On April 13th I attended the Student Homelessness and Housing Insecurity at New York City Colleges event on the Queens College campus with the guest speaker of Steven Banks, the Commissioner of the New York City Human Resources Administration. While the first portion of this event was very informative especially considering the statistics that were given about homelessness in the New York City, I felt as if the title of this event was a little misleading due to Commissioner Banks’ focus on the plan that Mayor De Blasio implemented in February 2017 called “Turning the Tide on Homelessness.” Rather than talking about homelessness within the student population at New York City colleges, he spoke on homelessness in general.
Like I mentioned beforehand, the beginning of this event was very informative. It started off with a video that gave some general information about how social workers employed by the Department of Social Services help homeless families and after that Commissioner Banks gave a speech. To be honest, this video kind of felt like a time killer as it didn’t relate as closely to the rest of the information so there was a bit of a disjointed feel as we transitioned. When Commissioner Banks gave his speech, there were many numbers and statistics, and it seemed like he had the information he gave us memorized by rote. He introduced the issue by talking a little about SNAP (food stamps), permanent housing, and the department that he works for – which is apparently a “superagency,” meant to make services easier to deliver. Commissioner Banks let us know about New York’s right to shelter (as opposed to other places like Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, etc.) and that most of our homeless people are in the shelter systems (which I actually later discovered was an inaccurate statement through the research that I did for my project on how the MTA approaches homelessness). The rise in homelessness in this city (a 115% rise from 2005-2015 to be exact) is due to the fact that rent has gone up drastically (18+%) while income has not kept up at the same rate (<5%+). In addition to this, there have been changes in rent stabilization laws where 150,000 units of rent stabilized apartments have been lost from 1994-2012.
Commissioner Banks emphasized that the cores of approaching homelessness are prevention, shelter, and permanent housing. Regarding the plan called “Turning the Tide” there are 4 major steps to be taken. The first is to prevent homelessness wherever and whenever you can, which is when the commissioner mentioned that there is universal access to counsel in housing court (which was left as a vague statement – I’m not quite sure how this would necessarily play out in these situations). The second is bringing people in from the streets through a program called HOME-STAT which focuses not on the numbers but rather a person-by-person approach. Commissioner Banks talked about the importance of trust and persistence – considering that there could be resistance – along with offering the “right tools.” The third step was rehousing people and providing rental assistance, given that we can’t have a shelter system without the means of getting people out of them. With that being said, we went off on a bit of a tangent about breaking the trajectory of growth and supportive housing (which is developed housing where the city is paying for rent and social services – there is a focus on mental health). We came back to the fourth step, which is to transform the shelter system which currently has no organized approach. When restructuring the shelter system, the commissioner said they are attempting to keep people near their communities and so, putting people and communities first. They are currently opening 90 new borough-based shelters to keep people close by their support systems and to shrink the footprint of shelter systems. With all these steps laid out, he let us know that since this program started a year ago, there has been a 27% decrease in evictions, 1500 people off the streets, 81,000 people accounted for, and 17 new facilities.
Along with all the progress, the city has invested a quarter of a million dollars into non-profit organizations and established the NYPD as responsible for security in shelters. At this point, the commissioner’s spiel seemed to die down and he facilitated a Q&A session. When asked about the discomfort the presence of the NYPD might cause for certain demographics in the shelter system, he responded that the officers assigned to shelters are specialized in de-escalating conflict and that the NYPD are only overseeing the security – apparently peace officers and contracted social service security are the ones actually posted at shelters. I found that this answer didn’t answer the question directly at all and just was a roundabout way of responding to this important question. Another person brought up the homeless youth as a demographic at risk and the commissioner responded that there was actually a different department that dealt with underage youth which made me wonder how they could effectively attempt to help these people if they didn’t combine their resources. At this point, Commissioner Banks also brought up the first LGBTQ shelter targeted towards those aged 21-30 that opened up in the city but did not have any information regarding how this shelter was any different than others and how it would benefit the target demographic specifically. I’m not sure if the Commissioner himself was just uninformed or if this was just an attempt to appease the general public and to seem like they’re being open and accommodating by having a token shelter. This talk for me truly highlighted the disconnect between the government elite and the common person, especially regarding very valid and pressing concerns that pertain to the lower class but may not even be on the radar of those who have the power to do anything about it.
