Bowery committee failing city’s homeless: audit
BY MARK HALLUM
The Bowery Residents’ Committee
(BRC) has a $36 million contract
to help reduce the number of
homeless people in subway stations
across the city — but State Comptroller
Thomas DiNapoli said they’re not living
up to their end of the bargain.
DiNapoli released a study Thursday
criticizing the Manhattan-based organization
for failing to uphold its pact with
the MTA to provide homeless outreach.
The same study also faulted the MTA
and the city’s Department of Homeless
Services (DHS) for failing to properly
monitor the contract.
“Homeless outreach in the subway has
been so shoddy and with so little oversight
from DHS and MTA, that it should
be no surprise the homeless population in
the subways has grown,” DiNapoli said.
“DHS seems to have hired the Bowery
Residents’ Committee to deal with the
subway homeless population, then walked
away. BRC’s failure to even come close to
fulfilling its contract has left vulnerable
homeless men and women badly served
and straphangers fending for themselves
in increasingly difficult circumstances.”
According to the comptroller, the MTA
entered into a memorandum of understanding
(MOU) with DHS to conduct
outreach in its 472 stations. DHS then
outsourced these tasks out to BRC via
contract as a nonprofit provider of housing
and services.
Progress, the comptroller contests,
was barely palpable; annual counts of the
subway homeless population found that it
dropped from 1,841 in 2013 to 1,812 in
2017 — a 1.5% decrease — before spiking
up to 2,178 in 2019. That’s a 20.2%
jump from the recorded population in
2017.
After reviewing DHS data as outlined
in the agency’s CARES database, the audit
found that 40% of clients with whom
the BRC had made contact had either not
been placed in shelters — or had been
placed in shelters at different dates than
recorded.
DiNapoli concluded that the information
in the CARES database was not
PHOTO: MARK HALLUM/AMNEWYORK
reliable.
The MTA, however, felt DiNapoli’s
audit needed to catch up on the times
and said that since its own task force on
homelessness was launched in August
2019, there have been real results.
“This out-of-date audit predates
major efforts the MTA has undertaken
to address the City’s homelessness crisis,
including the launch of the MTA
Homelessness Task Force, engaging the
MTA Inspector General to strengthen
oversight, and increasing outreach team
patrols to improve rule enforcement and
the acceptance of social services. Since
launching the task force we’ve had more
than 30,000 contacts with homeless
New Yorkers in the subway, and have
convinced more than 2,000 to accept
services,” an MTA spokesman said. “We
continue to do everything we can to
address this societal problem and what
amounts to multiple failures – of the
shelter system, mental health system, and
broader social services network – that
have left many of the most vulnerable
New Yorkers to believe that their only
and last resort is to live in the subway.”
BRC’s president, Muzzy Rosenblatt,
didn’t necessarily agree with DiNapoli’s
findings.
“While the office of the state comptroller
reports’ conclusions fail to appreciate
the effort and achievements of BRC’s
outreach programs, we recognize there
are opportunities to improve and have
already begun to work with our government
partners to implement constructive
changes,” Rosenblatt said.
The DHS accepted that better contract
oversight is necessary going forward —
but that was where agreement on the
comptroller’s study ended.
“BRC is an essential partner in our mission
to address the citywide challenge of
homelessness that built up over decades,
including by providing outreach, services,
and a helping hand to those living unsheltered,”
a DHS statement read. “We
take the comptroller’s report seriously,
and while we disagree on some of the
details, we agree with the spirit of the
recommendations.”
NYPD officials pressed on subway homeless
BY MARK HALLUM
A joint committee in the City Council
examined NYPD’s homeless
diversion program in the subways,
which to advocates represents a
policy that fines the city’s poorest.
The city Department of Social Services
and NYPD had representation in chamber
who were questioned by members of
both the committees on General Welfare
as well as Public Safety.
Policing of individuals sleeping in the
subway system often follow policies in
which they are fined if they refuse homeless
services and often arrested for failure
to comply with laws the prohibit riders
from occupying more than one seat.
“People who choose the street over the
shelter know what the shelter has to offer,
and they choose the street,” Councilman
Donovan Richards said. “I don’t blame
you trying to help this situation. I will
blame you if what you’re trying only
serves to harass people.”
NYPD Chief of Transit Edward
Delatorre said he did not
agree with aspects of police
outreach that lands people in
the criminal justice system, but
that there are merits to the effort
which sees some homeless individuals
to finding the resources
intended to help them get back
on their feet, such as Bowery
Residents’ Committee.
The civil summonses that are
issued to homeless individuals in
the Subway Diversion Program
is the “lightest touch,” Delatorre
told City Council members.
“We’re evolving here and we’re
looking for more and more ways,”
Deletorre said explaining that NYPD has
created in roads with the courts to have
warrants expunged so people can obtain
services.
Delatorre told City Council outreach at
the terminus of the E line has been better
PHOTO BY MARK HALLUM
facilitated by using New York City Transit
station space to offer coffee to homeless
people.
Molly Park, first deputy commissioner
of DHS, said it often requires “hundreds”
of times for outreach to stick with one
individual, something homeless
individuals themselves explained
in rally prior to the hearing.
Richard Hobbs, who is homeless,
said shelters are perilous.
Stabbings and muggings are
common, but he often sleeps in
Penn Station where being hassled
by the police is at least tolerable.
Hobbs stated that while he
has been mugged attempting to
deposit $20 into an ATM, police
in Penn Station will wake homeless
individuals every two hours
and ignore complaints of actual
crimes if those reporting them
look homeless.
The rally hosted by Coalition for
the Homeless pressured the de Blasio
administration to end what Councilman
Stephen Levin called a “dumb policy”
to took the only alternative to a shelter
away from homeless individuals during
the colder months.
4 January 23, 2020 Schneps Media