NY City Officials: Less Need For Homeless Shelters In New York

While Los Angeles is overwhelmed with the need for additional emergency and permanent housing for its homeless population, the same need in the city of New York has been reduced by 16%.

Los Angeles’s recent numbers reveal that out of the 91,000 people who are homeless, only about 15% of the population are housed. That means tens of thousands of people on the streets of Los Angeles have no place to go.

In New York City, 32,200 people are being housed in the city’s shelter system. That is a reduction of 16% since 2003, when they were housing 38,310 people. Here's the article.

Why a reduction in New York’s shelter use?

It depends on who you talk to. But city officials say that emergency shelter use is decreasing because they are putting new emphasis on building permanent housing solutions instead. They state that the “Housing First” model is working.

Homeless advocates in New York say that the reduction of Section 8 Public Housing certificates is the real reason for this decreasing number. Many of the city’s homeless families were using Section 8 vouchers, and because the federal government has reduced these, families are losing their housing options.

Los Angeles, however, has a completely different situation. There are so many people in the region that are in need of housing, that a reduction of emergency shelter use is a long way off. Every day, by mid-afternoon in Los Angeles, practically every shelter bed in the system is in use.

That means if you are homeless in Los Angeles, and are searching for an emergency bed, if you have not found anything by mid-afternoon, you are out of luck.