Frederick Shack, LMSW, Executive Director, Urban Pathways, Inc.

For more than 20 years the City of New York has struggled to find permanent solutions to address family homelessness. In 1985, NYC sheltered 3,688 families a night. By 2004, that number had climbed to almost 9,000. In 1987, New York City spent $274 million to provide emergency shelter for homeless families and single adults. Over 18 years later the City spends $734,249,948 per year to address homelessness. Of this amount, over $300 million is spent on contracts with service providers working with homeless families. New York has invested more time, money, and human capital than any other city in the country to address this crisis; yet, it still persists.

During the early years, families were housed in large commercial hotels like the Martinique, and armories like the Roberto Clemente in the Bronx as depicted in Jonathan Kozol’s book, Rachel and her Children. Entire families shared single hotel rooms without cooking facilities. In some cases, there were no private baths or people slept on cots on armory floors with hundreds of other families.

As advocates, social workers have sought solutions for years that do not rely on short-term emergency intervention. We have worked to find permanent solutions that include prevention as a central element, and housing subsidies, which significantly decrease the risk of recidivism.

What Do We Know?

So what do we know about permanent solutions to end homelessness? We know permanent solutions cannot exist without an adequate supply of housing which is accessible and affordable to low and very low-income populations. We know, in order to effect lasting change, housing must be stable.

In many cases, stability is contingent on the source of revenue used to cover rent. In the case of poor families in NYC, this requires that there be a revenue source that supplements rent payments for as long as the need exists. We also know that prevention strategies cannot be developed and implemented without first understanding the causes or risk factors that are most likely, without intervention, to result in negative outcomes.

Social workers have, and must continue, to play an integral role in advocating for policies designed to promote the production of, or which will subsidize the creation of, affordable housing for this population. Social workers understand that human beings, by nature, are dependent on the collective for survival. We also understand that healthy communities support the development of healthy families, which in turn aid in the development of healthy individuals.

Differentiating Risk Factors for Homelessness

We know that prevention works. In the medical field it has been long understood that prevention strategies related to illness and disease have been successful both in their ability to prevent negative outcomes and in their economic viability, as cost saving measures for the insurance industry.

The same basic principles can be applied to homelessness and other social conditions. Social workers have the ability to identify those families at risk of becoming homeless, and we have the ability to intervene before families reach a point where emergency shelter is the only option.

Social workers also know, and have known for years, that there are several communities in NYC that have significantly higher rates of family homelessness than others. Additionally, we now know that the difference in rate of family homelessness is not the direct result of the rate of poverty in a given community.

In-depth analysis has shown that there are issues related to the lack of other resources or issues associated with access to resources that differentiate the communities with higher rates from those communities that are similar in nature but which produce significantly fewer homeless families. With regards to permanent housing, we know that in New York City the wages of the working poor or the income afforded those reliant on TANF or Safety Net is not adequate to maintain permanent housing without some other form of subsidy.

Cost Neutral Solutions

Simply put, solutions to end homelessness lie in our ability to bridge the gap between family income and the cost of housing, coupled with our ability to provide access to supportive services to families before they lose their housing. Both solutions can be cost neutral. Through resource reinvestment on a local level, money saved as a result of decreasing our reliance on emergency shelter can be redirected to provide housing subsidies and to fund community based prevention programs.

Nationally, models like the home mortgage interest deduction and property tax deduction currently exist as the nation’s most costly housing subsidy programs. Together they cost the federal government over $79 billion in lost revenue in FY 2004. Small modifications in these programs could generate additional revenue, which could be utilized to provide housing subsidies and/or fund homeless prevention initiatives for poor American families.

Funding Increases Needed – or the Number of Homeless will Rise

In 2004, Mayor Bloomberg released his five-year plan to end homelessness. While both prevention and increasing the supply of permanent housing are part of his plan, it is critical that social workers continue to advocate for an increase in the money spent on both prevention and aftercare services.

Without these two critical elements, along with an increase in the number of affordable housing units, the homeless will not only always be with us, but their numbers will continue to rise each year.