Mayor Eric Adams’ Department of Homeless Services is trying out new rules that would create new grounds for kicking residents out of city shelters, THE CITY has learned.
A copy of a draft proposal for “Enhanced Client Placement Support” obtained by THE CITY would let DHS deny adults a placement in shelters if they fail to maintain active public benefits cases, turn down a housing placement or repeatedly violate shelter rules.
Asked about the new policy at a City Council hearing Monday by Councilmember Tiffany Caban (D-Queens), DHS Commissioner Molly Park said the rule change would first be rolled out in a pilot program.
Acting Commissioner of the New York City Department of Social Services Molly Park speaks at City Hall with Mayor Eric Adams ahead of an executive order signing ending the 90-day rule for people applying for CityFHEPS housing vouchers, June 16, 2023. Credit: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
The new proposal, “is really designed to build a culture of accountability across DHS,” Park said. “When I say accountability, I’m talking about accountability for the agency, for providers, and for clients.”
Park described a process with multiple warnings where shelter residents would be notified they were out of compliance and given a chance to rectify the situation before ultimately getting kicked out. A draft copy states people could be ejected temporarily for at least 30 days though they’d be let back in for extreme weather.
The new rules would apply to the roughly 22,000 single adults and 4,200 members of adult families staying in shelters overseen by DHS on any given night.
“My anticipation is that we will have few, if any, discharges from shelter” under the new policy, Park said. “It is really about building this culture of accountability.”
Advocates for the homeless, meanwhile, expressed alarm about the policy, which they say would result in a surge in street homelessness among those shelter residents who need a roof most.
“It makes no sense that they would be putting measures in place that are likely to result in more homeless New Yorkers ending up on the streets and in the subways,” said Dave Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, which reviewed the draft policy and provided feedback to DHS about it.
“Given all the attention right now around how to reduce the number of people that have to sleep out in public places, why in God’s name would you put a policy in place that is going to result in the highest needs individuals, those that are having difficulties in adhering to these new policies, being sanctioned out of shelters,” he asked.
‘It’s Unfathomable’
Joshua Goldfein, attorney for the Legal Aid Society, which represents the Coalition for the Homeless in ongoing oversight of the 1981 consent decree that established New York City’s right to shelter, recalled hundreds of shelter residents being targeted for removal when a similar policy was in use under Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
“They tried to sanction [shelter residents] for what they characterize as failure to follow rules. Really what was happening was, they were failing to provide people with the care that they needed,” Goldfein said. “We also saw staff retaliate against clients who they didn’t want to work with anymore. So we’re very concerned about that as well.”
According to the draft, residents would be booted following two instances of “gross misconduct” in which a person “engages in act(s) that endanger the health or safety of oneself or others, or that substantially and repeatedly interfere with the orderly operation of the shelter.”
Other provisions would allow DHS to oust someone “who does not actively seek and/or unreasonably refuses to accept suitable housing,” or someone who does not “Maintain an Active Public Assistance Case.” There’s a carveout for medical or disability related exceptions and another if residents have “good cause” for not meeting the required conditions.
Residents will be warned in writing of violations, after which they can be given a notice they have to leave.
“Every shelter client is entitled to a safe environment on their path to self-sufficiency, and this pilot will help us achieve the high standard of care that clients want and deserve,” William Fowler, a spokesperson for the mayor, said in a statement on the new policy.
Deborah Berkman, director of the Shelter and Economic Stability Project at the New York Legal Assistance Group, noted that many of her clients have had their public benefits cases canceled due to clerical errors that can take weeks to resolve.
All of them, she said, are eager to move into permanent housing and out of shelters, but many struggle to do so because of bureaucratic hurdles and difficulty finding housing they can afford. She said she couldn’t imagine how stricter shelter rules would speed up that process. “The truth is every single one of my clients who is in shelter wants to transition to permanent housing. If given the tools to do so, every one of them would move,” she said.
“To me it’s unfathomable that at this moment in time, we are, New York is taking steps to create more street homelessness.”
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