any more. When I pick up my phone, I'm hearing a broker or a landlord on the other end telling me, "How many people are in the unit?" And if I tell them, "It's a husband, a wife and a child. And the husband is a security guard and the wife is in school for nursing." He tells me, "No, no, no, no, no, they have to be on welfare. They have to be on welfare and they have to be a family of 4 or 5." I tell them, "But it's only a 2 bedroom." "But if it's the same sexes, we could fit them in." So unfortunately, this is a gigantic barrier for our families. And it's happening a lot. I have landlords that call me and tell me, "Listen, I have a two-bedroom apartment available but they have to be Spanish." Or, "They have to be black." Okay? It's so hard to work with these type of brokers and landlords that are even prejudice. I feel that in some kind of way we could have something in writing where the landlords must sign before they become approved, where they are not allowed to discriminate against gender, creed or if you only have 2 children. Hopefully, we could then put people in permanent housing more effectively. I think that the discriminators, the majority are the landlords. Another problem that I would like to raise is HRA. I will have clients that have been in the system for let's say 12 months. And they are certified for EARP or NYCHA. Unfortunately, HRA, when I pick up the phone and tell them my client works for the Board of Ed and she has been in your office trying to get a single issue. A single issue because she is employed. All she needs is a single issue. And a single issue is what pays your stay in the facility, and what gains access for you to find a lease to an apartment. Some HRA workers say, "I don't know what is a single issue. I cannot provide it to her." I'm like, "Can you fax me over a denial?" "No." They hang up the phone on me. They may be receiving SSI. You need a single issue. 9 out of 10 times I get no results from HRA. None whatsoever. Myself, as being homeless, I had a problem with welfare. I was pregnant and I was high risk. I was a widow, and I had 3 children. Now I have 5. I had 3 children, I was pregnant, I was in a high risk pregnancy. I had all my paperwork. They sanctioned me. I provided the papers that I needed to provide and unfortunately the HRA worker told me, "I don't remember you giving them to me." I lost a lease signing date to an apartment that I saw in Staten Island, because of this. Unfortunately it took 10 months, 10 months for HRA to open up my case, and lift my sanction. So that is 10 months of children having less food stamps, less benefits, less food, because society and the majority of society, HRA, they discriminate against parents and they are not thinking about the children. These children need to eat and unfortunately us, as adults, we make certain mistakes. And we must pay for it, through our time. But the children are not at fault. And when we hold these positions that we hold as case managers, housing specialists, HRA workers, we need to keep in mind, CHILDREN. Not the adults, children. TED HOUGHTON: So it sounds like there's a lot of opportunities for administrative reform. How has it been going, working with HRA? Do you want to second that? JANE VELEZ: I don't want to talk about HRA. But what I do want to say, just generally, I think this points out two big problems. One is the system is very complicated. Very, very, very, four times over in big capital letters. It's almost impossible for these families or singles to maneuver the system on their own, because there's a system within each one of the agencies. And it's difficult enough for people like us who are supposed to understand the system, to make it work. So I think one of the things…and I think that the Commissioner mentioned it, that what has to happen is the systems within the big system have to talk to each other. And there has to be one….this is nirvana, it's never going to happen….but wouldn't it be nice if the there was one person or one agency that would centralize, that could help you work out all the issues. Where the stats for the whole family were. That is, in my lifetime anyway, I know that is never going to happen. But I think that it has begun to happen and I think DHS started it. I think HPD is doing it. If you guys talk to each other, it makes it easier for us to talk to you and then it makes it easier for the client either to talk to you or to talk to us so we can talk to you. LINDA GIBBS: First, I don't want to miss the important point that you made about the EARRP bonus. There is a sticky issue, obviously, with our longest staying families frequently will be a large family. There is a challenge of helping particularly large families to move from shelter to permanent housing. So of course the solution that government has added to this, is to increase the bonus and actually in higher increments, so it's the EARPP bonus. The way that it works is a $1,000 per person but as the number of family members increase, the increment increases so it goes up to $1100 for the 4th and $1200 for the 5th. So we are actually really trying to come up with a solution that will help those large families to move out. Now you hear the results of that and I think that we need to…this is not the first time I heard it and although it's relatively new. I heard it just last week as well, so it says to me that people are experiencing this in a real way at the front line. I think we ought to take a look at that and see, "Okay, what is the solution that still helps us to get large families out but doesn't have this bias at the lower end, without defeating the first purpose." So that is an important one to look at. On the issue of the work and process of being certified for a Section 8 apartment, involved DHS, HRA, NYCHA and in some cases also