CURBED NY: What $1 Billion of the NYPD’s Budget Could Do for Housing

Meanwhile, the City Council has been in negotiations with the de Blasio administration to set the budget for fiscal year 2021. That, coupled with the nationwide protests against police brutality, has resurfaced calls from advocates to defund the NYPD’s $6 billion budget and invest $1 billion of those funds — to begin with — in social and homeless services, as well as housing.

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Meanwhile, proposed cuts to the Housing Preservation and Development capital budget will potentially slow down the creation of affordable and supportive housing for low-income New Yorkers in the years to come.

Here, we asked housing and homeless organizers, advocates, and politicians what they would do if $1 billion were taken out of the NYPD’s budget.

Lynden Bond, policy director at Human.nyc

“Decreasing the NYPD budget while removing the NYPD from the front lines of homeless outreach, where it does not belong, could open opportunities to financially invest in crucial resources that would allow New Yorkers experiencing homelessness to obtain and maintain permanent housing.

One specific example would be to increase the value of the CityFHEPS vouchers to fair market rate such that people could actually find apartments within their budget. It could also be used to operate the safe havens and permanent housing the mayor promised for unsheltered homeless New Yorkers.”

DEMOCRACY NOW: As NYC Subway Closures Force Unhoused People into Packed Shelters, Advocates Demand Permanent Homes

AMY GOODMAN: So, that’s Mayor Bill de Blasio. We’re also joined by Josh Dean, executive director of the homeless advocacy group Human.NYC. If you can respond to Mayor de Blasio, whether you think this is a successful policy? You are spending night after night outside.

JOSH DEAN: Yeah, I mean, this is absolutely not as successful as he’s making it out to be. The way that he is presenting the data is extremely misleading. We can start there. The people that he’s counting as accepting services is anyone who agrees simply to get into a van and be transported to the shelter, regardless of what happens when they actually arrive. And the folks that he’s counting as engaging are only the people with whom the outreach teams have a significant conversation with. So, because there’s such a heavy NYPD presence, and because the NYPD has consistently mistreated folks who are homeless, a lot of homeless folks will take one look at the NYPD and see that they’re with the outreach teams, want nothing to do with them. And those folks don’t get counted as engaged, despite being removed and sent to the streets.

There are also folks at the overwhelming majority of stations that are not end-of-the-line stations. And those folks, if they fall asleep on the platform, for example, they’re going to be asked to leave by NYPD, and there are not outreach teams there. The outreach teams are only deployed at the end-of-the-line stations.

So, both the numerator and the denominator in his, you know, statistics that he shares every day, where he says half of the people that we’re engaging are accepting services, are extremely misleading.

As we heard from the gentleman Rick, who we interviewed outside the 30th Street Men’s Shelter, a lot of folks are being transported to the shelters, and either because they’ve been there before or because they went inside and they saw how crowded it was, they left, for reasons that pertain to their safety, reasons that I think many of us who would be in the same situation would make the same decision.

So, what we actually ended up seeing, once some of the local journalists pressed the mayor hard enough, was that only a hundred people, of the folks that engage night after night, actually ended up staying at the shelter. And that, in and of itself, is concerning, given that the conditions that they were taking folks to, at least back a couple weeks ago when this was happening, are not necessarily safe places for folks to be right now.

NEW YORK POST: De Blasio claims ‘historic’ gains in getting NYC’s homeless off subways

Mayor Bill de Blasio claimed Monday that officials were making “historic” gains in getting homeless people off the subways amid the coronavirus crisis — even though it’s unclear how many are simply hopping right back on the rails.

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Josh Dean of Human.NYC, another advocacy group, also said that many homeless people were “moving further into the shadows to avoid the cruelty they are experiencing” by getting kicked off the subways.

“The mayor loves to talk about trust between outreach and homeless New Yorkers, but his actions right now are destroying that trust, perhaps irreparably,” he said.

POLITICO: Most homeless people removed from subways never entered shelters

With the subway system undergoing an unprecedented overnight shutdown, city officials have boasted that hundreds of homeless people removed from the trains agreed to go to shelters.

But a large majority of people the city tallied as accepting help never even entered a homeless shelter, according to data released Thursday.

