Westchester Square / Zerega Improvement Org

Over the past month WSZIO and the Merchants’ Association of Westchester Square have sponsored weekly protests (Saturdays, 3029 Middletown Road, 2 PM for those hardy souls who would like to join us) outside Mayor Bloomberg’s campaign office about the sneaky placement of a homeless shelter on St Peter’s Avenue, as you know.

 Yes, we all knew there was a homeless “emergency” as we were told by Commissioner Hess of DHS that gave them unlimited authority to fulfill their mission and circumvent normal process, and of course we knew that placing a homeless shelter in Westchester Square was just adding to the oversaturation of the area with social services. We even knew that the prohibitive cost to the city (our tax dollars) was disgraceful ($2700-3000 a month per family) and that the DHS was in panic mode to house the thousands of homeless families, and seemed to have been caught off guard by this increase in homelessness. Yet, there was an intuitive sense that the Bloomberg administration was somehow responsible for this situation, but how?

Then we did some research, and the first thing that came up on the Internet was No Advantage: The Bloomberg Administration’s Flawed Approach to

Family Homelessness, a briefing paper by the Coalition for the Homeless released on July 20, 2007. I quote directly from the paper:

“…the fatal flaws of the “Work Advantage” program [which expects homeless families to be self-supporting within 2 years either by getting a Section 8 voucher, which is almost impossible to get, or by getting a high enough paying job to support their increasing rents] – that it fails to acknowledge and meet the long-term housing needs of homeless and formerly-homeless families; that it excludes the majority of homeless families from receiving any housing assistance; and that it continues to ignore the worsening housing affordability crisis in New York City.”

It goes on to predict that these misguided policies will cause an increase in homeless families, and that’s exactly what has happened 2 years later.

Now, I ask you, what kind of a “crisis” or “emergency” is literally predicted 2 years in advance? The administration has had 2 years, at least, to prepare for the fallout from their misguided policies or change the policies. Homelessness “is primarily a housing affordability problem, not a welfare or employment problem” (the briefing paper again). 

These homeless families are poor, often are very young, with very young children. They may have little education, or no specialized skills with which to compete in an increasingly difficult economic downturn. To think that they are somehow going to be able to find high-paying enough jobs to pay the rent in full (and don’t forget how high rents have become in the past few years) and support themselves and their kids in this economy or get Section 8 vouchers in 2 years is unrealistic at best. And so, they are made homeless, where they enter the shelter system and are placed anywhere there is room by DHS at an exorbitant cost to the taxpayers.

Isn’t it better to continue the subsidies at a lower cost or expand housing subsidy programs and let people stay in their apartments at a lower cost to taxpayers than to throw them into the shelter system after 2 years?

This damaging policy is bad for almost everyone: the homeless, who would otherwise would get to stay in their subsidized apartments; the residents, who are forced out of apartment buildings because the landlord makes bigger bucks renting to DHS than to working residents; the homeowners, who suddenly wake up one morning to find a shelter across the street and their home value cut in half; the taxpayers, who are literally paying a fortune for the Bloomberg administration’s wrong-headed and failed homeless policy. The only ones who benefit are the landlords and politically connected middlemen.

And also remember that this panic “solution” of housing homeless families anywhere there is a “financially distressed property” is self-limiting, because no matter how many are housed, the failing policy is actually creating more and more the longer it goes on. And so this is one race the DHS can never win, despite the consent decree. I knew nothing of this until the protests began. And so, now I am amazed. To me, this is a scandal.

 What can we do about this? If Mayor Bloomberg is re-elected, nothing; he is adamant about maintaining these policies (and his DOE policies have also been detrimental also in many ways) and this will only be the first of many protest marathons as shelters are created everywhere. If Thompson wins, there are no guarantees; but as he did mention that the Work-Advantage policy was a failure in the last debate, he obviously gets it. So, my vote goes to Thompson. I would advise you all to consider the information given here carefully before you pull that lever on Election Day.

If you would like to contribute to the Westchester Square Merchant Fund which is going to pay the cost of the legal fees of the lawsuit brought by the community and merchants against the DHS over the homeless shelter on St Peter’s Avenue send a check made out to Westchester Square Legal Defense Fund to: Westchester Square Merchant Fund, 25 Westchester Square (2nd floor), Bronx, NY 10461.

TTFN