Results tagged “departmentofhomelessservices”

If bedbugs in the office are the next city scare, sign us up for bubble living. NY1 got an anonymous tip that "workers on eight floors of the Department of Homeless Services building on Beaver Street have been getting bitten by insects since Monday." But the DHS said, "We immediately began taking corrective action, and are extending it to all premises occupied by DHS. We are aggressively addressing the situation with an expert contractor and building management. No DHS employee has reported bites received from our building." Related: David Letterman doesn't understand what why Mary Louise Parker is so freaked out about bedbugs.

The NY Times reports that the Department of Homeless Services is enacting a new policy giving shelters more power to evict homeless families: "Homeless families can be kicked out of city shelters for repeatedly breaking rules like staying out past curfew or for refusing apartments offered to them." While DHS Commissioner Robert Hess claims it'll be used only in "egregious situations," pointing out some families use the shelters as permanent housing, Legal Aid's attorney in chief Steven Banks said, "With all of the problems that the state has and all of the problems that the city has right now, in the midst of this economic downturn, it’s shocking that the state and the city are prepared to invest the resources to put innocent children and their families out of safety-net shelters onto the streets." But one shelter operator said, "There’s not a caseworker alive that wants to realize that threat, and as an agency, we don’t want to move people to the streets. That’s not what we’re in business to do. But if you enter the shelter, if you know there’s a threat of being put out of the shelter, you’ll be more likely to follow the rules."

The city's Department of Homeless Services has recently begun enforcing a rule that is forcing 22 churches to stop serving as homeless shelters. The long-ignored rule states that religious-based shelters operate a minimum of five days a week. Many of these churches had long slipped under the radar and housed those in need three days a week. Arnold Cohen, president of the Partnership for the Homeless, who recently had to break the news to churches told the News, "We will see hundreds of people who will not have a place to sleep. It's antithetical to what the mayor talks about." The city is expected to once again this winter use the Code Blue system, an emergency-preparedness system that prompts city workers to take extra precautions to protect homeless people living on the streets. Right now we are at Level Two in Code Blue with temperatures outside currently at 17ºF after the wind chill factor.

The Coalition for the Homeless says "little-noticed data" shows "the number of new homeless families... has surpassed all-time record levels each of the past three months." Last month, 1,464 new families moved into the shelter system, which is the "highest one-month count since the City began keeping records 25 years ago" and it's 22% higher than September 2007. The group's head, Mary Brosnahan, told the Daily News, "While both city and state budget shortfalls require difficult choices, vulnerable New Yorkers now need more support, not less." Department of Homeless Services Commissioner Robert Hess tried to find a silver lining, "The fact that our system is withstanding the test of recent high demand is evidence that we have successfully transformed the families system and put a solid infrastructure in place." Earlier this year, NY Magazine had an article about how homelessness is the "single biggest failure of the Bloomberg administration."