HPD. And if you have a child in foster care, then you've got ACS in there. And there are a lot of agencies to navigate. The HPD has never been part of HRA but you hear the pendulum swing, because all of these agencies, in fact, did used to be part of a single agency. What happened is that those functions were getting lost in the umbrella organization so the solution was to separate them out so you had the right focus, the right attention at a high level on each of those issues. And now the question is how do you gain….you have all the benefit of separate agencies to handle and develop the expertise in those special issues but then how do you make sure that you don't lose the connections and the collaboration? So the effort, the way that we are trying to approach this is to really strongly emphasize crossage and collaborations. And it's actually not just at the top level. It is at this top level and I will tell you, accountability continues at all levels of government and I am called weekly to the Mayor's office to report on how I am doing. And at that meeting, it's reporting on how I'm doing but I get to do it….have the pleasure of doing it in front of the commissioners of HPD and HRA and NYCHA and O&B gets to come along to put in their 2 cents and CORP Counsel is there, in case I think anything illegal and they have to stop me. And I report weekly. And I report on here is the numbers. And here is how I'm doing. And here are all the things we're working on together. And all those agencies are there for that very purpose because nobody can do it alone and we all need to work together to achieve our objectives. That meeting is then replicated among the top management of the agencies at DHS, on a monthly basis, where we also include….O&B is out, Corp Counsel is out. So it's just the public agencies. But we also include….we have 6 or 8 of our providers that attend that meeting to give that front line input to the process and it's really to hear those kinds of experiences and stories so that HRA, who is quite frankly, a very willing participant in this, they are not at the table because they are being forced to be at the table. It's because this is their work and they are responsible for it and they want to do a good job at it. And they are willing to listen to the concerns and be responsive. So that group meets and then there are lots of little offshoots of that. A new issue comes up, ERRP bonus is a problem, so a work group gets formed and folks go off and then they bring back solutions. So that's how we actually started this back in late February, early March and that group has been meeting regularly around those issues. Very quickly, a couple of things that HRA has done in order to try to improve their responsiveness. The proposal that is being piloted is to centralize homeless cases in a single income support center with staff that is particularly trained around the issues as it relates to homeless services. The expectation is that the workers in that income support center will really develop a much greater expertise around the particular needs as it relates to establishing the benefits for rental assistance. So that's one step, to see will that help? Can we bring the cases together in one place where that expertise is developed? Another thing that HRA is starting, is rather than having the clients go to the income support center, the HRA workers are going out to the clients and visiting the shelters for their recertifications and now to reopen closed cases. What was the reason it was closed, can we work with the client? This is the task of the shelter providers. It's not just to provide a safe and warm place for people to sleep but it's actually to assist them and to advocate for them in these processes and with these cases. So it is fairly complex and our goal will be just to keep working and working and when one problem is solved, then move on to the next one. TED HOUGHTON: That's good to hear that there is something happening in that area. I'm going to ask one more question and then open it up to the floor. What I'm hearing is that there's some administrative reforms going on to speed this process. And that there's a lot of income issues and some of the subsidies and various other HRA issues can help with that. But I'm wondering whether or not this is going to work in lieu of an increase of supply. The fact is that landlords are rejecting 8 out of 10 families because it's a sellers' market. They can because they've got a line of families out the door. You talked about creating some kind of entitlement or subsidy, but is that going to work without increasing the supply? DENNIS CULHANE: I think there are limits to how much that will work, particularly in this market. Many other cities in the country continue to have very high vacancy rates so NY and just a couple of other of the major cities are relatively unique in having a very low vacancy rate. And clearly some production component needs to be considered. I don't know what the city's contemplating. I've heard that there are discussions about the affordable housing problem, at large, and looking at what the city's options are. We know NY is one of the few major cities in the country that actually has its own capital budget for housing and that there was a huge major initiative that the Koch administration started. Whether something like that will happen, I don't know. But you don't have quite the stock of abandoned housing to work with as you had in the South Bronx for that particular initiative. You still have some housing, but the number of units coming into that is trickled to nothing, so there is a supply problem. And that's again, really finding the resources. It's a more difficult problem. But finding the capital to build affordable housing, this is why this problem isn't going away. TED