HOMELESS AGAIN

(Article published in HWW Nov 2009)

So you have heard the news! The population of our New York City shelter system has grown to a new high of more than ten thousand homeless families.

But here’s a scary fact you may not have noticed.

Families who have been in the system before and moved back into the community are coming back to shelter in big numbers. Last year in December, 727 out of 1136 families entering the shelter system were not new to the system – they were returning after 30 days or more. Last August 1133 out of the 1941 families entering the system were returning. It’s called “recidivism” and we haven’t found anyone in a position of authority (at least not publicly) who is asking the question: Why are they coming back?

STUFF STARTED HAPPENING

Danielle Rosado didn’t want to come back into the system – and she doesn’t think it’s all her fault.

“I was in the Cross Bronx Hotel for 7 months in 2006,” she remembers. “I found an apartment in River Park Towers in the Bronx. I moved there July 2,, 2007, and stayed until December 18th of 2008 when I was evicted.”

Danielle had received a subsidy under the Housing Stability Plus program which was to pay her rent of $820 a month. She isn’t clear about exactly what happened (“They weren’t paying my rent like they were supposed to – They started paying it late.”) But she remembers receiving a notice that she would be evicted and going to her welfare office at 125 Riverview Annex to get help. She was referred to Catholic Charities.

“They told me they couldn’t help until I got the eviction notice. When that happened -- like two weeks later -- I went back and was told they couldn’t help me because I was being sanctioned. They said I was sanctioned cause I wasn’t complying with the WEP situation.”

That was Danielle’s third sanction for not complying with welfare’s work requirements . She was told because it was her third she couldn’t get it lifted for three months. That’s when the city stopped paying her portion of the rent though it continued to pay $250 for her child.

She doesn’t say she was right and they were wrong – just that is was more than she could handle and she couldn’t find any help. She had earned her GED, and started classes in Cosmetology, but she quit when the threat of eviction came up. “A whole lot of stuff started happening to us then,” she says.

When time came for her eviction hearing, she was not represented by a lawyer.

“I had never been to court before,” she says. “When I saw a lawyer there, I thought he was my lawyer. Turned out he was the lawyer for River Park Towers. He had me sign this paper that I owed $2500 in back rent and that I would pay a lot of it, over a thousand dollars, by November 14. I didn’t have that much money. I didn’t have any money.”

Danielle lost her case and moved with her 2 year old daughter Zaireania into a friend’s house in the same building and then to a Tier II family residence in the Bronx.

“I have a job now – I’m a child care provider in the shelter,” she says. She has her Work Advantage rent voucher. When parents of the children she cares for can take over, she’s looking but finds it tough locating an apartment that rents for the $962 she’s allowed.

ONE PAPER GONE MISSING

Michelle Laguerra was homeless for the first time in 2002. She and her baby boy stayed at Icahn House in the Bronx. With her Section 8 voucher already in hand, she found an apartment and moved out in nine months.

That’s where they lived for the next six years. During those years, Michelle had two more children, both girls, and she got a job working for St. Mary’s Community Care in home health care. Every year she went through the process of being recertified for Section 8.

Then, last August she ran into trouble. “I went to the Fordham Center for recertification and brought in my package,” she remembers. “They had all the papers they needed except one -- they needed an Income Verification Form from my employer.”

St. Mary’s Community Care hadn’t sent the form in on time. The reason, Michelle was surprised to discover, was that she had failed to sign a release form that would allow them to release the information.

“Nobody told me,” she says, “When I heard was when my landlord told me Section 8 wasn’t going to pay my rent any more. I went to the Center where they told me all my papers except the Income Verification Form had arrived. I was told I could not be recertified and that the time to request a hearing had passed.”

Having lost her Section 8 and her home, Michelle and her family went to the EAU and were placed in a shelter in Brooklyn. On August 27 she wrote to ask if she could be reinstated in Section 8. She hasn’t heard yet.