Editorial

Helping the Homeless, Then and Now

Posted

We applaud New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan, announced last week, to provide 15,000 units of supportive housing in a $2.6 billion city initiative to help homeless veterans, victims of domestic abuse and people living on the streets.

Coming just before Thanksgiving, when most New Yorkers are enjoying a holiday meal amid the warmth of family and friends, the plan gives us one more thing for which to be thankful—that is, if it’s carried out to completion.

There’s the price tag, for one thing: $2.6 billion is a lot of money, and the mayor didn’t spell out where it’s going to come from—except to insist that it is a city initiative, not a partnership with Albany.

Then there’s the matter of where, exactly, these 15,000 units will go. Finding communities to accept housing for the homeless is always a challenge, especially the kind of chronically homeless population aimed at here.

Finally, the plan would be implemented over a 15-year period—long after the current mayor and governor are gone from office—with the first units not becoming available for at least 18 months.

So even as we support the initiative, we’d like to see it carried out alongside something more immediate and less costly. Something, in other words, that’s aimed at the estimated 3,000 people who are right now bedding down for the night on sidewalks, in train stations and in doorways all over the city.

We know this is not an easy population to reach. Many of them refuse social services and reject offers of shelter. A good number have major problems, like severe mental illness or addiction to drugs or alcohol, and will not likely survive too long on the streets—certainly not the 15 years it will take to implement the mayor’s ambitious housing program.

That’s why it’s critical to nudge as much of this troubled population as possible into the system now. We think an intensive outreach can get a lot more people into hospitals and other programs that can stabilize them enough for supportive shelters and transitional housing.

We know that many “street people,” with the right services and support, can become self-sufficient, productive members of society. We’ve seen it in the programs run by agencies affiliated with Catholic Charities in Manhattan and the Bronx.

We know that Cardinal Dolan has pledged to provide 150 emergency shelter beds in church properties around the city, responding to the mayor’s Opening Doors initiative that calls on faith groups to provide 500 of such “safe haven” beds, adding to the 684 already operated by private groups.

These are initiatives that, once up and running, will make a difference.

As Cardinal Dolan said, when the Opening Doors program was announced, “It’s a great honor for the Church to partner. There’s nothing more natural and good than feeding the hungry and helping the poor and sheltering the homeless.”