One thing that I notice on my trips to New York City is that it seems to have relatively few homeless people. Certainly there are homeless in NYC, but they are much more visible in other cities. Other cities like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Austin, etc., have homeless populations that are very visible with things like tent cities, sleeping in doorways, living under bridges, etc. I was expecting to see much more of that in NYC because of the sky-high rent, lack of housing, and ample public spaces, but I just saw a relative handful of homeless people. What does NYC do to manage their homeless population that is different than other cities?
All those other cities have better weather all year than NY – winters in NY are much harsher than any of those.
Out of sight, out of mind. /s
How about Chicago or Boston? Those cities have harsh winters, too. They’re not on your list either.
Yeah, took the subway extensively. Brooklyn and upper/lower Manhattan. Virtually no homeless in the subway. Occasionally I would see someone sleeping on a train bench, but maybe that was 1 trip in 10 that I would see that. I did see people people who were having mental struggles who I’d guess to be homeless, but they didn’t really have the homeless gear (clothing, sleeping bags, bags of stuff) that I would expect them to have.
As for Chicago and Boston, I haven’t spent much time there so I don’t really know their homeless situation.
It may have something to do with the “right to shelter” laws in NYC.
Highly oversimplified - New York City is legally required to find a place to sleep for anyone that wants one, and I believe there are other restrictions around the housing they must provide to women, children and families.
This policy has been in the news lately due to states like Texas shipping migrants to the city, which has overtaxed the cities homeless system and is very expensive. I know that the city has leased out a bunch of hotels in order to meet the “right to shelter” mandate, and the current administration is looking to weaken it.
This is absolutely a large part of it - for many years, I worked with a population that was often homeless. New York City must find a bed that night for anyone who requests shelter by (I think )10 pm). Spending the night in a drop-in center or office is not good enough. Anyone - someone who just got off the plane at JFK, someone whose last address was in New Jersey, someone who decided that they prefer living in a shelter to living by a parent/relative’s rules. The Department of Homeless Services can assess someone’s eligibility* for shelter but must provide shelter while that assessment happens. No other locality in the country must do that . I know in some places, you have to more or less make an appointment to enter a shelter - you apply today and they tell you to come back next Tuesday for a placement.
And there was a predictable side effect - my counterparts in other counties would send homeless people to NYC, either because their county wouldn’t provide shelter or because NYC had more services available.
But when there is no guaranteed shelter, you will have more people sleeping in parks . on the steps of city hall, on the side of the road. This happens in NYC, but not nearly as much as other places I’ve been.
- That person who doesn’t want to live with a relative but can may be found ineligible - but they won’t be left on the street until DHS has found out whether they can return.
That would definitely explain it. I’m sure that policy is expensive to implement, but it seems worth it since it seems to do a pretty good job at keeping people off the streets.
It’d work far better as a national policy than one applied to a single, albeit large, city.
Someone once told me that Hawaii has the highest per capita homeless.
A pretty solid correlation with weather, then. Living up north myself, a single night without shelter could kill me through exposure, much of the year.
Can you blame them? If you’re going to be homeless, that’s the place to be. Plus, add in expensive housing and a poor native Hawaiian population and it all comes together.
This is the (mostly) correct answer.
If you’re homeless, or want to be homeless, you’re going to go to the place that offers the best services, amenities, and environmental conditions.
Homelessness also correlates to the cost of housing. NYC has managed to mitigate homelessness, but other places with a high cost of housing are still struggling. One factor in high housing costs is desirability - when people want to be there, housing costs rise, and people on the margin fall out of housing. AIUI most homeless are locals, who got priced out, and not people traveling around looking for the place that offers the most freebies (a common canard of the right) - what, the homeless are buying airline tickets to Hawaii? Cities perceived as “liberal” happen to be where people with the means want to live, with nice weather, strong economy, culture, etc., which keeps housing costs high (among other factors) - these places ought to look at this “right to shelter” policy, too.
I am sure that’s definitely true.
I am not right-wing, and not blaming the homeless, but homeless relocation is definitely a thing.
Oh, I agree, and yeah, shuffling people around and “out-of-sight” is definitely a thing. And I know you are not right wing! I just hear a lot of blame from the right about “liberal” western cities attracting the homeless like flies. It’s not like someone is giving-up their cheap housing in Omaha to travel to San Francisco to become homeless for those sweet liberal handouts.
So you are saying that I could retire in NYC with free housing? Becasue my GF has a green card and no income reported in 20 years and we love New York. She already says I dress like a homeless person anyway when shes not around.
It is , but there’s also a difference between buying someone a bus/plane ticket to where they have housing available ( even though that’s not where they want to live ) and just buying them a ticket out of town regardless of whether they have housing options. I’m sure the latter happens - but I’m not sure why it’s terrible that NYC buys a family plane tickets to Puerto Rico where they can live with a relative when the reason they ended up in a shelter in NYC was because when living with a relative in Delaware didn’t work out they packed up and moved to NYC apparently specifically to get help from a city that the family had no connection to. It’s not even that they came to NYC to live with a relative and that didn’t work out.
I am 100% certain that there are not a significant number of people leaving cheap housing in Omaha to live in a shelter in San Francisco - but I am also certain that homeless people from New Jersey or Westchester or Nassau enter homeless shelters in NYC rather than seeking assistance from their last place of residence
Income doesn’t necessarily matter - having somewhere else to live is what matters. There are working people in NYC shelters - including people who work at shelters and other municipal employees. . But you may be in a shelter a couple of years before permanent housing is found.