TESTIMONY OF:

Julia Okun—Affordable Housing Specialist, Civil Justice Practice

BROOKLYN DEFENDER SERVICES

Presented before

The New York City Council Committee on General Welfare

Oversight Hearing on Outreach NYC and Barriers to Shelter for Individuals Experiencing Homelessness

February 28, 2020

My name is Julia Okun and I am the Affordable Housing Specialist in the Civil Justice Practice at Brooklyn Defender Services (BDS). BDS provides multi-disciplinary and client-centered criminal, family, and immigration defense, as well as civil legal services, social work support and advocacy to approximately 30,000 Brooklyn residents every year. I thank the New York City Council Committee on General Welfare, and in particular Chair Stephen Levin, for the opportunity to testify today about barriers to shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness. BDS supports the proposed legislation, which seeks to reduce barriers to shelter and increase access to case management, critical first steps in addressing the homelessness crisis in New York City.

The Civil Justice Practice at BDS provides individual advocacy to clients on a range of issues, including housing court representation, eviction prevention, access to public benefits, and improvement of substandard housing conditions. BDS created an Affordable Housing Specialist position last year in order to provide housing relocation services to its clients, a previously unmet need that is prevalent across all practice areas. We recognized that a high volume of our clients, oftentimes due to their involvement with the legal system, were struggling to find permanent, affordable housing. Despite access to legal representation, housing vouchers, and other services, there was a substantial need for individualized support for clients struggling to actually use the programs for which they had been deemed eligible. BDS is now able to work with clients to retain their existing housing and, when necessary, assist them to successfully relocate.

Background

There are approximately 80,000 people currently experiencing homelessness in New York City. Over 20,000 are children, struggling to keep up in school as their lives fracture around them. These estimates do not encompass the vast number of New Yorkers who are housing instable, living with friends or family, trading sex for shelter, or just barely scraping together rent each month. Homelessness can be brutally disruptive; homelessness has been proven to drastically undercut school performance, inhibit job acquisition and retention, and negatively impact people’s ability to manage substance use disorders. And, significantly, studies have indicated that there is a causal link between mental illness and homelessness, which is only exacerbated by prolonged stays at shelters. With average shelter stays in New York City surpassing one year for single adults, adult families, and families with children, the risks that homelessness pose are given more than enough time to compound in dangerous and harmful ways.

The adverse effects of homelessness on mental and physical health are present in the extreme for the street homeless population, who have limited means of accessing wrap-around case management services. Though numbers can be hard to exact for this population, it is estimated that around 4,000 people are currently street homeless in New York City. These individuals face myriad additional health concerns due to prolonged exposure to harsh physical conditions and the very real safety concerns of living on the street. And yet this population has the least access to the supportive services that so many people experiencing homelessness vitally need.

BDS has often seen a reluctance to enter shelter on the part of the people we serve, born both of acute mental health concerns as well a widespread fear of the safety conditions within shelters. Unhoused people who choose not to enter the shelter system are often in the greatest need of services, yet they are systemically cut off from it. Reducing barriers to case management will be a critical step in addressing the root causes and consequences of street homelessness for the thousands of New Yorkers who face it every day, as will be expediting their access to housing vouchers and reducing additional obstacles they face for shelter entry.

Client Stories

Ms. W is 56 years old and is currently street homeless for the first time in her life. She lost her apartment in June after becoming unemployed and failing to make rent. Since June she had been living out of her car until that, too, was seized following a recent arrest. She has no other family or friends to stay with, and vehemently does not want to move to shelter. Ms. W has no income, no voucher, and apart from a meeting with Homebase where she was told she had to enter shelter to receive assistance, she had been unable to access any supportive services or even acquire information on possible next steps. After a criminal defense attorney at BDS referred her to our Civil Justice Practice, we were able explain what a housing voucher is and how to get one without entering a shelter. While this meant Ms. W was able to begin making a long-term plan for the first time since she became homeless, it also meant telling her, in the middle of winter, she could not get a housing voucher until she received DHS services for almost three months. Worse, it meant telling her this would only be the first step of many in securing permanent housing. As anyone who has a housing voucher or has helped people with housing vouchers can tell you, it can take months or even years to find a suitable apartment with a voucher, meaning far more time on the street.