Out of 824 individuals the city said accepted its services on the subways, only 201 made it into shelters. The rest may have accepted a bus ride to a shelter, but then took off without ever going inside.

Among those who checked into shelter, some stayed for only a few hours. Currently, 103 remain in shelters.

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Josh Dean, director of the nonprofit group Human NYC, said many homeless men have balked at entering crowded waiting rooms in shelters where the coronavirus is spreading. That’s on top of long-standing concerns about crime and security in the facilities.

“Some people didn’t even walk toward the shelter, and just walked away,” said Dean, who spent time outside the 30th Street Men’s Shelter, the biggest intake center in the city. “They were planning on sleeping outside. Some of them were planning on waiting until the train opened.”

Other people, he added, have been booted from trains in remote neighborhoods at the end of subway lines, and agreed to take a ride to Manhattan with no intention of entering a shelter when they got there.

Advocates have pushed for people living on the street to be offered hotel rooms, an idea de Blasio has rejected because many of them have mental illnesses and substance abuse disorders.

“Everyone we talk to on the streets is ready to come inside. They just need to be brought to a safe place,” Dean said.

THE CITY: NYC Shuttles Homeless Men from Subway to Packed Shelter

The convoy arrived in the chilly Manhattan darkness around 1:30 a.m.: vehicles pulling up one after the other outside 30th Street Men’s Shelter, the city’s biggest refuge for homeless New Yorkers.

The passengers who emerged at this temporary bus stop all shared the same story: They’d just been expelled from the subway during the system’s new daily 1 a.m. to 5 a.m. COVID-19 scrubdown.

Advocates question why, of all the places the city could bring these men, the Department of Homeless Services chose one of the most crowded shelters — one where social distancing has proved a major challenge, spurring efforts to reduce the headcount there.

“I can’t think of a worse place than 30th Street,” said Josh Dean, director of the nonprofit homeless support group Human.NYC. “How dangerous is it to take these people off the subway and put them in this one place?”

The Guardian: Closing New York subway will have ‘devastating’ impact on homeless, experts warn

New measures to close the New York subway for nightly coronavirus cleaning will have “devastating” consequences for the thousands of homeless people who regularly sleep there, experts have warned.

Starting on Wednesday, for the first time in its history the usually 24-hour service will shut down every night between 1am and 5am to be disinfected in a bid to improve travel conditions for essential workers during the Covid-19 outbreak.

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New York’s mayor, Bill de Blasio, has said the closures will enable the city to help people more effectively. But Josh Dean, executive director of the street homelessness organisation Human.nyc, said it will put many on the streets – potentially in an unfamiliar area. He also fears it will breach trust and damage existing relationships between homeless people and social workers.

“This is going to be a tragedy,” he said. “Tonight [Tuesday] at the same time 2,000 homeless folks or more are going to be thrown out of the train and into the streets … The impact of that is really going to be devastating.”

In recent days he said he has already witnessed police ordering homeless people to get off trains at end of the line stations at night.

He added: “They even forced a man with one shoe out into the rain one night. So it’s a pretty brutal and cruel operation.”

In collaboration with other organisations, Human.nyc has raised more than $63,000 for its #homelesscantstayhome campaign which has so far housed 27 people in hotels.

Anthony Williams, 57, who has been homeless on and off for decades, had been sleeping on the subway for the last two and a half years until he got a room in a hotel through the campaign three days ago.

He said: “Now that Covid-19 exists and they’re shutting it [the subway] down it leaves a void. Where do people go to find their safety, to sleep?”

He predicts some people will sleep in the day on the subway and walk the streets at night or try to hide in abandoned train stations or tunnels. But, he said, they will not go in shelters – both because of coronavirus and, like him, have negative past experiences.

BuzzFeed News: There Are Thousands Of Empty Hotel Rooms Across The US. Why Can’t Homeless People Use Them Through Quarantine?

In normal times, Darryl Rice, 54, and his friends would spend every evening collecting cardboard boxes to sleep on at a Fifth Avenue corner, just four blocks from Trump Tower and the luxury Bergdorf Goodman department store.

But when the coronavirus officially shut down New York on March 22, no stores meant there were no boxes. The gym where he showered and shaved had closed. The bathrooms at Grand Central Station and Penn Station were shut. The soup kitchens followed right after.

