How many shelters in nyc

Some take refuge in out-of-the-way spots — including behind The Bronx Zoo. Anthony Lewis, 62, hunkered down in a tattered blue canvas camping chair on the sidewalk across from the Chrysler Building as a frigid wind raced down 42nd Street. Between the disease and the streets, his feet are a constant source of pain. But he said he has yet to be observed by homeless aid workers on the street long enough to qualify.

Now I got to suffer for a full year out here. The vast majority of those interviewed were single adults, and most had been in New York on average 30 years. The Coalition field workers who did the survey chronicled the habits and survival skills of the unsheltered, finding them in typical places, including hubs like Penn Station and the Port Authority, and on church steps huddled in cardboard boxes or bedded down in ATM vestibules.

Marte, in his 70s, is a former building porter who lost his job years ago and was never able to get back on his feet. He assumes his parents are dead. He said he knows vendors and commuters by name, and many stop to chat and give him food. He has a bad case of edema that he struggles to treat, making it difficult for him to walk.

The report stated that shelter security problems are compounded by inadequate and poorly trained staff, along with a convoluted bureaucracy that sends residents from shelter to shelter, and makes the path to housing confusing and arduous.

Some cite public safety fears, concerns about strain on local services, worries about the safety or suitability of the proposed site for shelter residents, or fears about the impact a shelter might have on other plans for the neighborhood. Is it fair to communities to insist that they absorb more of the shelter system simply because their residents face harsher economic realities and are more likely to be homeless? And who deserves fairness more: shelter neighbors worried about quality of life or homeless people facing a housing crisis?

And of course, however one defines it, the question of fairness has to be dealt with amid the practicalities of finding space for new shelter beds and doing so with some urgency. Single adults spent an average of days in shelters compared to days in FY and days in FY Adult families spent an average of days in shelters—the equivalent of two years and two months—compared to in FY and days in FY At the very end of the last fiscal year, the city and a network of nonprofit providers purchased 14 buildings long used as cluster-site homeless shelters and began converting them to permanent housing for hundreds of families— though problems persist at each site.

After years of advocacy by homeless New Yorkers and their allies, the City Council voted in June to raise the value of the city subsidy to match federal Section 8 levels, potentially unlocking tens of thousands of previously unaffordable apartments across the five boroughs. City Limits is solely responsible for the content and editorial direction. Your email address will not be published.