Yonkers Policies Are Hurting It's Homeless (Part Two)

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday November 11, 2016 · 1:00 PM PST

2016/11/11 · 13:00

This article was originally published on Black Westchester, please make sure you read part one either on Daily Kos or here.

Before the city of Yonkers started shutting down services for the homeless themselves it tried other methods. Allegedly, at meetings for years the city’s development commissioner Wilson Kimball had pressured Saint John’s Church (their landlord) to close them down. Once she reportedly turned to the (now former) priest and said “why don’t you just cut their lease.”

The city and county agreed to relocate the headquarters of Sharing Community by the end of 2017. But the city would not wait or be content with only moving the headquarters building.

Last winter the city tried to shut down Sharing Community’s Broadway Manor facility, which had both a drop-in of mostly women and transitional housing beds by alleging fire code violations. For awhile the clients had to be vanned to other drop-ins, but in the end it wasn’t shut.

The transitional housing beds were some of more than 40 the county cut this year, reducing their numbers by half. While I believe the cuts were budget related, city pressure could have played a role as most of them were in Yonkers.

Over the summer, the city tried to pressure social services to move the homeless, claiming that Yonkers has a disproportionate amount of drop-in clients. This is untrue. They also allege the drop-ins had more clients than they were contracted for. This is true. Most drop-ins in the county are over capacity because the county turns people away from it’s actual shelters. But Yonkers at about 80 clients is well under half of the county’s total. New Rochelle has about 80 people despite being contracted for a 27 bed facility. Open Arms in White Plains takes up to 50 despite being contracted for 14, a non-county run drop-in in Mount Kisco takes 30. Peekskill has a small drop-in and White Plains has another small one for women. As a result of Yonkers claims, 20 individuals are being bused nightly to New Rochelle and White Plains despite the fact that the New Rochelle drop-in, Oasis, is not only overcapacity, but has actual severe safety issues including bedbugs.

This September, after two public incidents involving the homeless, the city temporarily shut down the men’s drop-in, now being run out of Sharing Community’s headquarters at St. John’s church. Besides the capacity issue, they claimed that there was no permit to house drop-in clients there, but the city shut down the actual drop-in location in 2014 (because it was in a church in a residential district, Yonkers zoning code prohibits them from having social services), and getting a permit is pretty much impossible. As a result several men spent a night sleeping outside on cots through a rainstorm. It attempted to again shut the women’s drop-in as well, raiding it twice during the night to check for code violations.

The city states that there are no certificates of occupancy, as I mention in my last article Sharing Community apparently has trouble getting them. The city also said that there were fire code violations, and that Broadway Manor is “inhumane” condemning the building as they had done to Gospel Mission. As someone who has both slept at Broadway Manor, and seen actual inhumane shelters I have some problems with this.

First of all they have pictures, but many of them seem to have been taken on the now empty upper floors, not where people stay

Secondly, according to the court documents; they gave the North Broadway site a social service organization special permit over the summer and the zoning code states that this cannot be done if a building is unsafe.

As part of a statewide initiative; the state comptroller inspected 9 Westchester shelters. I believe he inspected the Sharing Community, and every shelter he visited was rated adequate except for Oasis and Westhab’s Coachman Shelter which were rated very poor. And the audit pulls no punches.

Another problem with blaming Sharing Community for safety issues is that the buildings landlord is apparently responsible for some of the maintenance.

The biggest issue is that in 2014, when the day program was closed I asked Development Commissioner Wilson Kimball, if other buildings used by Sharing Community had violations. She said “as far as we know, there are no other issues with the sharing community other than the ones they are currently working to correct.” Of course that year no one had said anything about North Broadway.

A court order is keeping the Broadway Manor drop-in open, and the county also took over its lease so it will be for one thing, exempt from city zoning laws. The city has backed off the headquarters drop-in for now probably because many of it’s clients are being vanned elsewhere despite the fact that most of them are Yonkers residents.

The Sharing Community is located in the middle of an area again undergoing a major “development push.” Local “stakeholders” who want redevelopment have been major pushers of closing the shelter. The 2014 minutes of the Thursday Lunch Club, one such group read: “The opinion was expressed that development opportunities are not being taken advantage of because of the homeless situation.” and “One of the goals to improve the downtown area is to relocate the Sharing Community by 2017.”

Sharing Community is definitely not perfect. While most are nice, several of it’s lower level employees could be more respectful to clients. Around 2012 it had financial problems that resulted in the departure of several key staff members, but since 2013 the current executive director has kept it running smoothly, and it does the best it can with the funding it has. And anyway, the city is not interested in finding another provider, just not having one.