That's when "the reality and the despair hit," Rice told BuzzFeed News. He'd slept on New York City streets for two years — but this time, he worried how he would cope for months with no services.

The Homeless Can't Stay Home campaign, run by homeless advocacy groups, paid for Rice to move into his own Midtown hotel room two weeks ago. His room has a queen-size bed, desk, and private bathroom. When he first arrived, he slept for nearly a day and a half straight. "This has been a real blessing to get off my feet and get some needed rest," he told BuzzFeed News.

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Josh Dean, the executive director of Human.NYC, a homeless advocacy group that is part of the campaign, told BuzzFeed News he hopes to keep those people, including Rice and Meier, in their hotel rooms for as many weeks as possible. Most of the rooms were booked on hotels.com, and hotels have not shown any concern about individuals who are homeless living there.

"It’s really frustrating — the city is not taking the action they need to," said Dean, who added the campaign has shown that moving people into hotels is an effective and easy plan to implement. "People should not be going into congregate settings, people should be going from the street only into their own space."

The city's Department of Homeless Services said that as of April 21, 639 New Yorkers who are homeless have tested positive for COVID-19, and 44 have died. DHS did not respond to a request for comment for this story.

Dean noted that the department has been infuriatingly slow at moving people out of crowded shelters, failing to even meet its own small targets.

"We have the hotel rooms; we have federal funding that we can use for this, and the issues that they’re pointing to as reasons for doing this are all solvable problems," Dean said. "It’s a lack of political will, that’s it. That's the only thing preventing the city from doing the right thing here."

Gotham Gazette: Opinion: When Homeless New Yorkers are Safe, We’ll All Be Safer; The Mayor Must Use 30,000 Hotel Rooms Now

Last week we learned of Mayor de Blasio’s plan to move an additional 2,500 New Yorkers living in crowded shelters into hotel rooms by the end of April. While this may help some people escape the dangers of COVID-19, it simply does not meet the need.

For tens of thousands of homeless New Yorkers, virtually all of the protocols to prevent contracting and spreading coronavirus are impossible. Homeless people, by definition, cannot stay home, and many of the city’s 70,000-plus homeless people are living in settings that don’t allow them to easily wash their hands as frequently as needed or to shut a door and social distance from their neighbors.

If he really wants to make an impact, reduce the spread of coronavirus, and protect some of the city’s most vulnerable amid this crisis, Mayor de Blasio would utilize 30,000 of the 100,000-plus vacant hotel rooms across the city to move homeless New Yorkers out of the shelters and off the streets into spaces where they can easily practice social distancing, shower, use the bathroom, and wash their hands.

Further, the city already has a system and vendors for providing food to clients living in hotels, as it has long used commercial hotels as emergency shelters. And the mayor just announced enhanced efforts to deliver food to those who need it. The longer the mayor fails to act, the greater negative impact it will have on our whole city. Failing to act will lead to further spread of the virus and will continue to overwhelm the already overcrowded hospital system.

If homeless New Yorkers are safer, we are all safer!

THE INDYPENDENT: The Homeless Can’t Shelter-in-Place: Advocates Call for NYC To Put Empty Hotel Rooms to Use

All the while, the city has continued policing practices that make it even more difficult for unsheltered New Yorkers to protect themselves from the spread of the virus. The Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project reports that NYPD is continuing to regularly clear homeless camps — a routine practice that advocates say explicitly disregards recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that encampments not be displaced unless the people living there are offered safe shelter. 

The city’s disagreement hinges mainly on a technicality: they say New York City doesn’t have the type of encampments the CDC is referring to, and that unsheltered homeless people do have another housing option in the shelter system. But many unsheltered people say they would feel even less safe in the shelters, where there are reports of overcrowded and under-sanitized facilities. 

Josh Dean, founder of the homeless advocacy group Human.NYC said he first heard sweeps were continuing from a woman living on 33rd Street and 8th Avenue who reported seeing a notice printed by the city advising homeless people living there that their belongings would be cleared.

“The CDC is saying ‘don’t do sweeps’ not just because it’s cruel — and it is cruel — but also because it exacerbates the public health crisis,” Dean said. “That is really, really, really concerning.”