HOUGHTON: I think there's a lot of talk about vacant land, city-owned land and the fact is that things have to go towards new construction. Is there any hope in this area, that the city can spearhead some movement? LINDA GIBBS: This is one that is not my expertise or jurisdiction. I can tell you that Deputy Mayor delivered some comments last week at NYU and I don't know if anyone here was at that forum. I think that the fundamental starting place that the city is in, is that we are not the holders of 10s or 100s of thousands of units, thank God. I think that all the community reinvestment work that was done, through the 80s, has really sustained itself and we have overwhelmingly good, strong, vibrant neighborhoods. And so that the city's current properties are few. And I guess the second major issue is that the city is facing the single largest budget gap that it has ever faced. And it's quite possible, even adjusted for inflation, that it is larger than the gaps that we were looking at in the 70s. This is a truly, truly crisis financial situation that the city is in. And the question about whether or not there can be a huge infusion of city resources that would be necessary in order to invest in a housing production, for the city to build housing, it's not going to be a possibility, certainly for the short term. With those major constraining factors, and with the urgency that the city is feeling around the housing issue and the fact that we have a less than 3% vacancy rate throughout the city, the question is what can the city do and what should the city be doing in order to encourage housing production? So what the Deputy Mayor's comments really focused on is what can the city can do that will incentivize production in the private market, through things like looking at rezoning and looking at vacant land that could be offered for development. Looking at one interesting thing is that second and third floors over storefront operations, commercial operations, there are many of those units are vacant because the owners can generate sufficient income off the commercial operation. So what can we do to incentivize those owners to invest and renovate all of those units? And I think that number is 39,000 units that are not currently being used. So I think the path that we will be looking at is really going to be around those things. Building incentives. Here is another nirvana, a single building code that is streamlined and makes sense and can allow you to affordably do construction in the city. So I think that with those major constraints we are starting with, at the same time there is also a very strong urgency to look for the new solutions that make sense for this generation. TED HOUGHTON: It's a grim situation but it's good to see that the Deputy Mayor has been thinking about these things. One of the things I liked best about his speech was that he floated the idea of using some of the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation's money for capital development of affordable housing. So maybe we will see some more of that, even in these hard times. I think it's time to open up for questions. Announce your name and where you're from and speak loudly, please. Question: My name is Laurie Cole, and I'm the executive director of the Tier 2 Coalition. I appreciate this opportunity to speak. It's striking to me that we are here in this room and we heard from each of the speakers and I appreciated so much what Gladys said. She began by talking about children. And she ended by saying CHILDREN. And then it was easy, I think, in my mind to move away from that issue and for us to go back to a dialogue. It's so hard to think about breaking the cycle, and at the same time to respond to the emergency needs of these children. So with that, and given the fact that you are on the front lines, I just wanted to ask you a question about the children. What do you think the children that are living in the homeless shelters that you serve right now, that you said you had how many? GLADYS CRUZ: 80 families. Questioner: So maybe you could either talk about your own personal experience with your children and the way homelessness has impacted them. Or maybe alternatively you could talk about the caseload of people that you see and what they need in the short term, in the long term, in terms of servicing families. And I guess the other question I want to ask ultimately, is whether or not you would support what the city's proposal is right now, to modify the plan currently under discussion to serve them, which includes the possibility, although not likely, eviction of families, which would include children? GLADYS CRUZ: I totally disagree. I totally disagree, because I am a mother. I am a mother of 5 children. When I had my 4 children, and I'm living in the shelter. Again, I had 3, I gave birth to my 4th, before moving into permanent housing. Through my own ignorance, I became homeless. Through my own not being educated enough when I ended up in the homeless system. Unfortunately, my kids had to pay for my mistakes. I feel children shouldn't have to pay twice for our society's mistakes. And what I mean by that is, my 4 children love me. They love me, they depend on me. And I nurture them the best way that I can now. And thank God, for the guidance and the confidence and the self-esteem that I gained being at a shelter and having people by my side advocating for me. It made me see things in a broader and a positive manner for my children. Where I am now a full-time student for human services, I'm going for my Bachelor's and straight for my Master's, and full-time momma and full-time employee. I do all this, and it's a lot, with my head up high, for my children. I feel no one else would be able to give what I give to my children, the wholesome heart that a