BDS routinely sees homeless clients elect to live on the street due to concerns about safety and drug usage in shelters, often citing shelter conditions as inferior to jail facilities. People are often unaware that they can access case management services and housing vouchers without entering the shelter system.

We also regularly see the long-term disruption of family units due to the city’s current policies for shelter entry. Mr. S was permanently banned from living with his wife and son in family shelter because of allegations of a verbal dispute with his wife during a past shelter stay. Current DHS policy causes couples to be permanently banned from living together in shelter if they have ever been the subject of a domestic incident report. Upon losing their home, our client’s wife and son went into family shelter together. But Mr. S, who feared re-entering the violent and dangerous men’s shelter system after negative experiences in the past, became street homeless for almost a year. He therefore had no access to services, and shelter staff continuously refused his wife and son a voucher that included Mr. S and accurately reflected their household composition. With no other options available, his wife was forced to choose between permanent housing and her husband. The family languished in shelter for years, despite the fact that both adults were employed and otherwise qualified for a voucher. Policies such as these make it impossible for families who rely on rental subsidies to find housing reflective of their actual family unit, and drastically reduce their prospects of becoming housed. Providing DHS case management for street homeless individuals would create an avenue for people like Mr. S and his family to get a rental subsidy true to their family unit. Without these measures in place, it is nearly impossible for many families to end their cycle of homelessness, let alone to do so together.

Once a family is split up between multiple shelters, it is often impossible for them to be placed on the same household composition for a housing voucher and receive a rental subsidy that would accurately reflect their family size and allow them to find housing together upon leaving shelter. Creating formalized processes for DHS to provide case management and screen for voucher eligibility while families are street homeless would substantially increase the likelihood that homeless families be able to receive accurate rental subsidies and thus remain intact as a family unit in the long term, even if they are unable to reside together in shelter.

The stories of these BDS clients are emblematic of a flawed approach still central to New York City’s housing policy. The requirement that individuals in crisis proactively seek out resources they may not even know exist is both ineffective and insensitive. It has been shown, time and again, that providing stable housing first makes the provision of case management services far more effective, and we believe that New York City must continue to move towards ending a policy that requires vulnerable New Yorkers to affirmatively seek out assistance before they have received any stabilizing services. Had today’s proposed legislation been in effect when clients like Ms. W became street homeless, it would have allowed them to more swiftly access the services they needed to get off the street. Without them, it’s often hard to see the end in sight.

The Need to Increase Street Outreach and Reduce Barriers to Shelter

New York City is currently pouring $3.2 billion per year into homelessness reduction, and yet rates of homelessness remain at an all-time high. 5 Radically reshaping our approach to homelessness is critical. BDS applauds the Council for holding this hearing on barriers to shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness in New York City. BDS supports the proposed legislation, which would allow animals in DHS shelters, require reporting of animals in DHS shelters, require DHS to provide case management services to street homeless individuals, and allow eligible street homeless individuals to access rental assistance programs after a maximum of 30 days.

Int. 1483 & Int. 1484

The current denial of animals in DHS shelters is a significant barrier to entry for many homeless individuals, forcing them into street homelessness or other undesirable living arrangements. As stated above, the evidence of positively correlated experiences of homelessness and mental illness have been well documented. BDS supports Int. 1483 because not only would this bill remove a barrier to shelter for many individuals, it would allow them to maintain connections to animal companions who are often invaluable to mental and emotional health for people undergoing a high degree of instability and duress. We also support Int. 1484 as it increases transparency and communication between organizations and allows for a more effective monitoring of the proposed legislation.