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Josh Dean with Human.NYC calls the city’s reliance on private groups like NYC Relief to feed the unhoused in this time of crisis a “huge red flag.” Lynn Lewis with Picture the Homeless said the coronavirus proves what she and other advocates have long declared: housing should be viewed as a human right. 

THE CITY: A High-Stakes Race to Help NYC’s Homeless as Coronavirus Spreads

Last weekend, the first homeless person in a city-run shelter tested positive for coronavirus. As of Friday, there were seven at four separate shelters.

Meanwhile, homeless people who stay on sidewalks and subways rather than go to often dangerous shelters are overwhelming city-supported drop-in centers that offer meals and showers at a time when staying clean is crucial.

The dual dynamic, advocates for the homeless say, adds to a growing health crisis — with vulnerable people living in close quarters in the era of social distancing while those in the streets struggle more than ever to get help in an all but shut down city.

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Josh Dean, director of Human NYC, a group that aids homeless people, delivered boxes of socks to the Staten Island and Bronx drop-in centers Tuesday.

In The Bronx, “It was super crowded. People were absolutely not able to perform social distancing. There was not sufficient space for that. People were making physical contact with each other.”

In Staten Island, he said, homeless people filled rows of chairs almost touching in the common area of the center. “I was bumping into people trying to get through,” he said. “It was nuts.”

THE CITY: NO HAND SANITIZER FOR HOMELESS LIVING ON STREETS, EVEN AS VIRUS SPREADS

Danny Espada, who lives on the streets, spritzes his palms with hand sanitizers he spots on store shelves around Midtown.

“They can’t deny you on that part,” said Espada, who hits CVS and Duane Reade stores to find the precious alcohol-based cleaners. “I’ve got to keep my hands nice and clean.”

Espada, 44, one of an estimated nearly 3,600 people living on subways and sidewalks, has struggled to stay clean, and away from crowds in shelters, as the number of coronavirus cases in the city increases.

Some stores and building atriums offer people free hand sanitizer near entrances.

But the city’s Department of Homeless Services discourages its outreach workers from giving people living on the streets any sanitary items, food or blankets because, officials say, that encourages them to stay out of shelters.

Homeless service advocates have long questioned that stance and are now pressing the de Blasio administration to switch its position to protect a vulnerable population from the spread of the coronavirus.

“The least we can do is give them hand sanitizer and clothes because of all times, now is the time to do it,” said Josh Dean, co-founder of Human.nyc, a homeless outreach organization.

Mother JOnes: Handing Out Hand Sanitizer May Not Be Enough to Stop the Pandemic Among Unsheltered People

In New York City, for instance, where there are at least 329 confirmed cases of coronavirus, city officials are discouraging giving hand sanitizer to unsheltered people because the worry that this measure actually will keep them from going to shelters. New York City’s policy is to get homeless people to move into shelters as opposed to staying on the street. However, many homeless people report that shelters can be unsafe or even dangerous. “The least we can do is give them hand sanitizer and clothes because of all times, now is the time to do it,” Josh Dean, co-founder of Human.nyc, a homeless outreach organization, told the City an independent nonprofit news outlet.

City & State New York: Homeless New Yorkers at greater risk from COVID-19

For homeless people outside the shelter system, fewer services are now available to help them. Charities providing food, showers and other help to the homeless are either closing or cut down services to only offering to-go meals. The city’s parks department has also closed its recreation centers, which many homeless people use to shower. 

“I’ve gotten a couple of texts this morning from people like, ‘where do we go shower now?’” Josh Dean, executive director of Human.nyc, said. “And they’re apparently just washing up in bathrooms using the sink, and that’s not nearly the same, especially at a time like this.”

The city Department of Homeless Services has recently allowed outreach teams to start distributing socks and hand sanitizer to the city’s homeless, overturning a previous rule that prevented outreach workers from giving supplies because officials argued it discouraged people from entering shelters. The rollout on that effort is just beginning now.

CITY LIMITS: City Doing Hundreds of Homeless ‘Clean-Ups’ Each Year

Over the past four years, the de Blasio administration conducted at least 1,700 operations aimed at moving homeless people from locations where they had set up shelter, according to data obtained via the freedom of information act.

