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October 18, 2016 4:33 PM Subscribe
Nearly one in 10 New York City schoolkids was homeless during the school year that ended last June, representing a 22% jump in homelessness over the year before.
NYT: For New York City’s Homeless Children, Getting to School Is the Hard Part (report, PDF): During the 2014-15 school year, only about half of homeless families were placed in the same borough as their youngest child’s school,
NYT: For New York City’s Homeless Children, Getting to School Is the Hard Part (report, PDF): During the 2014-15 school year, only about half of homeless families were placed in the same borough as their youngest child’s school,
Disgusting. That we, as a society, have completely failed is beyond question. 1 in 10 school children, living in the richest city in the richest country that has ever existed, are homeless. The wealthy have harvested everything we have, hollowed out our society, and stolen the futures of countless children. They have manipulated our system so all the gains flow to their pockets and, year by year, we become poorer and more desperate. It's well past time to reinstitute the 95% rate for the top tax bracket, end the tax loopholes that allow the wealthiest to escape paying their fair share while forcing us to subsidize their looting, and retake our Republic from the thieves that are eating us alive.
posted by Lighthammer at 5:28 PM on October 18, 2016 [49 favorites]
posted by Lighthammer at 5:28 PM on October 18, 2016 [49 favorites]
Not acceptable. This is a shame on this country.
Does anyone know of reputable charities that reach these kids (or any kids who are homeless)?
posted by sallybrown at 6:06 PM on October 18, 2016
Does anyone know of reputable charities that reach these kids (or any kids who are homeless)?
posted by sallybrown at 6:06 PM on October 18, 2016
(I hope that someone sends this to Hillary Clinton. With her mother's background and her prior work experience, this is something I think she would genuinely and deeply care about.)
posted by sallybrown at 6:08 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by sallybrown at 6:08 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
Having worked in homeless services in New York City, that number immediately looked wrong. When I looked at the article, the difference revealed itself. They are counting children who are in double up situations as well as literally homeless – one family living with another, or inter-generational family, as homeless.
It's still bad, and we still need to fix it, but I don't think it's what most people would think of when they saw that headline.
posted by corb at 6:11 PM on October 18, 2016 [17 favorites]
It's still bad, and we still need to fix it, but I don't think it's what most people would think of when they saw that headline.
posted by corb at 6:11 PM on October 18, 2016 [17 favorites]
If anyone is wondering what they can do to help homeless school children in New York City, the best resource is to look at the nonprofits helping in that area, and volunteer either money or time. There's a good list I can link to when I get home.
posted by corb at 6:13 PM on October 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by corb at 6:13 PM on October 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
Another point is that paradoxically, most of the help going to the homeless in New York City specifically is dealt out by the city Council, not state level legislators. Your city council members are also very responsive to their constituents, have a lot more access If you live in New York City, contacting your local councilmember and telling him that this is a priority for you could have a really big impact, as could attending the council meetings on the subject that have public access.
posted by corb at 6:18 PM on October 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
posted by corb at 6:18 PM on October 18, 2016 [3 favorites]
They are counting children who are in double up situations as well as literally homeless – one family living with another, or inter-generational family, as homeless.
I think it makes sense to include "one family living with another", i.e. literally in a space primarily belonging to a second family, because it's likely to have the same sorts of issues with temporariness and insecurity that lead to things like missing school, changing schools, missing important exams, getting work, etc.
It doesn't on the other hand make sense to count doubling up as homelessness in cases where it's two families living together from the start, in a space that belongs to both of them (or was chosen by both of them together), e.g. intergenerational families, or intentional communities, etc.
posted by lollusc at 6:19 PM on October 18, 2016 [12 favorites]
I think it makes sense to include "one family living with another", i.e. literally in a space primarily belonging to a second family, because it's likely to have the same sorts of issues with temporariness and insecurity that lead to things like missing school, changing schools, missing important exams, getting work, etc.
It doesn't on the other hand make sense to count doubling up as homelessness in cases where it's two families living together from the start, in a space that belongs to both of them (or was chosen by both of them together), e.g. intergenerational families, or intentional communities, etc.
posted by lollusc at 6:19 PM on October 18, 2016 [12 favorites]
Sorry, I gave a stupidly simple answer to a complicated question! Really all of those definitions should be - and are - counted as insecurely housed, but really it's important to accurately count how people are unstably housed because the solutions are very different. Even within the literal homeless population- which I didn't make clear is a definition not of my own devising - you have both sheltered and unsheltered individuals, who have different needs.
