Problems With New York City's Temporary Shelter Program

The cluster-site program, an emergency housing program for homeless New Yorkers, has been criticized as a dysfunctional shelter system, yet the 83-unit building at Clarkson Avenue, in the middle of a gentrifying Brooklyn neighborhood, represents "one of the most complex and intractable challenges confronting" New York City Mayor Bill DeBlasio, writes Vivan Yee for the New York Times.

The program, which pays for homeless people to live temporarily in privately owned buildings, began in 2000, when the homeless population was overwhelming city shelters. But with the city paying over $2,500 per month per family, the Clarkson Avenue building featured in Yee's story highlights the inefficiencies of a system wherein landlords stand to gain more from sheltering homeless people than by providing affordable housing for Section 8 voucher tenants and other low-income renters.

"Critics of the program, including advocates for homeless people, community leaders and elected officials, denounced it as a stopgap that papered over one problem only to worsen another, pushing low-income residents out of their homes and removing otherwise affordable apartments from circulation," reports Yee.

The program was supposed to be temporary, but the number of homeless people living in cluster-site buildings has steadily increased. The money designated to the program is also supposed to provide social services, including building security and employment assistance. However, conditions have deteriorated in these buildings. In one Ditmas Park building, "people loitered in the common areas, openly using drugs. Cockroaches clustered in the light fixture and refrigerator. Doors and windows were broken. The bathroom was moldy and pocked with rodent holes. There was no stove."