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The pace of clean-ups has increased over time, from 155 during the last seven months of 2016 (the data begins on April 29 of that year) to 427 in 2017, 519 in 2018 and at least 617 last year (the data ends on December 11.)

“The fact that we’re seeing a year-over-year increase is alarming,” says Josh Dean, co-founder of Human.nyc, an advocacy organization. “Similar tactics, meant to criminalize and deter/move homeless people out of sight and out of mind, are popping up across the city, too.”

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“We meet people who are traumatized by having NYPD, DSNY, and DHS discard their belongings and move away from one of the few places they feel safe. We’ve witnessed cleanups and they are absolutely heartbreaking,” Dean says. “People have had vital documents like birth certificates, identifications, and medications discarded against their will.”

WNYC: Report Says HOME-STAT Program Is Causing Confusion

A new report and survey from Human.nyc found that the city's homeless outreach workers as well as homeless individuals themselves are confused about how to give and receive services. 

Under HOME-STAT (Homeless Outreach & Mobile Engagement Street Action Teams), outreach workers are supposed to canvas the streets of Manhattan and “hot spots” in the outer boroughs to find homeless people and provide them with the services they need. But the survey, conducted last summer, found wide discrepancies over who qualified for a case worker.

"The answers varied so wildly," Human.nyc Executive Director Josh Dean said.  "Their understanding of what they have to do to actually move forward in the process of housing process is very unclear."

GOTHAMIST: MTA Rips Backs Off Benches At West 4th Subway Station To Repel Homeless

The MTA has rolled out a new tactic to prevent the homeless from sleeping in New York City's subway system: removing the backrests of benches.

All the roughly dozen wooden benches at the West 4th Street station have had their backs removed. Asked about the reconfigured seating, the MTA said that the changes were made last month and aimed at deterring people from sleeping inside the station.

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"It's really backwards and sickening," said Josh Dean, who co-founded the homeless advocacy group Human.nyc and frequently talks to homeless individuals in the subways. "They are just going to keep shuffling people around."

Referring to the cold weather conditions and those who might be forced to go without sleep, he added: "It's going to have consequences on people's health."

PIX11: Subway Diversion Program where homeless are given a summons or services is under scrutiny

Homeless New Yorkers in the subway system are facing a new choice.

If approached by the NYPD, they can choose a summons or services.

It's part of the Subway Diversion Program that the city launched over the summer. Police approach the homeless violating the transit system's code of conduct rules. An infraction, like sleeping on multiple seats on a subway car, allows the NYPD to give the homeless person the choice.

It happened to Karim Walker back in August.

"The police picked me up at a stop. Asked me if I needed services. Fool as I was, I did say yes. They put me in handcuffs. Wrote me a ticket," Walker said.

Walker said he thinks shelters are unsafe. He chose to go with outreach workers so his summons would be dismissed. But he soon returned to the subway.

And now the New York City Council is taking a look at the Subway Diversion Program.

"We cannot have a law enforcement lens approach when it comes to addressing homelessness," Bronx Council member Vanessa Gibson said.

Early NYPD numbers show less than half of the homeless chose to dismiss the summons and seek services.

"It is apparent this program has not helped the city's un-sheltered individuals in the transit system move into shelter and services," General Welfare Committee Chairman Stephen Levin said.

GOTHAMIST: Six Months In, Critics Say De Blasio's Strategy To Help Homeless In Subways Isn't Working

New York City Councilmembers are criticizing a controversial de Blasio administration program that gives New Yorkers living in the subway the choice between receiving a police summons and going to a homeless shelter or engaging with outreach providers.

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“It is apparent that this program has not actually helped the city’s unsheltered individuals in the transit system move into shelter and services,” said Councilmember Stephen Levin, who chairs the general welfare committee, during a City Council hearing on Tuesday.

On the same day, Human.nyc, a group that focuses on street homelessness, released an anonymous letter that it said it received from officers working for the NYPD’s Transit Bureau. The officers attacked the program, calling it “blatant discrimination” against the homeless that they’re being forced to carry out.