NYC is really its own special hell, though. Anyone has a right to immediate shelter, but after that they start investigations into your past and familial contacts, to determine whether you "deserve" to be in the city's munificent shelter system. If they determine that you could have another option, they can boot you to that other option, losing your place in the shelter system, whether or not it's a real, valid option.
posted by corb at 6:38 PM on October 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
NYC is really its own special hell, though. Anyone has a right to immediate shelter, but after that they start investigations into your past and familial contacts, to determine whether you "deserve" to be in the city's munificent shelter system. If they determine that you could have another option, they can boot you to that other option, losing your place in the shelter system, whether or not it's a real, valid option.
posted by corb at 6:38 PM on October 18, 2016 [4 favorites]
I'm glad that they're starting the programs they mention to help the children who are homeless keep up in school. Now, if we could apply the same kind of resources to keeping families from losing their homes to begin with.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:51 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
posted by The Underpants Monster at 6:51 PM on October 18, 2016 [1 favorite]
You can donate to Operation Backpack, which provides homeless kids with school supplies at the start of the year.
At the holidays, you can sign up to be a Secret Santa for a needy child (not restricted to homeless, but including shelter residents).
The Ali Forney Center offers a 24-hour drop-in program and other housing services for homeless LGBT youths.
posted by praemunire at 7:05 PM on October 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
At the holidays, you can sign up to be a Secret Santa for a needy child (not restricted to homeless, but including shelter residents).
The Ali Forney Center offers a 24-hour drop-in program and other housing services for homeless LGBT youths.
posted by praemunire at 7:05 PM on October 18, 2016 [5 favorites]
Yeah, the "doubled-up with family" part of the definition is pretty problematic. Even if for some financial calamity I had to move in with my parents, or even my couchsurf at my siblings' place, I would in no way consider myself homeless. Similarly, if my children had to stay at my parent's or my siblings', it too would be hard to consider them homeless. Is it stable or permanent? No, and unstable housing is a major concern. But it's still a family home.
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 10:11 PM on October 18, 2016
posted by I EAT TAPAS at 10:11 PM on October 18, 2016
"Living with someone else on a 'temporary' basis" is part of the standard definition of homelessness, not least because there's a good chance the people you're staying with are in a somewhat tenuous housing situation themselves (or will be if their landlord finds out about you staying with them). It's a different set of needs than when you can't find someone's couch to crash on, but you're going to see the same deleterious effects on things like school attendance and performance.
posted by hoyland at 4:05 AM on October 19, 2016 [6 favorites]
posted by hoyland at 4:05 AM on October 19, 2016 [6 favorites]
Seriously... what are we doing, telling people they're not homeless "enough" to worry about their children?
posted by hoyland at 4:05 AM on October 19, 2016 [18 favorites]
posted by hoyland at 4:05 AM on October 19, 2016 [18 favorites]
Similarly, if my children had to stay at my parent's or my siblings', it too would be hard to consider them homeless. Is it stable or permanent? No, and unstable housing is a major concern. But it's still a family home.
For kids in school, though, you're also talking about school enrollment issues. This is covered by the federal McKinney-Vento Act, which allows homeless students (including students sharing housing due to economic hardship or loss of housing) to stay in their "school of origin" (the school they were attending when they became homeless). For children who are likely to be shifting from one relative's house to another or to be moving from staying with friends or family to motels and back again, that kind of stability is super important in ensuring that they receive consistent educational services.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:04 AM on October 19, 2016 [4 favorites]
For kids in school, though, you're also talking about school enrollment issues. This is covered by the federal McKinney-Vento Act, which allows homeless students (including students sharing housing due to economic hardship or loss of housing) to stay in their "school of origin" (the school they were attending when they became homeless). For children who are likely to be shifting from one relative's house to another or to be moving from staying with friends or family to motels and back again, that kind of stability is super important in ensuring that they receive consistent educational services.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 6:04 AM on October 19, 2016 [4 favorites]
I hope this isn't considered a derail since it isn't education related but still deals with homelessness in NYC.
I saw this video earlier today about homeless women's struggles with feminine hygiene in the absence of places and resources to fully manage their health. Living in NYC is a daily lesson in the tremendous privilege I enjoy as an employed, homes, healthy person and it regularly hurts my heart that there is just so much need and even the good programs seem to be at best bailing out a ship with a thimble.
Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, the NYC city council member in the video, is not someone I had previously had a very high opinion of - for reasons not relevant here - but it does show the tremendous power of the CC to target specific issues facing their constituents and communities, something I do appreciate about the ultra micro level governance of the US's largest city. (the flip side is when their focus is in the wrong place, it sure seems petty, like the time I heard a Councilmember who will remain unnamed complain to the budget director that he had been promised pony rides at van Cortland park and they hadn't materialized).