I was approached recently by a homeless man claiming that a police officer kicked him when he refused to move from where he was sitting. It is worth noting that I have no proof of the validity of such claims, but I believe him. The YPD has already been investigated for brutality by the Justice Department.

If these shelters close, the homeless will not go away, rather they will be housed on the city’s sidewalks, porches, and stoops.

Yonkers Policies are Hurting It's Homeless

LauraCase

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 02, 2016 · 9:53 AM PDT

2016/11/02 · 09:53

Yes, I am the girl who wrote about a New Rochelle shelter in 2014.

When people think of homelessness in New York they tend to think of the city, but Westchester county has a severe problem as well. Our homeless system is very poorly run. Social Services often refuses people placement in shelters. Many of the homeless sleep in drop-in shelters only open during the night. In Yonkers the problem has been made worse by a city government bent on ridding itself of the homeless in a way other than housing them.

Locals will be aware of recent incidents such as the temporary closure of a drop-in which forced people to sleep outside for a night through a rainstorm. To really understand the situation, one has to go back a bit.

It began with major changes in the zoning code , which quietly created what may be the strictest anti-homeless laws in the country. According to Yonkers zoning code chapters 43–73 H, and 43–35 C and A; social service organizations cannot be within 400 feet of each other. Church’s within residential districts may not engage in social services, period, including soup kitchens. All agencies must apply for special permits, to be renewed yearly unless they only use their offices for administrative functions. The permit application includes a detailed plan of staffing, operations, hours, maintenance, etc. and is reviewed by the commissioner of buildings who can reject them for any reason and then by city council which can do the same.

Any social services entity in the government district must be on a “designated redevelopment site.” No, I do not know where the government district is, I was told it costs $20 to see and or copy the zoning map. Finally, none of this allows shelters to actually operate. The zoning code states: “Philanthropic institutions providing social services are neither emergency shelters, overnight shelters for the homeless….”

In 2014 Christina Gilmartin the mayor’s press secretary confirmed this in an email: “The Zoning ordinance was revised in the year 2000. Chapter 43, section 43–73 H (7) specifically prohibits a homeless shelter causing a requirement for a variance.”

These rules are selectively enforced. I believe most nonprofits are not even aware of their existence.

In the late summer of 2014 in the midst of a redevelopment push Yonkers began its ground campaign. The Gospel Mission was a 50 bed 24 hour men’s shelter located on North Broadway. Because it had a focus on religious education and prayer it was run through private donations.

It was already shutting due to lack of support. But that did not stop the city from making extra sure it left. According to a college project written shortly after which included an interview with it’s director, the city condemned the building three days before it closed, telling him they would do so to all shelters with “dormitory style ” setups.

Sharing Community is Yonkers major provider of shelter services including as of 2014 two county funded drop-in programs. The Yonkers men’s drop-in was in Holy Cross, a small church. The city closed it in September 2014. No building code violations were ever alleged to the best of my knowledge, I believe the city used the fact that the church was in a residential district. According to a church source I spoke to that year Development Commissioner Wilson Kimball had simply emailed Holy Cross that they could either be a shelter or a church, not both. The men were moved to the headquarters of Sharing Community at Saint John’s church (1 Hudson St.) in the downtown.

In November 2014, the city next shut Sharing Community’s day program, Host. It must be said that the program; run out of the headquarters’ basement, was not big enough for the number of people it served. There were not enough activities or housing counseling. But it kept people safely out of the cold, they had shower access, and neither of the above was mentioned among the “reasons” it was closed.

Allegedly, Sharing Community did not have the ridiculous special zoning permit as explained above, or a certificate of occupancy. Sharing Community alleged that their attempts to get them had been denied. Also cited were the drop-in clients sleeping there. The city’s logic seems to have been that the homeless men would simply evaporate into mid-air after they closed Holy Cross, so a new site would not be needed. The one valid reason given was fire safety problems (lack of sprinklers), but the Sharing Community alleged that their building permits to fix these issues were later denied as well.

Because the showers were at the day program, the clients have not had shower access at the shelter in two years. For five months after the closure there were no showers at all. I had pointed out that Yonkers had a taxpayer funded bathhouse that was sitting locked and unused. Eventually, it was opened to the homeless three days a week, two hours a day….if you can walk two miles. It has not even remained open constantly.

The irony of this whole situation is that it was the city that had chosen Sharing Community to run the day program! Host was funded federally, through a grant to the housing authority, which then supervised and chose the subcontractor. If the city had been sincere about wanting what was best for the homeless and they thought Sharing Community was an unfit provider they would have just picked someone else, instead they allowed the homeless to be without showers and in the cold.

