CHILDREN LIVING ON THE STREETS OF NEW YORK CITY ARE ON THE RISE

Sun 15 June 2024:

Families with children that sought shelter from New York City authorities increased in May compared to the same time last year, according to the city’s Department of Homeless Services (DHS).

Last month, nearly 19,000 families with children were counted in the DHS system, a jump of about 2,500 from 2023, the data showed, Newsweek reported.

Children’s homelessness has been rising over the last 25 years, according to city Comptroller Brad Lander’s office. Between 2000 and 2020, people who sought shelter through city authorities soared by 175 percent.

But there was relief at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic when the government offered income support to residents and instituted a moratorium to those who struggled to pay rent. The aid helped to reduce homelessness by 25 percent.

An increase in the number of asylum seekers who seek help at city shelters and the end of pandemic-era assistance for things like rent contributed to a jump in instances of homelessness in the last two years, the city said.

“The combination of these factors has caused the shelter population to balloon over the past two years, with the city providing some form of shelter and services to nearly 120,000 individuals each night,” according to the comptroller’s office.

As of September 2023, nearly 30,000 children up to age 13 lived in a shelter, data showed, pointing to the challenge faced by younger people in the city.

“We urgently need to combat the homelessness crisis and we’ve got a lot better shot of managing it if we measure it, if we look at the data clearly, if we try to find the patterns,” Lander told the Gothamist in April regarding a new data dashboard to measure homelessness trends in the city.

Newsweek contacted the comptroller’s office for comment via email on Friday.

The data revealed that 13,000 children who were age 5 or younger on average spent at least a night in a city shelter, which was a nearly 50 percent jump from the year before. Teenagers who had to rely on a shelter for at least night increased 64 percent, according to the Gothamist.

City experts said the soaring cost of housing in the city is contributing to the rise in homelessness.

“Housing is the key solution that the state and city need to invest in,” Gabriela Sandoval Requena, policy director at the organization New Destiny Housing, told the Gothamist.

“We know shelter stays can be traumatizing. The shorter the shelter stay, the better,” she added.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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