And so, the human and financial costs continue to mount.Īs a result, tonight nearly 50,000 New Yorkers will sleep in Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelters, while thousands more stay in shelters operated through other City agencies. Painting mass homelessness as an individual failure rather than a systemic inequity has resulted in billions of dollars being spent on emergency responses, while the underlying problem remains unaddressed. The word “homelessness” implicitly places the focus on “fixing” those whose lives have been upended by a lack of housing, instead of on the fundamental reason for mass homelessness: the lack of affordable housing options for enormous swaths of our population. Looking back at the successes and failures of the de Blasio and Cuomo administrations, and those of the past 40 years, the overriding theme is that mass homelessness continues to devastate our communities because it is framed as a homelessness crisis, not as a housing crisis. This year’s report is titled New York at a Crossroads because we are clearly at an inflection point in which the convergence of a global public health crisis, a national awakening to the insidious impact of racial injustice, changes in political leadership, and public outcry over the consequences of decades of systemic indifference to the unmet needs of vulnerable New Yorkers calls for a fundamental re-examination of how mass homelessness is viewed and addressed. The State of the Homeless report is released each year by the Coalition for the Homeless to offer a clear assessment of New York’s ongoing housing and homelessness crisis and to recommend proven solutions based on an objective examination of what has worked, and what has failed, in the past.
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