mother could give to those kids. And the 80 families that I'm with, they as well are mothers, and fathers, that love their children. And I think this would traumatize the children. I feel again, we should look at other ways. Again, as HRA and the brokers, having them sign off on something where it would be more fitting for a little bit more easier, for a family of 3 as opposed to 5, and 5, can be placed into permanent housing. Our children are our future. And 8 out of 10 times, besides child abuse issues which is definitely something else, if a parent is not abusing their child, they have to be with their parents. We need to work with them more closely. TED HOUGHTON: I think it might be good to take a step back and the speaker was referring to the litigation and about the city has asked the courts to give it some more…I don't know if you would say leeway, in backend eligibility. Basically say that a family could face sanctions….a family in the shelter could face sanctions for not cooperating with the housing search. And that is what you were referring to. Maybe Commissioner, you could explain the city's position. LINDA GIBBS: Maybe if I can just technically explain it for folks who aren't familiar, that you understand what the question is. What we are seeking is court permission to create standards for client activities, while they are in the shelter, which includes the expectation that they will, while they are in shelter, actively seek housing. To do everything necessary in order to look for an apartment. And then if they identify a suitable apartment that meets their family's needs, that they would be obligated to accept that apartment and not to turn it down and stay in the shelter. If a family was found to refuse to do either of those things, the proposal would allow us to suspend the family for 30 days from shelter. So that they would be not allowed to return to the shelter and would be temporarily suspended from shelter. So the court will have to give us permission to move forward with this. It has been litigated for about 6 years, 7 years, and through multiple levels of appeals that the city was supported on at every level. And the last restraining order that the last administration did not move forward on. So this is what we are asking permission to do now. The reasons for doing this…and maybe another sort of fact that, because I think there are many different facts and they should be considered in whole. They don't contradict each other. They are just both present. We looked at a sample of 300 apartment searches that were done in the spring. Of those 300 apartment searches, in fact, 20% of the cases, the landlord refused the tenant. And we don't know the particulars of why they refused. But in 20% of the cases, the landlord refused to rent to the tenant who was visiting the apartment. In that same sample of 300 cases, in 30% of the cases, the client refused the apartment. And to me, as we think about the city's housing affordability and whether or not there are apartments that are available, I think the situation as we find it is that we do have clients who are turning down suitable apartments that meet building code and housing code but they exceed those standards and meet Section 8 standards and the clients are turning them down because right now they are able to turn them down. That is the rule that currently exists in the system. There is no standard that they have to comply with in terms of accepting housing. And I think it's a very rational behavior on their part. They want….they know that in their apartment search, that if they don't have to accept a suitable apartment, that they can continue to look and the hope is that the next one might be a little bit closer. The next one might be a little bit bigger. The next one might not be 3 flights up. It might be 2 flights up. And they are really using the authority that they are given, in order to try to make sure that they get the best they possibly can out of that circumstance. The result, however, is that for these vast majority of clients who do want to move to permanent housing, is that they essentially have an undefined extended period of time while they are in the shelter system. And we are a temporary, emergency shelter system, that has grown over time to become a form of permanent housing as families are staying there for longer and longer and longer. And even without an increase in demand, we are going to see the shelter system grow, unless we bring a balance back within the shelter. So our goal is to establish this standard, to expect clients to seek and accept suitable housing. My belief, and I wouldn't move forward with this request if it was not my firm belief…is that virtually every client will understand those standards and will comply. And I would not do this if I thought that this means that we would be sanctioning 10s and 20s or 100s of people from the shelter system. GLADYS CRUZ: We could try, as well, what I do in my facility. The people that are certified for ERRP, they meet me on a weekly basis. If I feel that the client has been in the facility for some time now, and they are not coming up with any linkage to any apartments, I sit down with them. I speak to them. I put them in a housing contract. Giving them 60 days to be linked to an apartment and accepted. Sometimes 30 days, depending on the situation of the family. If within those 30 or 60 days they are not linked and connected to a broker, landlord or apartment, I tell them that they must accept an apartment that I find for them. I'm not going to twist their arm. I can't. So tell them if they decide not to accept the 3rd or 2nd apartment because they were looking around. The 3rd or 2nd apartment that I found for them, which is usually the first or definitely the first or 2nd apartment, I show to them. I