Report: Why Not House The Homeless In Vacant Apartments?

(Hernan Hernandez's flickr)

Could we solve the city's growing homeless problem without a shelter system? According to a report being released today by Picture the Homeless and the Center for Community Planning & Development at Hunter College we totally could. In a survey of just 20 of the city's community districts the groups found enough vacant housing to put up 199,981 individuals. Hey, it worked for the homeless guy squatting in Ann Curry's UWS townhouse...

According to the report, vacant buildings in Manhattan could house some 65,824 people alone. "We have proven that there are significant vacancies in the city. We have proven that we don't have to have homeless shelter system and no one needs to be sleeping on the streets," said Kendell Jackman of Picture the Homeless.

City officials, who say they haven't read the report yet (it is being released this afternoon), are skeptical—specifically of the number of vacant spaces the report cites:

Eric Biederman, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development, said with out detailed research into each location it is hard to draw any solid conclusion about the status of any property. Elyzabeth Gaumer, a top analyst with [Housing Preservation and Development], said what may appear anecdotally to be vacant may be occupied part time or be in the legal process of being re-developed. Gaumer added the city's research shows vacant proprieties don't remain idle long. "And a vast majority, within a relatively short period of time, actually transition back into occupied and active use."

Of course the trouble with tracking vacancies is part of the point of the survey—the groups want the city to start an official vacancy census, an idea supported by many City Council members but not yet by Christine Quinn. Meanwhile, the idea of housing the homeless in vacant apartments isn't too outlandish. HPD recently started "using stimulus funds to match low-income families with foreclosed homes" and the city is mulling sending homeless adults back to their last residences—with city-bought furniture for the home's primary residents.

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By Garth Johnston in News on January 26, 2012 2:30 PM

Comments [rss]

naala

Must be nice to live with such a simplistic and narrow point of view.

The homeless' main problem isn't their lack of home ... it's lack of a job, to be specific, lack of ability to keep a steady job...

Samantha Nicholson

I want a free apartment too then!

Christopher J. Stephens

Despite the fact that we call them "homeless", generally speaking the problem these people have is not their lack of housing, but rather the mental illness and substance abuse that plagues most of those who live on the streets. Putting a temporary roof over their heads, one that could get taken away as soon as these landlords find paying tenants, won't add much stability to their lives or solve their underlying problems.

AwayFromTheGrey

If you ride the Queens-bound J train and look out the left window, you can see right through vacant buildings' windows all the way to the back wall (which can be halfway or completely to the span of the block from corner to corner). I think about this very question from time to time to myself simply because it is painful for me to see a homeless person in the subways, trains, or asking for a handout and not knowing the last time they had a hot meal, a warm bed, someone to lend an open ear or a simple hug. I hope I don't annoy anyone by confessing that...

jisnotused

so they get to live in manhattan for free while I work ass hard to live in a shithole.

WZA

Homeless folks don't belong in Bloomberg's NY.

randomtransplant

There is a housing shortage, and vacant housing surplus.

This proposal seems like a very good disincentive to artificially inflating the cost of housing (holding vacancies and waiting for market inflation) by dispossessing people of homes in the first place.

We wouldn't have to subsidies the business plan of Pray for Housing Bubble 2.0 by paying for homeless shelters and letting boarded up vacancies devalue neighborhoods which only a gentrifying speculator could love. It keeps investment out of industries which actually produce things, and it keeps people from buying homes for what the market will actually support, it forces people into dangerously underfunded shelters which have a habit of turning normal people unemployable.

The fact that the city doesn't already have hard data on vacancies is very conspicuous. It suggests the people who see $$$ by collecting high property taxes in blighted, half empty communities are just fine with the way things already are while they step over panhandlers on the way to the bank.

SFNY

And let's not forget all those buildings with warehoused apartments, where landlords are breaking the law by withholding available units while they wait for the remaining tenants to kick the bucket or move so that landlord can condo the property and make a killing.

If it's cheaper for the govt to put the homeless (especially families and the working homeless) back into apartments rather than housing them in shelters, I'm all for it. It's just Section 8 on steroids.

Politburo

Assuming that there are enough beds, you still have to solve the issue of who pays for utilities and damages.

chuzzlewit

we would. isn't it soundly proposed that it's a lot cheaper to house people than it is to respond to homelessness? i like saving money and i don't like homelessness.

Unkle_Bob

It's cheaper to house *some* homeless. Basically, a small minority of homeless take up a dis-proportionally large amount of resources every time they, say, get drunk and are taken to the hospital in an ambulance (police response + ambulance + ER = $$$).

Unfortunately, the math doesn't work out for the more responsible homeless. The whole logic is pretty twisted, even if it's economically sound.

AaronRed99

We do!!!!

TheRealCannibal

isn't that already called squatting?

AaronRed99

Well I think first we should ask the OWNERS of those buildings if they want all these undesirables lazing about, not paying any rent.

Roncore

Fixing the homeless problem by giving them homes? Makes too much sense.

virgilstarkwell

is there anything worse - photographically - than a shot of a sleeping homeless person taken with a long lens? oh yeah, one that looks a little HDR-ish.

ew.