After months of protracted negations, the building permits were finally approved in 2015, however in exchange the county agreed to move all programs out of Saint John’s Church to a new location by the end of 2017 when Sharing Community’s lease is up. (as discussed in the recent court order keeping one of the drop-ins open) This includes the cities only daily soup kitchen, and a full service shelter. No one knows where it will go.

And it was too late for the day program anyways. HUD, the funder of the day program; cut it’s money for the 2016 year (because I am told, they do not like funding supportive service only programs) so it never reopened. The Drop-in clients now have to leave at 5:00 in the morning, rain or shine.

My next article will explain go into what has happened in the years since 2014 including attempts to force the shelter to move even sooner than agreed upon.

Please read the companion articles here and here!

Westchester Denies Help to It's Homeless

LauraCase

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday November 02, 2016 · 9:49 AM PDT

2016/11/02 · 09:49

Yes, I am the girl who wrote about a shelter in New Rochelle in 2014

People tend to think of homelessness in New York as a city issue. Westchester county, New York City’s deeply confused cousin, has a crisis of its own. Our rents are extremely high, but the situation is made worse by incompetence, corruption, and cuts in funding.

In New York City, the shelter system is entered by walking into an intake shelter. Here, social services (DSS) must refer you either to it’s intake shelter or directly to a provider, depending largely on whim. If it refuses you, or you are ineligible (such as undocumented immigrants), you must stay at a drop-in; a facility open only from late at night to as early as five in the morning, sometimes unsanitary, and without services. One or two have (inadequate) day programs funded by other sources, most do not.

Often, the county asks clients to stay at these places for 10–30 days as proof that they are homeless before they will place them. This is done through a letter from the facility although the county pays around $100,000 or more anually for a computer system used to enter the data of homeless people. HUD said in 2012 that this data could be used as proof of homelessness if the county fixed problems such as providers not actually using it. Guess they haven’t yet. Some drop-ins make getting letters difficult.

The county says that most other eligible drop-in clients don’t want help and refuse to be placed in the shelter system, that they allow clients to stay in the warming centers anyways out of kindness. This is a lie. As these surveys prove, many people are turned away by social services, and many are unaware that the real shelters even exist or how you get to them.

Out of 32 drop-in respondents, 12 were refused entry into the shelter system (one may have been ineligible). Some were given no reason. One just had open heart surgery and was refused services anyway. He had a welfare case years ago, but had found a job, and worked until his heart problems; the county said they need him to spend at least thirty days at a drop-in or on the streets before they can “reopen” his case, 2 people were totally unaware that they could go to social services, 5 clients went there but were never spoken to about shelter placement.

5 clients did refuse placement. One works, and the intake shelter is over two hours away in an isolated complex near the county jail. Another was told he must participate in a work program, though he can’t walk properly. One was put in the intake shelter, but he was kicked out for refusing to hand over his entire paycheck to the county. 8 clients were refused placement, but given ($590) room vouchers. They cannot however, find rooms on their own, or for that price.

The survey shows a common denominator among most of those turned away; lack of income. It is my allegation (and an open secret among the homeless) that these people are rejected to save Westchester money.

When someone is put into our shelter system, all their income is taken by the county, except for a $45 monthly allowance. New York City takes only thirty percent. This makes it very hard for even people in the shelters to get out of the system, with some staying as long as three years.

The state only pays 29% of our shelter costs, so when it takes in someone without money, Westchester has to actually spend it’s own money on it’s poor. And our county executive prides himself on a low budget.

It is no secret that drop-ins are cheaper. This contract states that one of their benefits is that they cost $38 dollars per person, while a shelter costs $105–148 per night. This contract states the same but with different numbers.

Two clients in the survey, state that they were told they would not be placed because the county would not spend $4,000 on them.

Minutes of the Mount Vernon local continuum of care (which has it’s own issues) from 2009 read “DSS is denying claims baselessly- i.e. reasons are provided but they are untrue/ baseless/ confused……” I believe they are speaking about temporary assistance (the $590), but it shows the general trend.

Because of this, most of the county’s drop-ins are over capacity by more than 30–60 people. For example Oasis in New Rochelle has about 80 people or more, in what is supposed to be a 27 bed facility.

The problem has been made worse by the 2013 closure of the Mount Vernon drop-in due to community protests.

Even if the county relents, there may be nowhere for people to go. This year, it cut over half of it’s county funded transitional housing beds for singles, as well as emergency housing for families.

The county just closed a shelter for employable single adult men, the Vaughn Glanton Residence, stating that there is not enough demand for it’s services. They turned it into a family shelter into which they put some of the families they took out of emergency housing.