call for an involuntary discharge. I feel that by conducting this involuntary discharge, and then being faced…this family being faced with a hearing officer from outside the facility, gives them a realistic touch of starting all over again. And again, 8 out of 10 times, my clients will be, "No, I don't want to start all over. I do not want to go back to EAU. I don't want to go to a scattered site or Tier I." And I'm like, "Well, look where you are at now. You need to accept this apartment or we will have to do an involuntary discharge because you are not complying with rules and regulations for being in Tier II." And it works. My clients accept it. TED HOUGHTON: So an involuntary discharge meaning a transfer to the beginning of the system but within the system, it seems that what you've gone to court for is asking for something more than that? Asking to actually leave the system for 30 days and then there is some foster care involved? If this works, do we need the second? LINDA GIBBS: The current process that shelters use is to request involuntary transfers of clients who they feel they can't work with anymore and who won't respond. And right now we do several hundreds of those every year. What I am looking for is a standard that works more in its preventive measure rather than actually a different thing to use as enforcement. I want fewer families to actually get to that point of wanting to trigger the enforcement. And I want to be working successfully with families to move to permanent housing. To use and to rely on the transfer is actually something that I would like to ideally eliminate. Unless there is a positive reason for a transfer, closer to a doctor, if the child has a medical need. Transfers as penalties are just disrupting those families once again. You are moving the parent, you are moving the kids, you are potentially changing the kids' schooling. Our shelter system now bounces families throughout the system. Even in an ideal case, a family will have no less than 3 places that they go to during their duration in shelter. We have to cut that down. We have to make the shelters much more stable for families and I also….in that context….do not want to see transfers for problematic families be the solution because we are just moving our problem around and creating more instability for those frail and more challenged families. So the goal is to have a consequence that is something that is enforceable so that, in fact, we can say this is the consequence that they can understand will occur if they don't undertake the activities that are expected. Again, understanding that the vast majority of families want to move to permanent housing. Question: Hi. Housing First, I work with Gladys at Bronx Morris but I have been out in the trenches a long time and I totally disagree with this study of not linking housing with services. The people that we are talking about came from houses. They didn't come out the sky. They were in an apartment. In an intensive case management program where when a family is rejected at the EAU, would have a team of workers to work with them to help them not apply for the shelter. And it worked. I mean the former mayor cut the contract but what was happening, for an example, in the Borough of Brooklyn, that's the agency I was with Henry Street and that's where we had the program. They would go to the EAU, "I'm homeless." "Where did you stay?" "I'm staying with my mother, she threw us out." We would go to that home and find out that there's a family conflict. With services we were able to stabilize the family, prevent them from coming back to the shelter. Give maybe the primary tenant some housing assistance. "Look, this person is in my apartment. They are not paying rent." Help with the rent. "Would you allow them to stay there? We'll get them a job. Get them school." We enabled a lot of families not to even go to the EAU. We got them jobs. We found out there are a lot of family conflicts. There may be a situation where if they could just be stable long enough to go to another relative, until they got on their feet. So I'm just saying all this to say that there is no way we can deal with the population that we are dealing with, without services. If we cut the services, we may as well increase the jails and make institutions for our children, because they are going to lose their children without services. These families are in housing, in apartments. And I contend that…and I was sorry to see the program end and not see the results of that program ending because you had all these people going to the EAU, but I contend that if we do more prevention, we get back out in those homes of the people who are coming to the shelter. Many times we can stabilize them. TED HOUGHTON: So maybe that's one area that we might be able to spend some of this prevention money and as you do your studies on what works in prevention, that might be one area we could look in. Question: I think a lot of discussion has been focused on the highly visible and relatively easily quantifiable cost of the existing shelter system and our existing set of interventions. And not much has been focused on the external costs of housing instability, crowding, excessive cost burdens, poor physical conditions and there's a large and growing volume of body of literature and research on the negative impacts of housing conditions on educational attainment. How workforce success, foster care placements, engagement with criminal justice and on and on and on. So I think we better think really, really carefully before we are quick to say there isn't money to develop more sustainable solutions that focus on the supply side and think about these negative spillover effects that we can't so easily quantify but clearly are vast. And a number of people have mentioned the