THE CITY: PUNCH CARDS FOR HOMELESS DANGLE HOPE OF HOUSING, DELIVER WAITS

On any given night, more than 3,500 homeless New Yorkers live on the streets, often because they refuse to bed down in city shelters they say are too dangerous.

Many share a goal: placement in apartments or residential rooms under a program called Safe Haven.

But there’s a catch.

To qualify, many say, they have to “prove” they’re homeless. They say they’re told they need to plant themselves in the same spot, week after week, so outreach workers can see them there and officially dub them “chronically homeless.”

Some of the homeless men and women have even been given cards with a series of boxes to be signed by an outreach worker after each “sighting.” The card resembles the punch cards high-end coffee shops hand out to customers, touting a free cup of java after multiple purchases.

“There is something not right with this,” said Charmain Hamid, 44, who has been living on the streets of the city for much of the past decade. “I’m sitting there all day to wait for (an outreach worker) to see me? That’s not going to happen.”

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Some homeless people told Human.nyc they were flat-out informed they needed to be seen on the street for nine months before becoming eligible for a transitional apartment.

Of 32 homeless individuals living in and around Penn Station that Human.nyc surveyed between May 20 and June 3, 21 said they were told about the “sightings” protocol by outreach teams.

OP-ED IN THE DAILY NEWS: We Can Act Today To Help People Safely Move Off The Streets

It has been two weeks since the horrific and preventable deaths of Cheun Kok, Anthony Leon Manson, Nazario Vazquez Villegas and Florencio Moran. Sadly but not unsurprisingly, the response from the mayor and the governor has been woefully inadequate.The response has been especially disappointing because there are common-sense and cost-effective reforms we can enact immediately. At this point, we are not doing everything in our power to make sure no one is left in a position where they feel the streets or the subways are the safest place they can rest their head at night. That truth is a stain on our city.

To ensure people are provided case management services as soon as possible, we should standardize and clarify this process. Case managers are pivotal in providing people with their options, and subsequently working them through our city’s messy bureaucracy to get them off the streets as soon as possible.

Next, outreach teams should be given the freedom to place people in smaller shelters, those typically accessed only later in the process, rather than only having the option of bringing them to intake and assessment shelters, which people on the streets are likely deliberately avoiding because they are the most notoriously difficult to live in.

Meanwhile, we should retrofit existing shelters to accept people with pets. Oftentimes, a person’s only barrier to coming off the streets is that he might have to give up his pet. Across the country, shelters have been retrofitted to “co-shelter” people and animals without significant modifications or financial investments.

We should see this opportunity as low-hanging fruit and act on it immediately.

For those who are not willing to go to any shelter — again, for legitimate reasons — a safe haven is their next best option. At the time of their inception, safe havens were created for those who have been on the streets the longest, and as a result, they were only open to those who are chronically homeless under the city’s definition, meaning they had been living unsheltered for nine or more months.

An unintended consequence of this eligibility requirement is that people who have not been determined to be chronically homeless, regardless of their level of vulnerability, are not eligible for safe havens, even if a safe haven would be the best way to provide that person with stability.

We must have transitional housing for people who aren’t chronically homeless.

Finally, we need to immediately end the criminalization of homelessness, particularly on the subways. People on the subways need services, not a trip to the precinct house or jail.

We can start attacking this problem today. Are we prepared to do so?

CITY LIMITS: A Walk With Mayor de Blasio’s Street Homelessness Outreach Workers

Even Safe Havens aren’t for everyone. Ulysses Peter Malvan, 61, has been living on New York City streets continuously since 2013 after growing disillusioned with the Safe Havens and shelters. With all its dangers, the streets feel safer for him.

Over the years Malvan said he has been engaged by outreach workers around half a dozen times. In one instance, he learned that an outreach worker with whom he had built a relationship had quit the job. It is experiences like this that have sometimes left homeless individuals feeling alienated. “I told this person all of this stuff and you don’t have any of it and I have to start all over again with you,” he recalls feeling about the new worker on his case. 

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Malvan said the reason he is still on the streets is because he hasn’t been offered the right type of housing. “I want more supportive housing that’s not warehousing,” he says. 

Some advocates who do outreach to the street homeless believe the lack of real housing options undermines the effort to stay in touch with people sleeping outdoors. 

