Homeless Families in New York Lose a Loophole

NYT

Beginning tomorrow night, the city will stop giving emergency shelter to families who are reapplying for a place to stay after being ruled ineligible, officials said yesterday.

The decision means that families who apply for benefits but are turned down — usually because the city believes they can stay with a friend or a relative — will find themselves without shelter as they reapply one or two more times.

The toughening of the policy, which follows a rise during the summer in the number of families given emergency shelter in free public apartments, was criticized as cruel by advocates for the homeless and by some of the people it will affect. But it was defended by officials as a necessary tightening of a munificent policy that was being repeatedly abused by a few families.

The city had allowed families who had been ruled ineligible to be given shelter for one night if they reapplied after 5 p.m. Some families using this emergency provision would keep their belongings with them and repeat the process, moving to a new shelter the next day, often late at night, the city said.

“Families began to realize if they came in after 5 they could evade that accountability,” said Linda I. Gibbs, the city’s deputy mayor for health and human services. “What we are doing now is closing the loophole.”

The number of families using emergency overnight shelter had remained small for a long time, most likely because moving from place to place at night entailed such a harsh existence. Families checked in for emergency overnight stays fewer than 75 times a month for most of 2006, but the number erupted this summer, climbing to nearly 800 stays in July. In August, that number increased slightly.

City officials and advocates for the homeless estimated that a core group of families, perhaps dozens, has stayed in this cycle for weeks or longer. Some families have been in the cycle for months.

“The actions of a few are threatening the culture for the many,” Ms. Gibbs said. “We have to stop it now.”

Officials said a vast majority of the families seeking shelter from the city accepted the outcome of their 10-day eligibility review. But the score or more families who remain in the system using emergency shelter night after night, they said, are setting a corrupting example for everyone else. (Entering shelter is thought to be desirable for those who are not necessarily homeless because it is a way to get subsidized housing.).........