intergenerational homelessness phenomenon, which again is documented in the research and the high percentage of single adults who are products of the foster care system. Single adult homeless people who are products of the foster care system. I guess it is more by way of a comment, but are we looking at the impact of the serious supply problem on our other social service systems that are accounting for these costs of the acute care system in the shelters. TED HOUGHTON: That might be something as all these agencies are now working on the problem together and maybe that cost benefits can really be explored. LINDA GIBBS: Sounds like an important piece of research to do, don't you think. Questioner: I was actually glad, I think it's important to have the discussion on prevention and also on long-term solutions but I was wondering if you have an action plan for the very current and long term at the EAU. LINDA GIBBS: One of the loveliest challenges of the Department of Homeless Services is that you have to be in several planning modes at the same time. So you have to be in immediate, today planning mode; crisis reaction, crisis response. You have to be in medium term planning mode cause the third mode, long-term planning mode is all great. And we have to focus on it and we can't not focus on it, but it's long term and when this crisis is over, there's some stuff that just can't wait for that long term to happen. So we are in a time warp. Every conversation we are going into different mode. And I love that challenge. I think that's part of what I really think is the interest to me and how compelling it is to work in government, because you get to do all of those things at the same time. So we do have a strategic plan so maybe you are one of those 20 who urgently would like a copy so we can share. That's the long-term mode. Some of these things, in fact, that we have been talking about, fall more into the intermediate category of things that we can improve on and fix so that the current stuff works better. In terms of the shortest term, the crisis mode, the good news, the very good news, the very relieving news is that now for two weeks, as the summer demand has abated and the school year has started, we have not had families overnight at the Emergency Assistance Unit. And that is on top of, in fact, being able to no longer need the Avenue Annex, that we opened up to much attention this summer. So we are no longer using that facility and we do not have families at the Emergency Assistance Unit. Our short-term strategy is really comprised of two things. The preventive is long term. And so that is pretty fixed and that is reality that we are dealing with. So the solutions are two, to meet demand. You open up more shelters or you improve the number of people who are moving to permanent housing. Many of you may have heard in your own communities about the shelters that have opened. 1800, I said earlier, units of family shelter, since January, alone. And I hope that I can stop that trend. I hope that is not something I have to look forward to in the upcoming years. And the second thing is really back to the housing. And if we don't make great improvements to assist people who are already in shelter. You can have the bigger policy debates, which I think are really critically important about what should your housing policy be and what should the priorities be in order to access rental assistance. But right now I have almost 9,000 families in the homeless system and I have to have a way of assisting them to move to permanent housing. And so it's getting the resources, the administration and the mayor and City Hall have been tremendously supportive in this fiscal environment, to provide those resources for the permanent housing. And now we have to make the systems work. With all those agencies working with our shelters, the housing specialists and the clients, all to work together to assist people to move to permanent housing. Questioner: I am a researcher by educational background but a practitioner at heart. And today I'm an executive vice president of an organization in the Bronx and we do some permanent housing, in addition to that we do human services, medical and services. And we see indicators today. We don't always know what they mean. One of the things that we see is repeated programs, whether they are vocational or housing, especially temporary housing. We do hold ourselves to accountability standards, especially in our contracts. I think the data alone doesn't speak. The families we see h have many services but the way those services have to produce outcomes is much less clear. And the families that we see need services so I totally understand that there is a need to perhaps develop another parallel track for services so that the homeless shelter system is not port of entry for all services, especially housing. I would hate to see services disconnected completely. Or services that are rationed in a way that don't really serve the families so the outcomes can be stabilized. One last point to make is an OTDA and city contract. And the other is an HPD and housing contract, both of which expire in December and February. We have two teams of social workers, doing case management as well as coaching. And they are going to be defunded and probably out of work in February and we have not been very successful in getting the attention of the city, in terms of negotiating and yet we hear both through the public purview and at meetings like this one, that the fight will be continued. And so I would urge the Commissioner and all the city agencies to continue to talk with each other. And to talk with providers, especially providers whose services have track records, have outcomes that are very, very….in fact, in a couple of our contract cases, extremely successful