Bronx Real Estate and Homelessness

On the Bronx beat: I am looking to do a follow-up on my Coalition for the Homeless story. On the Citizen’s Advisory Bureau, at 1130 Grand Concourse, which seems to be a busy place. I’d still like to find out if the April 5th edition of the Bx Comm News was published, and with it, my Feeding the Homeless Article.

This is an article I had published in the Bx Comm News recently:

Coalition for the Homeless Offers Meals and Hope
By Howard Giske

Due to increasing housing costs, the pressure continues on low-income Bronx families who are trying to avoid becoming homeless. According to the Coalition for the Homeless, homelessness is up by 11-percent over the last year, and in an average night, 35,000 people are in city homeless shelters. The Coalition for the Homeless is a citywide, non-profit organization. According to a Coalition spokesperson, there are 1,000 meals a night given out for free, to the homeless and the needy. Sites for the meals distribution in the Bronx are: SW corner Randall Ave. & Bryant Ave. ~7:35pm, NW corner Lafayette Ave. & Manida St. ~7:50pm, Lincoln Hospital—Morris Ave. & 148th St. ~8:00pm, Harm Reduction -2 blocks from Lincoln ~8:10pm, NE corner 164th St. & Ogden Ave., ~8:30pm, Jerome Ave. & 170th St. ~8:45pm, Fordham Rd. & University Ave. ~8:55pm, and Fordham Rd. & Webster Ave.~9:05pm.

The homelessness crisis is exacerbated by an average 8-percent increase in rents over the last 3 years, while there is a decline in median income. The Coalition recently hosted a press conference at their 129 Fulton St. office in lower Manhattan, which featured a Bronx man, John Chapman, as a speaker. Mr. Chapman had long depended on the city’s shelter system. Through the NY City program, Housing Stability Plus, he was able to obtain an apartment in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx, and was able to improve his education, get a GED High School Diploma and get a job. However, he recently was forced out of the Housing Stability Plus program, and thinks that he soon will be homeless again. In addition, the Housing Stability Plus subsidy declines by 20-percent a year.

There are rules that require recipients to stay on public assistance – prohibiting the recipients from working too much, or else they lose their housing subsidy. Other issues that have come up are that there are no protections for families from dangerous housing conditions, and illegal demands for "side" payments from landlords. Households that are able to obtain wages sufficient to make up for the annual decline in their rent supplement have to carefully monitor that their income is not over the limit to be eligible for welfare and, as a result, lose their Housing Stability Plus subsidy. According to a recent Newsday report, a single mother earning $6.75 an hour would become disqualified and lose her subsidy. Currently more than 5,000 formerly homeless New York City households have been relocated from shelters using the Housing Stability Plus program. Over the next year all of those families will face a 20-percent cut in their housing supplement while being prevented from getting enough of a job to make up the difference.

Despite flaws in the program, the Coalition for the Homeless and other housing groups and service providers urge Mayor Bloomberg and the New York City Council to enact a package of reforms to fix the program. To contact the Coalition for the Homeless, for more information, or to help their efforts, call 212-776-2000, website: http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org.
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