New York Times, January 14, 2008: From a Shelter to a Home, but for How Long?
This is the year that Jose Guzman۪s luck is supposed to change. After spending a year and a half in a homeless shelter with his wife and two young daughters, Mr. Guzman is living in a railroad flat at the edge of Bushwick, just across the subway tracks from a cemetery. The city is paying most of the family۪s $1,170 monthly rent this year, and they are expected to save up a few thousand dollars, which will be matched by the city.
City officials call the matched savings a rainy day fund for the family when they leave the system and support themselves. Mr. Guzman calls it a delusion, since he makes only $7.15 an hour as a maintenance helper at the very shelter where he lived with his family in one cramped room.
“I۪m trying to do the best I can for my family,” he said, as his 2-year-old daughter, Heyshliani, padded about barefoot in their apartment in Brooklyn, clutching a baby bottle that was tucked into a sweat sock to keep the milk warm. “But there۪s never anything left at the end of the month. Save what?”
His apartment has little more than two beds, two televisions, and a ton of blankets to keep off the chill when using the electric heater becomes an extravagance. The refrigerator is equally bare, with only a few eggs, milk and some frozen hamburgers.
Mr. Guzman۪s wife, Yahaira de Jesus, frowned. If they are lucky, she said, they might qualify for a second year of rental assistance.
“What happens when the city stops helping pay the rent?” she said. “I guess we۪ll go back to the shelter.”
Advocates for the homeless said the Guzmans were part of a wave that pushed the number of homeless families in the city to record levels in 2007. Given the weakening economy, low wages and high rents, many advocates are worried that the formerly homeless may be knocked off their feet again.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg has set a goal of drastically reducing chronic homelessness by 2009, and officials have introduced new housing programs that offer to match savings so families can better withstand tough times.
But advocates for the homeless said the plan is rushing families through the system without adequate support.
“Bloomberg۪s approach to poverty is to pay people to change their behavior,” said Patrick Markee, a senior policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless. “That is not the fundamental issue when rent for a two-bedroom is $1,100 and someone is making minimum wage.
“It۪s a housing problem, and you need a housing solution,” he said. “At the end of the day, the working poor in this city do not make enough without some sort of subsidized housing.”
Before last year, the city had a subsidy program that covered the rent for formerly homeless families on public assistance over a five-year period, with city aid decreasing by 20 percent each year. That approach, advocates for the homeless said, pushed more families back into the shelter system, while landlords were left frustrated by slow payments.
The city replaced that program with four different ones that were more tailored to individual circumstances, said Robert V. Hess, the commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services. He said that although the previous program had moved thousands of families out of shelters, there were unexpected problems, including bureaucratic glitches.
Denise Holliday, a single mother of three in Brooklyn, said her benefits were cut off as soon as she started her $11-an-hour job as a medical assistant in May.
She appealed the decision until last month, when a counselor at the coalition helped her apply for one of the new programs. Still, the delays have left her behind on the rent for the two-bedroom apartment she and her children have lived in since leaving a shelter two years ago.
“They want you to get a job, but once you do they cut you off,” she said. “I mean, once somebody gets on their feet they want to throw you to the curb.”
Commissioner Hess said families with children, or people on fixed incomes, would now have their rents covered by the city while they waited to be certified for federal Section 8 rent subsidies, usually within the year.
He said that another of the new programs, specifically for working families, would pay up to $1,130 a month for a two-bedroom apartment for one year. Families would be expected to pay $50 a month toward rent and would be encouraged to save up to 20 percent of the actual rent.
By year۪s end, he said, the city would match the savings as well as their $600 in rent contributions. An extra year would be allowed for those who were still shaky. He estimated that a family could have $10,000 by the end of the second year.
“There has never been in this country a local housing subsidy that was this generous with these kinds of savings-match options,” Mr. Hess said. “We are in a little bit of uncharted water. That said, from my experience, families that made it through the shelter system are really survivors. I am not going to bet against them.”
That optimism is not shared by Sister Barbara Lenninger, the executive director of the Thorpe Family Residence in the Crotona section of the Bronx. She and other shelter providers in the borough have complained to Mr. Hess that families are being rushed into permanent housing without enough time to provide them with skills and counseling to live on their own. As a result, she said, many landlords who used to take her clients now refuse to rent to them.
Commissioner Hess who said he was unaware of Sister Barbara۪s concerns even though she and several other Bronx providers sent him letters about them as recently as October acknowledged that it was a long-standing tension.
“We think it is long overdue to move families back into the community,” he said. “Shelters are for crisis.”
But crisis seems to be all that hangs over Jose Guzman and his neighbors, who live in a three-story building with more than 170 housing code violations.
Those rare stretches of hallway walls that have not been punched in are covered with gang graffiti. The front door swings open without a lock, and so do most of the mailboxes. Wires dangle over door frames encrusted with lead paint, and the broken floors are covered with trash.
Harry Brown, the building۪s managing agent, blamed the tenants of one apartment for many of the problems.
“I have animals in the building that look like humans,” he said, “a different kind of animal that needs to go to the zoo.”
City officials say the building passed inspection before families were allowed to move there. Mr. Guzman took the apartment out of frustration, settling for sporadic heat and constant mice. Even someplace this bad, he said, would be impossible for him to pay for on his own.
As he waited to go to work one day last week, Bethzaida Rodriguez, a friend, showed up at his door to stash two bulging garbage bags filled with clothes and toys in his kitchen. She met the Guzmans last year when all of them were at a shelter.
She has tried seven times, without luck to get into a long-term shelter since she and her three children became homeless in September. She describes her existence as a cycle of overnight shelter stays and 10-day placements that end once she is rejected for assistance.
With no permanent home, she can۪t even think of looking for work. The routine is rattling her family, especially her 8-year-old daughter, who she said has psychological problems. “Every time she sees a paper slipped under the door she starts crying,” Ms. Rodriguez said. “She asks if we have to move again.”
Maybe this is the year her luck changes.
“They always reject me because they say I have a place to stay,” she said. “If I had a place to stay, do you think I۪d be going through this?”