and continue to develop ideas that are outside the box of housing, temporary housing, but tracks the families that are at risk. TED HOUGHTON: In defense of what I was saying about services, the role of services, it's not that services are not important or valuable or needed by many families. It's where are these services provided, is the issue. I think providing services to maintain people in their own home, as a preventive mechanism is absolutely the right way to go. The program, in fact, that was mentioned was moved….that intensive case management program was initially deployed in a previous administration to focus on families who were resettled under the assumption that most families who were resettled were recidividing back into the homeless system, which in fact turned out not to be true. So that intervention was moved intelligently to a prevention focus to the EAU families. Similarly, I think that the issue with respect to services inside the transitional housing programs. I don't doubt that these services have benefits for people but when 92% of the families who get placed, irrespective of whether they are in Cadillac program of services over here versus one that has very little. Where 92% don't come back to the homeless system, that tells me the housing subsidy is solving the homeless problem for nearly all of them. It doesn't solve all of their problems. These families have many problems and they need services to address those problems. But guess what, they are not unique. There are many, many families in the community who don't get lucky enough or are unlucky enough to end up in the homeless system, who also need services. And I think we need to think and try to get the service providers to focus on the vast amount of people whose services and needs for services are unmet. Particularly because there are so many dollars tied up in the hotel costs. The fixed hotel costs of the transitional housing. There's a real issue here that there are many families going unserved because we are running a system that is very efficiently perhaps overexpending its resources on a small number of families. JANE VELEZ: What was brought up by the gentleman back here was really important. The majority of these families or individuals, homeless, this just didn't happen yesterday. What you are seeing now is a result of what has been going on for years and years. And they are, for lack of a better word, basically most of them…I would say the majority of them, are fragile populations. Basically most of them, I would say the majority of them are fragile population. They come into the Commissioner's system with a whole set of problems. The end result of what you are seeing is that they are homeless but many of them have been through the foster care system. They are connected to the criminal justice system. And an overwhelming number of them have substance abuse involvement. This is not your Dick and Jane family. For the most part, we are not talking about people who just couldn't pay the rent one month or the rent was raised and they couldn't meet it. Or who got in an argument with their mother-in-law and so they moved out. We are talking about families or individuals who have a whole set and history of issues. And now, because they are in this system, and all of a sudden the system feels forced to put them in places that don't get such good publicity sometimes, all of a sudden now it's a problem. Believe me, it was a problem a long time ago, and if we don't start preventing it, there are going to be people sitting here 20 years from now having this same discussion. Question: We are talking about front end. I am Estelle Hathaway and I'm with the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I work with runaway, homeless youth programs, that deal with the young'uns who are coming up and who have to get sheltered because they cannot be placed with their families, because they are adolescents, they are males, whoever else people don't want them, they are afraid of them, they eat a lot. They are teenagers, right. But we are talking about the front end prevention. There is another end. Yes, the families you are talking about, the ones who show up again and again or present with difficulties and real challenge with working with them. Just because they get housing, it's not over. We need to do something and I would like to think that we don't forget about them. The same thing comes up with adoption, that we don't forget about it. The job's not done. It's not the end point. So I just hope that we will keep that in mind. Question: I'm the director of Covenant House. I want to comment on the issue of services. What we found is that with the age of 21 comes, a lot of them may not know how to do a resume. We did this study that found the biggest indicator, which indicator of whether they would be recidivist, is if they were trained in employment or education and had a job. These clients were able to sustain housing and not be homeless after 6 months. Now 40% of the adults in the family system, are under the age of 25. So at least with that specific population, I think it's important to continue transitional services. And a lot of our clients, 40% of them have come from the foster care system. We service about 5,000 runaway and homeless youth a year, which include families and we also focus on prevention. We service 2000 clients in all 5 boroughs on prevention. TED HOUGHTON: There is an immense need for services. I think that Dennis' point was that it doesn't have to all occur in the emergency shelter system. That a lot of these can be based in the community, for people who are living in housing. Thank you very much for all attending. I really appreciate the guests we had today and your involvement. END OF FORUM |
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