The biggest problem with family applications, they say, is that workers at the Prevention, Assistance and Temporary Housing (PATH) center in the south Bronx, where families with children apply for shelter, consistently overlook evidence indicating eligibility. Families often have to re-apply many times before finally being sheltered.
The Legal Aid Society claims this violates a Dec. 2008 agreement (negotiated in September, finalized in December) to settle the decades-long litigation known as the McCain case. That agreement established the right to emergency shelter for families with children, and specifically outlined steps that the city’s homeless services agency must take to fulfill that right.
“Regrettably, while the litigation has been settled, the errors and the suffering continue,” said Steven Banks, attorney-in-chief at the Legal Aid Society. “It is at this point only a matter of time before we are going to have to return to court to enforce the underlying order.”
Advocates have focused on one particular city statistic they say indicates a pattern of errors: almost 40 percent of families who were ultimately accepted during fiscal year 2009, and during prior years, had to apply more than one time. This shows that eligible families are first turned away, they say.
Department of Homeless Services (DHS) Commissioner Robert Hess interprets this statistic differently. Intake workers are accepting new information on subsequent applications and recognizing that families’ situations change, Hess says. “I would say that is a strength in the system.”
Immediate needs
This is how the system is supposed to work: A family applying to PATH undergoes a screening for domestic violence, health and other concerns. Then, intake workers investigate its housing situation for the past two years. They try to determine if the family has a safe alternative to the shelters.
A family will be placed in a shelter while homeless services workers determine if it is eligible, a decision they must make within 10 days. If they find that the family has other places to live or if the family doesn’t cooperate with the investigation, they will deny the application and the family must move out. Families may appeal to a state administrative law judge.
If a denied family who was found to have alternative housing re-applies within 90 days of being denied it must show some “material change” in its situation to receive another 10 days of provisional, “immediate needs” shelter.
In October 2007 DHS eliminated one exception to this rule which allowed families to be sheltered for the night if they were reapplying after 5 p.m., even though their situations had not changed and they allegedly had other housing options.
The policy since then has been to reject these families reapplying after 5 p.m. unless they demonstrated a significant change. City statistics show that over 1,000 families were denied “immediate needs” shelter under these circumstances during fiscal year 2009.