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 6:58 AM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
I saw this video earlier today about homeless women's struggles with feminine hygiene in the absence of places and resources to fully manage their health. Living in NYC is a daily lesson in the tremendous privilege I enjoy as an employed, homes, healthy person and it regularly hurts my heart that there is just so much need and even the good programs seem to be at best bailing out a ship with a thimble.
Julissa Ferreras-Copeland, the NYC city council member in the video, is not someone I had previously had a very high opinion of - for reasons not relevant here - but it does show the tremendous power of the CC to target specific issues facing their constituents and communities, something I do appreciate about the ultra micro level governance of the US's largest city. (the flip side is when their focus is in the wrong place, it sure seems petty, like the time I heard a Councilmember who will remain unnamed complain to the budget director that he had been promised pony rides at van Cortland park and they hadn't materialized).
posted by Exceptional_Hubris at 6:58 AM on October 19, 2016 [1 favorite]
Seriously... what are we doing, telling people they're not homeless "enough" to worry about their children?
No, not at all, but different levels of housing instability require different responses and respond better to different resources.
So from my perspective, working in this system, the things I saw would be:
Unsheltered literal homeless children - children living, usually, with their families, on the streets. The number one priority for those people is getting them inside shelter of some kind; it is literally the biggest single impact you can make on their lives at that moment, the biggest destabilizing element. Living on the streets is insanely dangerous for a lot of reasons.
Sheltered literal homeless children - children living, generally with their families, inside a shelter. This is a more complicated case, because sometimes the situation that brings the kids the most stability is not the situation that is best for the adults in the family. Living inside a shelter is incredibly stressful for children - for a lot of reasons, but primarily the inability to be secure in your environment. Kids can't trust that the stuff they leave at the shelter will be there when they get back. They can't trust that they'll be there next month, or six months after that. It's not so much the fact that it is A Stigmatized Shelter, and more the fact of the actual chaos of the place.
Most homeless children that we saw did have other family willing to take the children, but not the adults in the household - however, there are more resources for adults with children than there are adults without children. So there's kind of a perverse incentive for parents to keep children with them in the shelter, rather than dropping them at Auntie Ana's until they have a stable situation. The children would show a serious improvement in the stable family situation.
Unstably housed children living with non-immediate family in a stable living situation - children, as noted above, in a family living situation. Resources that were most helpful for this were resources to help the adults currently caring for the children - childcare, food/electric help, and transportation assistance, for example.
Unstably housed children living with non-immediate family in an unstable living situation - In NYC, where we mostly saw this occur was with people who lived in housing projects, that for reasons I cannot comprehend, would be threatened with eviction if they had a family member living with them that was not originally allocated for, which I personally find monstrous, but that's another rant. People are generally good enough to take the children in anyway, but it places them in an untenable living situation. This is one of the hardest situations to deal with - the family doesn't want them to be forced to live in a shelter, but they're also at risk of eviction as each month goes by. You also can't rehouse children separately, nor can you rehouse, because of the particulars of the current homeless system, people that are not homeless at the present moment. There is no capacity for "I will get evicted if they discover my living situation" at the moment, which is definitely a problem.
Unstably housed children being passed around multiple houses - people with the best of intentions, again trying to keep kids out of shelter, but the moving every few weeks actually tends to be, IME, more disruptive than having a semi-stable location would be, and the children never knew why they were being passed at which times. It's really one of the more terrible options, though it doesn't seem so.
Unstably housed children currently in an apartment - also called "prevention" cases, people whose parents had already received an eviction notice. There are flat out not enough resources currently in NYC for these people, which is a crying shame, because this I would say is actually one of the more common situations. The response from the city and some social service organizations tends to be that the generous legal procedures in the eviction process means that people with an eviction notice won't have to immediately vacate, so it's not a big deal: however, for children, it's an enormous big deal to have an axe constantly over their head and never knowing when it will fall. Some of the problem with funding help for this level is that there are often a lot of serious problems leading to the eviction that can't be cured with simply a month's rent and a letter, which is what most agencies try to offer in that case.
posted by corb at 8:49 AM on October 19, 2016 [15 favorites]
No, not at all, but different levels of housing instability require different responses and respond better to different resources.
So from my perspective, working in this system, the things I saw would be:
Unsheltered literal homeless children - children living, usually, with their families, on the streets. The number one priority for those people is getting them inside shelter of some kind; it is literally the biggest single impact you can make on their lives at that moment, the biggest destabilizing element. Living on the streets is insanely dangerous for a lot of reasons.
