Requires the department of homeless services to maintain a facility for processing requests for shelter

Summary of provisions

§21-316 is added to amend Section 1, of the administrative code of the city of New York to read as follows: Intake for single men. The department shall maintain a facility in Manhattan, south of ninety-sixth street and as proximate as possible to major transportation centers, which shall be open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, to accept and process request for shelter from single homeless men. The facility shall have shelter beds on site and shall be operated in accordance with all legal requirements, including but not limited to occupancy limitations for new facilities.

Existing law

New.

Justification

The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is charged with the responsibility of housing the homeless people throughout New York City. The 2008 Homeless Outreach population Estimate (HOPE) results showed that there are an estimated total of 3,306 street homeless individuals citywide. There are 1,263 unsheltered individuals in Manhattan, 279 in the Bronx., 336 in Brooklyn, 135 in Queens, 152 in Staten Island, and 1,141 in the subway. 58% of the City's street homeless were on the streets of Manhattan while only 16% were living in Brooklyn. Although the Department of Homeless Services argues that 23% of the homeless people report that they are from Brooklyn, the fact still remains that 77% of the other homeless individuals are coming from boroughs other than Brooklyn, points to the need for a Manhattan location because of its centralization.

DHS claims that on average only 40 people enter the Bellevue shelter everyday. This number however, only takes into account those homeless individuals who are new to the systems or have not been in the system for more than a year and does not include people who return to seek shelter again within a year. In contrast, when the number of new entrants to the shelter system is combined with the number of individuals already in the system, it appears that on average 50-150 individuals enter Bellevue's intake center each day. When the weather takes a turn for the worse, whether a frigid day in the winter or a rainstorm in the summer, large increases in the number of homeless that enter the Manhattan shelter are observed. On January 3, 2008, the coldest night of the year in 2008, the temperature was 12 degrees Fahrenheit and the intake center had 241 men come in off the street.

Outreach teams serve the chronically homeless population and are charged with transporting people to intake or to "safe haven" beds, of which there are only 298 according to DHS's latest numbers. The "safe haven" sites are smaller decentralized shelters that try to encourage entry by reducing the bureaucratic barriers to entry that often deter homeless from approaching the shelter system. opponents to the closure of the intake center point out that 500 proposed "safe Haven" beds are grossly inadequate for the more than 22,000 homeless men that Bellevue served in Fiscal Year 2007. Additionally, opponents maintain that the "safe havens" cannot serve the broad range of homeless men that Bellevue serves because the "safe havens" are targeted to serve a smaller niche of the chronically homeless.

These points factored in weigh heavily in favor of an intake center remaining in a Manhattan location rather than the proposed transfer of its functions to the Brooklyn Bedford-Atlantic Armory site. Although the intake will not be able to remain in Bellevue because of plans to sell the building to a developer, another Manhattan location must be identified.

Fiscal implications

None to the state.

Local fiscal implications

Unknown.

Effective date

This act shall take effect on the sixtieth day after it shall have become a law.