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Supportive Housing Helps Solve Homelessness


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Homeless Services Commissioner Gilbert Taylor (photo: Samira Bouaou/Epoch Times)


On December 17 at Gotham Gazette, the Doe Fund wrote advocating for 'a working solution for homelessness,' in response to a Goddard Riverside Community Center call for the City and State to renew supportive housing legislation. We at Urban Pathways agree with the Doe Fund about the role and value of work. Our goal for our clients is to help them maximize their self-sufficiency through work and other strategies. However, we respectfully disagree with the Doe Fund's categorization of supportive housing, which constitutes a successful and cost-effective solution for homelessness.

Since the City and State entered into their first supportive housing agreement nearly 25 years ago, supportive housing – a combination of affordable housing with support services - has helped New Yorkers who face the most complex challenges live more stable, productive lives. These individuals extend beyond those persons "profoundly disabled." Supportive housing works well for individuals and families who are not only homeless, but who also have very low incomes and serious, persistent issues that may include substance use, prior incarceration, mental illness, and HIV/AIDS.

While these supportive housing agreements require an infusion of City and State government dollars, supportive housing constitutes a cost-effective solution to homelessness. The cost per-day, per-person in New York City for supportive housing is less than $45. This compares to approximately $74 for shelter and $167 for jail. According to a December 2013 analysis by the City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the NY/NY III agreement reduced the use of shelters, hospitals, psych centers and incarceration, for an average net public savings of $10,100 per unit per year. It's also worth noting that we leverage a dollar of private investment for every dollar of City or State subsidy invested in supportive housing.

As the Doe Fund correctly notes, any solution for homelessness should not keep an individual "trapped, right where they are." Working with the City, organizations like Urban Pathways and Goddard Riverside have developed successful affordable housing models that have helped numerous New Yorkers integrate into communities and maximize their self-sufficiency. Our programs, for example, promote independence, enhance individuals' ability to function in their communities, and encourage participation in wellness and recovery-oriented activities.

It's also worth noting that even when individuals working full-time don't need social services, many still need subsidized housing. This remains true due to the disconnect between the low wages of many New Yorkers and the exorbitant cost of New York City rental housing. According to U.S. Census Bureau data, during the Great Recession, median apartment rents in New York City increased by 8.5 percent while median rent incomes diminished by 6.8 percent.

As we end 2014, almost 59,000 homeless persons sleep in City homeless shelters each night. Now is the time for us, City homeless providers and advocates, in conjunction with the City and State governments, to mobilize on the solutions for homelessness.

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Frederick Shack is the Executive Director of Urban Pathways, a not-for-profit, social service and supportive housing organization that has served homeless adults in the New York City Metropolitan Area since 1975.

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Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? E-mail executive editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

What's the NYPD doing with an LRAD?


LRAD NYPD

An LRAD being used by NYPD on Dec 3 (photo: @PeoplesHistory)


While the protests following the non-indictments in Ferguson and Staten Island have been disruptive, they have been mostly non-violent and clashes with police have been minimal, with the notable exception of the injury of two NYPD officers on the Brooklyn Bridge on the night of December 13.

However, on December 5 officers attempted to disperse a small march in Midtown using a new tool in crowd management, a long range acoustic device (LRAD).

LRADs have two primary functions: first as a long range communication device and second as a dispersal tool, emitting penetrating and piercing tones at high decibels.

LRADs were developed for the military following the terrorist attack on the USS Cole in October 2000 in Yemen. The purpose of the device was to ward off potential attackers before they could get close enough to an intended target to strike. The device has also been used at military checkpoints to communicate with and deter threatening vehicles.

The use of LRADs as a speaker may have some justification in crowd control. Best policing practices call for enhanced communication between demonstrators and the police. While this should be done face to face and on the ground as much as possible, there are situations where the police should notify crowds of their risk of arrest or of being subjected to use of force. Such crowds should be told where to disperse to and how. LRADs might be able to help with this since they can be heard over the shouts of crowds, unlike many conventional sound systems. However, we don't really know what if any harmful effects this function might produce, especially for people with existing hearing problems.

The dispersal function is similar to tear gas or water cannons. It is intended to be a less lethal use of force that can be used as an alternative to baton charges or other more extreme measures. Their use might be appropriate in dealing with a violent crowd attempting to storm the UN or other location where force might be necessary to prevent property destruction or injury. The effect, however, is usually rather crude. Like with tear gas, flash bang grenades, and riot control projectiles, the dispersal brought about by LRADs generally is disorderly and can lead to collateral property destruction and injury to onlookers and innocent by-standers. They should be used only as a last resort, in place of relying on higher levels of force.

