Results tagged “shelter”

Because the cost of housing homeless families in shelters is so high, the Bloomberg administration has been quietly funding a $500,000-a-year program to buy one-way plane tickets for indigent individuals if they agree to stay away. Well, the program was quiet until it was featured in today's Times, so who knows how many New Yorkers will now start posing as transients for one-way tickets to Burning Man. So far the city has paid for more than 550 families to leave since 2007.

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 Guggenheim Museum and Google invite you to build something, somewhere. The alliteratively-named duo has launched the Design It: Shelter Competition, which asks contestants to design a virtual shelter using Google’s SketchUp 3D-modeling software and place it anywhere on the globe using Google Earth. The competition draws its inspiration from the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture—students there design shelters as part of their training—but instead of winning a master’s degree, the prize for Design It contestants is a paid trip to New York City complete with free software swag and private museum tours.

After publishing that quintessential degentrification story about a new luxury condo in Crown Heights being converted to a homeless shelter, the Daily News reports that after reading the article, at least four homeless people "flocked" to the building yesterday.

The number of homeless families with children entering New York City shelters has risen dramatically in recent months, hitting an all-time high in November, when 9,720 families were reported in the municipal shelter system. According to figures released by the Department of Homeless Services, 1,343 new families were accepted into the shelter system last month, a 43% increase over the 935 who moved into shelters in November 2007.

It's a doggy redux: Vice President-elect Joe Biden, who upset PETA and the Humane Society for buying a purebred German Shepherd puppy from a breeder, tells ABC News' George Stephanopoulos that he's also going to get a dog from the pound. Biden explained he and his wife wanted to two dogs, so they'd be companions, "We're going to have more than one puppy...I've had German Shepherds since I was a kid and I've trained them and shown them in the past. So I wanted a German Shepherd and we're going to get a pound dog, which my wife wants, who is hopefully a Golden [Retriever]." Thrilled, PETA is sending the Bidens and their dogs some presents, like soy pig ears and "coupons that he can give the pup that are good for tummy rubs and long walks." Biden also told Stephanopoulos, "The economy is in much worse shape than we thought it was in. There is no short run other than keeping the economy from absolutely tanking." You can see the interview tomorrow morning on This Week.

Vice President-elect Joe Biden may have picked up a German shepherd puppy, partially sating the public's desire to know what kind of pets the incoming administration will have, but even a cute dog can be controversial. PETA is upset because the puppy apparently came from an animal breeder...and "If it weren't bad enough that Biden chose to buy from a breeder, we are now trying to confirm the accuracy of a report that was sent to us alleging that he bought his dog from a known puppy mill operator!" The Humane Society is also upset Biden bought a dog from a breeder "since he has been a leader on animal-protection issues and has championed a number of important animal-welfare reforms in the Senate," but Biden's spokesperson said, "He is an advocate for rescuing animals, as shown by his rescue of the Biden's current cat, Daisy, from a local shelter."

Yesterday morning, a man fatally shot his pregnant wife at a Bronx homeless shelter on Walton Avenue. The Daily News reports that Imanie Evan-Sawyer, 7 months pregnant, was trying to protect her 15-year-old son when husband Michael Sawyer was aiming his gun. Sawyer hit his wife as the teen ran across the street to the Bronx Supreme Court, yelling, "He has my mommy hostage! He's going to shoot my mom!" After shooting Evan-Sawyer, Sawyer shot himself in the head. Paramedics were unable to save the baby and one shelter resident said the couple was always fighting.