Sheltered literal homeless children - children living, generally with their families, inside a shelter. This is a more complicated case, because sometimes the situation that brings the kids the most stability is not the situation that is best for the adults in the family. Living inside a shelter is incredibly stressful for children - for a lot of reasons, but primarily the inability to be secure in your environment. Kids can't trust that the stuff they leave at the shelter will be there when they get back. They can't trust that they'll be there next month, or six months after that. It's not so much the fact that it is A Stigmatized Shelter, and more the fact of the actual chaos of the place.
Most homeless children that we saw did have other family willing to take the children, but not the adults in the household - however, there are more resources for adults with children than there are adults without children. So there's kind of a perverse incentive for parents to keep children with them in the shelter, rather than dropping them at Auntie Ana's until they have a stable situation. The children would show a serious improvement in the stable family situation.
Unstably housed children living with non-immediate family in a stable living situation - children, as noted above, in a family living situation. Resources that were most helpful for this were resources to help the adults currently caring for the children - childcare, food/electric help, and transportation assistance, for example.
Unstably housed children living with non-immediate family in an unstable living situation - In NYC, where we mostly saw this occur was with people who lived in housing projects, that for reasons I cannot comprehend, would be threatened with eviction if they had a family member living with them that was not originally allocated for, which I personally find monstrous, but that's another rant. People are generally good enough to take the children in anyway, but it places them in an untenable living situation. This is one of the hardest situations to deal with - the family doesn't want them to be forced to live in a shelter, but they're also at risk of eviction as each month goes by. You also can't rehouse children separately, nor can you rehouse, because of the particulars of the current homeless system, people that are not homeless at the present moment. There is no capacity for "I will get evicted if they discover my living situation" at the moment, which is definitely a problem.
Unstably housed children being passed around multiple houses - people with the best of intentions, again trying to keep kids out of shelter, but the moving every few weeks actually tends to be, IME, more disruptive than having a semi-stable location would be, and the children never knew why they were being passed at which times. It's really one of the more terrible options, though it doesn't seem so.
Unstably housed children currently in an apartment - also called "prevention" cases, people whose parents had already received an eviction notice. There are flat out not enough resources currently in NYC for these people, which is a crying shame, because this I would say is actually one of the more common situations. The response from the city and some social service organizations tends to be that the generous legal procedures in the eviction process means that people with an eviction notice won't have to immediately vacate, so it's not a big deal: however, for children, it's an enormous big deal to have an axe constantly over their head and never knowing when it will fall. Some of the problem with funding help for this level is that there are often a lot of serious problems leading to the eviction that can't be cured with simply a month's rent and a letter, which is what most agencies try to offer in that case.
posted by corb at 8:49 AM on October 19, 2016 [15 favorites]
They are counting children who are in double up situations as well as literally homeless – one family living with another, or inter-generational family, as homeless.
This matters with respect to, for example, registering children for school. If you're designated "homeless" including if you're living in a temporary or doubled-up situation, then school registration does not require the same documentation as a non-homeless student. They want to make sure kids get to enroll and stay in school and get transportation to school, without having to pay tuition for not "residing" in the district. In many cases, the kids can stay in their old school and the old school must transport the kid from their temporary residence at no cost.
Each public school should have a homeless liaison, who is supposed to provide parents/guardians with this information and help them register, but many districts are woefully uneducated on the law or resistant (due to classism/racism) to actually complying with the law. Many school districts pay private investigation firms to follow children or their guardians home to see where they're "really" living, so they can kick them out of the district or demand tuition. It's gross.
If anyone is interested in helping with these issues in NYC, Advocates for Children is one of the main nonprofits in this space. They usually need, among other help, attorneys to take on kids' IDEA and McKinney-Vento cases pro bono.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:42 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
This matters with respect to, for example, registering children for school. If you're designated "homeless" including if you're living in a temporary or doubled-up situation, then school registration does not require the same documentation as a non-homeless student. They want to make sure kids get to enroll and stay in school and get transportation to school, without having to pay tuition for not "residing" in the district. In many cases, the kids can stay in their old school and the old school must transport the kid from their temporary residence at no cost.
Each public school should have a homeless liaison, who is supposed to provide parents/guardians with this information and help them register, but many districts are woefully uneducated on the law or resistant (due to classism/racism) to actually complying with the law. Many school districts pay private investigation firms to follow children or their guardians home to see where they're "really" living, so they can kick them out of the district or demand tuition. It's gross.
If anyone is interested in helping with these issues in NYC, Advocates for Children is one of the main nonprofits in this space. They usually need, among other help, attorneys to take on kids' IDEA and McKinney-Vento cases pro bono.
posted by melissasaurus at 1:42 PM on October 19, 2016 [2 favorites]
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