NYC Shelters Now Charging Rent

"Start paying rent, or get out." This sums up the notice thousands of residents of of New York City's publicly-operated homeless shelters found under their doors last week after the Bloomberg administration decided to quietly start enforcing a 1997 state statute. This sloppy execution of a ill-informed policy will no doubt lengthen the amount of time spent in shelter, thus further contributing to the clogging the NYC shelter system.

Here's some background from the NY Times:

Vanessa Dacosta, who earns $8.40 an hour as a cashier at Sbarro, received a notice under her door several weeks ago informing her that she had to give $336 of her approximately $800 per month in wages to the Clinton Family Inn, a shelter in Hell's Kitchen where she has lived since March.

"It's not right," said Ms. Dacosta, a single mother of a 2-year-old who said she spends nearly $100 a week on child care. "I pay my baby sitter, I buy diapers, and I'm trying to save money so I can get out of here. I don't want to be in the shelter forever."

City officials said the new rent requirement had been in the works since a 2007 state audit that forced them to pay back $2.4 million in state housing aid that should have been covered by homeless families with income. They argued that homeless people with income should be expected to pay for a portion of their shelter costs, a model that echoes the federal Section 8 housing voucher program.

"I think it's hard to argue that families that can contribute to their shelter cost shouldn't," Robert V. Hess, the city's commissioner of homeless services, said in a telephone interview Friday. "I don't see this playing out in an adverse way. Our objective is not for families to remain in shelter. Our objective is to move families back into their own homes and into the community."

It is unclear why the state law has not been enforced until now. New York's situation is unusual, with far more working homeless families than elsewhere in the state, and higher housing costs than virtually anywhere in the country.

Until policies are in the pipeline to realistically improve the gap between living expenses and income for low-income people, I somewhat understand the logic of simulating real-world circumstances for people in shelters; balancing work, budgeting rent, etc. But in reality, most people become homeless because of a one-time, "perfect storm" of circumstances that derails them. So "teaching" the skills needed to keep a home is pointless; what these people really need is financial independence.

But what makes this story so frustrating is the sudden enforcement. To impose such a ill-conceived policy suddenly, with no notice, throws an unnecessary curveball to already struggling families. I think Arnold Cohen of the Partnership for the Homeless said it best: "We're dealing with the poorest people, the people who are the most in need, and we're asking them to pay for a shelter of last resort. As a city and a state that has a history of social and economic justice, I think we can do better than that."