Int. 1902

BDS supports the provisions of the legislation directed at increasing services for street homeless individuals. Case workers are often essential in getting shelter residents into supportive programs, getting them adequate health care, and providing them with the rental subsidies they need to find permanent housing. Limiting that kind of support to only the individuals residing in shelter each night ignores a critical subset of the homeless population, who often require those services most. BDS supports this bill because it helps reduce the gaps in service provision for the homeless that currently plague our system. It acknowledges the need for proactive support and advocacy for populations who typically fall through the holes of our government safety net, and thus we believe that this is a critical piece of legislation.

Int. 1903

BDS is in favor of limiting the number of days that street homeless individuals are required to receive DHS services before accessing rental subsidies. BDS routinely sees how difficult it is for chronically street homeless clients to maintain constant contact with case management services for the required 90 days due to the high degree of instability in their day-to-day lives. Without a place to sleep at night or a regular place to receive mail, it is difficult for our clients to attend scheduled meetings, keep track of important documents, and stay in regular communication with case workers. And while reducing the number of days DHS services must be received from 90 days to 30 days is a step in the right direction, BDS believes that requiring over a month of regular service provision is still a prohibitively high threshold for street homeless individuals trying to access rental subsidies.

The Housing First Model has repeatedly been shown to be one of the most effective means of stabilizing the factors that contribute to chronic homelessness. Given the efficacy of that model, we urge the Council to adopt a far more expedited approvals process that would immediately vet chronically street homeless individuals for voucher eligibility as a part of every case management intake, and thus drastically curtail the time it takes for them to get housed.

Additional Policy Recommendations

The report on homelessness issued by Speaker Corey Johnson last month acknowledges the breadth of the problem and desire to address the crisis. BDS supports the proposed legislation, one step toward addressing the crisis of homelessness in New York City. There are other critical steps that must be taken in conjunction with those put forward today in order to achieve substantive change.

We respectfully offer the following recommendations:

• The maximum time in which eligible individuals receive housing vouchers must be reduced for all people experiencing homelessness, not just the street homeless. Almost every person we work with who is currently in shelter struggles for months or years to successfully find an apartment with a voucher. Given the difficulty of use and the immediacy of need for all involved, we believe that timeline of voucher provision for eligible shelter residents must be curtailed, as well. Current policy requires people to be in shelter for 90 days to receive rental subsidies such as CityFHEPS; the minimum shelter stay requirement for housing vouchers must be instead limited to the duration it takes to verify eligibility upon intake.
• Allocate additional funding for housing relocation services at shelters. Every person in shelter already has a caseworker, however the people we serve often need additional support. Shelter housing relocation specialists must assist residents in actually obtaining new housing, rather than simply providing vouchers and expecting them to find places on their own. Increasing staffing, training, and funding for housing specialists at shelters will be critical in expediting moves out of shelter. And it would allow shelter residents to access that assistance in-house, rather than struggle on their own or be forced to seek out assistance from other agencies.
• While the proposed legislations would reduce barriers to voucher access for street homeless individuals, it fails to address the difficulty of using housing vouchers that plagues so many recipients. BDS clients routinely face rampant, unchecked source-ofincome discrimination in every borough. Additional legislation needs to be passed that not only increases the voucher amounts to fair market rents, but that also creates mechanisms of enforcement and accountability for landlords and brokers. The provisions currently in place for source-of-income (SOI) discrimination in New York have fallen short, and in order to truly reduce the numbers of homeless individuals, street and otherwise, SOI laws must be bolstered.

Conclusion

BDS is grateful to The New York City Council Committee on General Welfare for hosting this hearing and to Chair Levin for sponsoring these bills. Thank you for your time and consideration of our comments.

If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to Alexandra Dougherty, Senior Staff Attorney, at 718-254-0700 x 141 or adougherty@bds.org.