Fewer families are flooding into New York City’s homeless shelters after eligibility requirements were tightened, the Daily News has learned.
Just 38% of the families seeking shelter through the Department of Homeless Services were approved in February, according to an analysis of city data — a steep drop from last year’s average of 50%.
The slide comes after Homeless Services Commissioner Steven Banks asked the state in November to require families to show “clear, convincing and credible evidence” they truly have no place else to go.
His request was granted in November, reversing a policy the state had put in place a year earlier that made it easier to get into the city’s shelters — and led to a spike in the acceptance rate, the News previously reported.
In October, before the eligibility requirements were tightened back up, the city accepted 51% of family applications for shelter. In November, it dropped to 47%; in December, 42%; in January, 43%.
Asking for the policies to be tightened was an about-face for Banks, who had spent years arguing they should be looser when he was an advocate.
“Our eligibility rate is consistent with past years — and we believe this rate and our revised processes enable us to more effectively reconnect New Yorkers with their communities to avoid shelter,” DHS spokesman Isaac McGinn said. “At the same time, family shelter applications and reapplications are down in part due to these changes that have helped us find solutions allowing families to remain in permanent housing in their communities.”
But Banks’ former allies in the advocacy community aren’t happy about the eligibility drop.
“We were really disturbed to see that percentage so low for families across the board,” Giselle Routhier, policy director at the Coalition for the Homeless, said. “Its’ definitely a pretty significant drop.”
Anecdotally, the coalition has seen an uptick in people coming to its crisis center after being rejected from homeless shelter. While the city has determined they have another place to stay — with a relative or friend they’ve stayed with before, for example — the families often say they can’t stay with those people because of medical issues, crowding, disagreements or discrimination, Routhier said.