In 2014 the county closed it’s only shelter for medically frail adults, claiming that it was not needed because 68 of the beds in its system were vacant. Small comfort for the drop-in clients it won’t place in them.

Next article: how housing programs have sat empty while the homeless sit on the streets.

Please read the companion articles here and here!

The number of articles in this survey will constantly be changing as I get more!

Update: Footage of New Rochelle Shelter (Bedbugs and All)

LauraCase

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday October 02, 2014 · 6:04 AM PDT

2014/10/02 · 06:04

Please watch this first:
https://www.youtube.com/...

Sorry I haven't written in so long everyone, but i have been trying to prove this once and for all, it looks like I have the proof but none seems to want to do anything anyway.

I am going to try to sum this up as briefly as I can. That will be hard. I am an advocate working with the homeless in New Rochelle New York, I am homeless myself. How I became homeless is something I can exoplain and has to do with stereotypes of people with diagnoses (mine is adhd) mine own decisions of course, and our society, but that is not the point of this story. There is a shetler in New Rochelle New York run by Wesctop a 30 billion dollar organization that has a leak in the ceiling bedbugs, missng donations, and will not refer people to the proper social services agencys. They get about 36,000 per year per person and yet 25 people a night sleep in chairs while another 39-40 sleep in bedbug infested cvots. I wrote a petition about this shelter after I was told I could not help people get out because I was interfering with true director's business. Despite DSS promising to investigate I was told to leave one night as threats to the shelter would no longer be tolerated. I refused. Was in jail for a month afor a city code violation” trespassing, they kept postposing my trial when I wouldn’t plead guilty. I came out of jail and continued my efforts.

Then the shelter and a soup kitchen named Hope Coummnity Services which gets a large hud grant to hosue people but has only housed 4, they say 25, there tax return says 19, there CoC (continuum of care report) says 12, there other rtax return says 107 applied to run a day program with the shelter despite the fact that there was already a experienced good day program for the homeless in the city with 18 years experience (Dimesnions) that was struggling with it’s rent. Westcop has connections. The mayor is on their local board, previously on their county board. They run half the New Rochelle Housing authority (see my blog for that) County Executive Astorino saved it from closing and got the support of Westcop related officials in his campaign against the mayor for executive in the process, State Sebnator George Latimer is on their Mamaronek board. So are judges, small town mayors etc. Westcop also gets a few million from the federal government. Nita Lowey and Eliot Engel got it for them. They are supposed to house verterans. I know none they have housed. I have taken people to them to get help. We were told they don’t handle those kinds of cases.

The shelter and Hope got the grant. The council originally voted for a n open proposal, since there are agaencys like Dimensions that has been there for ten years and had far more experience, but a week later they reversed their decision.. The program started September 2nd.There is nothing to do the whole day. People are not allowed to leave (except for medical reasons) or they cannot come back unitll 9 at night. It is like prison. Some people report being followed. There is also a van program. If people see a homeless person they can call the shelter. Even if the homeless person is reading, eacting, walking in town etc. The shelter than will send a white van to get them. It all sounds insane. And it is. And I have proof of it. This is all the documents, footage I have with links to my blog and local newspaper articles.
http://www.newrochelletalk.com/...
Sincerely,
Laura Case
http://hometwn.com/...

Homeless Person Speaks About Shelter (New Rochelle)

LauraCase

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday June 04, 2014 · 8:43 AM PDT

2014/06/04 · 08:43

Homeless People sleeping in chairs without blankets.

People deserve to be treated with dignity regardless of their status in society or life. If you have heard about the homeless in New Rochelle NY (or anywhere) it is probably in the context of how many of us there are or how we sit in the downtown area and cause noise. It is true that we do sit outside reading, or talking quietly, although more often we can be found looking for housing on the library computer, eating at the soup kitchens, or trying to get our lives together. Furthermore a lot of the individuals I have heard accused of causing disruption and noises are not homeless. People tend to lump groups together, and I have often almost laughed to hear things blamed on my community that we had nothing to do with. I am sick and tired of us being treated as either an economic cash cow, or a political nuissance issue (get the homeless out of site, ect.) I have a friend who was an accountant for many years, others who work as landscapers, people with college degrees and home health aides. Others have disabilities; some are over sixty five, some under 21. I am not saying we are a perfect community, obviously many of us are at a point of turning in our lives or we wouldn’t be out here, but no one I know is there because we are lazy or want a free ride. So of course the question becomes, why are there so many of us here and what can New Rochelle do to help us? Read More

RSS