The question of whether an LRAD is preferable to tear gas, projectiles, or flash bangs depends on balancing effectiveness in reducing violence and property destruction versus potential injury to protesters and onlookers. The problem is that we don't have very good evidence about the potential harmful effects of this relatively new and untested technology. There have been reports of related injuries leading to a legal settlement from LRAD use in Pittsburgh in 2009 and a ministerial report in Canada raised significant concerns about their health effects.

If we knew for sure that the dispersal function had no long term health consequences, then it might be preferable. If, however, there is a risk that those with existing hearing problems, and even others might experience medium to long term problems, or if psychological or cognitive functions are disrupted, then the costs may be too high. In the absence of clear evidence we should err on the side of caution.

One of my major concerns is that like with tasers and much military hardware, there is strong temptation for "mission creep." Often these devices are obtained under the pretext of very restricted uses in extreme and highly unlikely circumstances such as terrorist attacks or snipers. However, once departments have them, there is a tendency to use them in additional ways that make life easier for police but endanger the public.

Tasers can be life savers, but they can also be torture devices when used improperly. LRADs have this potential and we saw something like this when they were used during the Garner protests in New York. A few individuals in a larger group threw some things and the police used the dispersal function against the whole group on a Midtown street with no real plan for managing their dispersal. Other less dangerous methods could have been used and the effect on an already dispersed group was just to splinter them, making it harder for police to track them and leaving open the opportunity for random property destruction. Generally, this technology should not be used on a few troublemakers in an otherwise peaceful protest and it should not be used on more broadly violent crowds unless there are limited alternatives and a plan for managing an angry and disorganized splintering of the group.

Last week a group of lawyers sent a letter to the NYPD asking them to clarify their policies about the use of this technology. So far there has been no official response. There needs to be much greater transparency about the plans to use such intensive riot control tools. In fact, the NYPD also owns water cannons, and there has been no public discussion of their appropriate use either. It's time for the City Council to step in and hold hearings about the proper uses of riot control equipment in the New York.

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Alex S. Vitale is associate professor of sociology at Brooklyn College and author of City of Disorder: How the Quality of Life Campaign Transformed New York Politics. He is senior policy adviser to hte Police Reform Organizing Project and serves on the New York State Advisory Committee to the US Civil Rights Commission. You can follow him on Twitter: @avitale

A Working Solution for Homelessness


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Members of the Doe Fund march in the Veterans Day Parade (photo: @TheDoeFund)


In a December 11 Gotham Gazette editorial advocating for more supportive housing, a program director from the Goddard Riverside Community Center made a bold statement: "The number one cause of homelessness[...]is a lack of affordable housing." That's a clean explanation for one of society's most vexing problems, but it's not true.

If housing was the answer to homelessness, we would have solved this crisis a generation ago. Homelessness isn't a state of being; and it's not a condition that people must live with and manage, like diabetes or cancer. It's an outcome. In a small fraction of the cases, it's the result of a serious disability that precludes a person's ability to work. But to say that all—or even most— homeless people require subsidized housing implies that they as a "group" are incapable of supporting themselves. And that line of reasoning is offensive to advocates like me, who know this population and have served them for decades.

Permanent supportive housing is our responsibility to provide for people who are profoundly disabled. But it also requires enormous and unending support from taxpayers. What happens when programs change, budgets get cut, and the money runs out? The homeless people warehoused in supportive housing are back on the streets, without any of the tools they need to live independently. To make supportive housing possible and sustainable for those who really do need it, we need a strong city with a strong workforce.

Any way you slice it, the answer to both our growing homelessness crisis and our need to build supportive housing is work.

The city, the state—the nation as a whole— has to recognize the dignity and potential in our homeless and long-term unemployed populations. We need programs that address not just a bad outcome, like homelessness, but the complex web of barriers, behaviors, and circumstances that have produced it: education, skills and experience gaps, vocational training and workforce development, substance abuse treatment, and reentry support for the formerly incarcerated.

When my husband and I started our work thirty years ago, people told us there was no way to put the homeless to work. They were lost causes; they would never be able to support themselves. They were simply "too lazy, or too crazy."

We can all agree that that's a disgusting statement. But is it really so far from dismissing all homeless people as permanently disabled? I can think of at least 21,000 individuals who would beg to differ; they're just some of the people we've served over the last three decades. They didn't come to our organization for a free house. They came to us for an opportunity: to work, to grow, and to support themselves and their families—for life.

Ms. McCullough of Goddard Riverside is right: the measure of a society is how it treats its most vulnerable members. Let's start by recognizing their dignity and abilities. Then, let's give them the hand up they deserve, one that frees them from homelessness forever; not a handout that keeps them trapped, right where they are.

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Harriet McDonald is the Executive Vice President of The Doe Fund, a nonprofit organization that provides transitional housing, paid work, job training, and supportive services for the formerly homeless and incarcerated.  Find The Doe Fund on Twitter: @TheDoeFund

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Have an op-ed idea or submission for Gotham Gazette? E-mail editor Ben Max: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.



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