“The challenge for me is you basically have to stay in touch and maintain a relationship or maintain trust with the person for a very long time without being able to give them any updates or any good news,” says Josh Dean, director of the advocacy group, Human.nyc. 

Dean, whose organization also does its own form of outreach, says outreach workers are not to blame for this situation. “We always make the point that outreach workers are doing their best in a broken system,” he said. “It’s all about the offer. When we are low on housing, it makes it really difficult for outreach workers to do their job,” he added.

Dean says conflicting messages come from city-contracted outreach workers. Some homeless individuals have said they’ve been told that they are required to be sighted a number of times on the streets before they can be considered chronically homeless, a scheme first reported by The City.

CITY & STATE NEW YORK: ASK THE EXPERTS: Do New York City’s outreach efforts lessen street homelessness?

How can outreach to New York City’s homeless population be improved?

Dean and Bond: To begin, outreach can be improved by acknowledging that people experiencing homelessness are the experts. Everyone should ask – and listen to – their thoughts and ideas for solutions. It’s clear that the city has made absolutely no effort to recognize their expertise, which is the very reason our organization exists. Any changes to the bureaucracy should focus on what unsheltered New Yorkers want and need. People tell us that they want an expedited process to secure case management, and from there, a more clear understanding of what they need to do to secure housing. They do not want to be waiting as long as they are. With that, the most effective way to improve outreach efforts is to invest in the back end. By increasing the availability of safe havens, supportive housing and affordable housing set aside for homeless New Yorkers, we reduce the bureaucracy up front. By adapting a housing first model, which has been successful in cities around the world, we would allow people to secure housing and address other issues afterward. The increase in housing stock would allow outreach teams to do their jobs far more effectively, rather than trying to maintain trust with people while the mayor and governor drag their feet on their promises to deliver housing.

THE GUARDIAN: ‘I'm just sleeping’: police crack down on homeless in New York’s subways

Josh Dean, executive director of Human.NYC, a homeless advocacy group, said he had seen police enforcement in action. If someone is lying down in a subway car, he said, even late at night when no one else is on the train, officers will bang batons on the seats or poke the person, trying to wake them.

“The efforts to use policing as a force to address this is not going to do anything” to help, Dean said. “They’re not actually addressing the root causes of homelessness.”

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Karen Walker, 56, made the choice to live in Penn Station last year. After a violent relationship left her on the streets in 2014, she paid to live in a building that was part-shelter, part-rented single-occupancy rooms. Tired of tensions between those who lived there as a shelter and those who paid rent, she moved into Penn.

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But in July, she received the first of three court summonses for lying down in the station. Each time, an officer asked for her ID and handed her a summons, even after she stood up.

After she went to court and met with a social worker, Walker obtained a housing voucher. She will soon be looking for a permanent place to live.

Though her experience in court was ultimately positive, Walker said she had to advocate for herself and be firm on her right to housing. That is hard for many homeless people, especially if they are intimidated by law enforcement.

“The shame, embarrassment and humiliation keep people tied to situations that are just destructive,” she said. “Some people are easily discouraged and therefore may limit themselves.”

BROOKLYN DAILY EAGLE: Pet policy at city shelters keeps homeless New Yorkers on streets. Could that change?

Levin was inspired by the work of Human.nyc, a nonprofit that conducts outreach with the homeless. Human.nyc helped draft the legislation and contributed to a recent New York University study that found pet ownership is one of the main barriers to shelter entry. 

“The feeling on the street is that if you have a pet, you’re barred from services,” said Josh Dean, the group’s executive director. 

NEW YORK 1: Volunteers Canvass NYC Every Year to Determine How Many People are on the Streets. Here's How That Works.

A critical resource for studying the issue of homeless in New York City is the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate, known as the HOPE Count. Every winter, volunteers spend a night canvassing streets, parks, and subways all across the city, speaking with homeless people and collecting data that helps the city understand the crisis.

NY1 Investigative Reporter Lydia Hu and Josh Dean — the co-founder of Human.NYC, an advocacy group that provides resources to homeless people looking to move into housing — sit down with Mornings On 1 Host Pat Kiernan to discuss the HOPE Count.