NYC has enough vacant apartments to
house the homeless. It’s time to do it.
COURIER LIFE, NOV. 20-26, 2020 17
OP-ED
BY BEN KALLOS &
FREDERICK SHACK
New York is not dead, but
tens of thousands of apartments
here are empty. This
presents an unprecedented
opportunity to house every
New Yorker experiencing
homelessness. As a city we
have a moral mandate to permanently
house our homeless
now. We can do so by creating
tens of thousands of affordable
housing units in existing
empty apartments, including
in our tallest buildings and
wealthiest neighborhoods. No
matter what neighborhood we
live in, we can all welcome unhoused
New Yorkers onto our
block and into our buildings.
This morning, over
18,000 children woke up in a
city shelter. Just over 10,000
families account for a 30,000
person majority of those living
in shelters. With over 15,000
vacant Manhattan rentals
and 4,100 vacant condominiums
dating back before
the pandemic, we now have
more vacant apartments than
homeless families. The city
should buy these vacant condominiums
and secure long-term
leases on vacant rental apartments
to provide transitional
and permanent housing for the
homeless. Opening up space in
family shelters would then allow
single adults experiencing
homelessness to utilize buildings
currently used as family
shelters, enabling social distancing
and providing greater
privacy than the dormitory
style shelters, where the majority
of single adults currently
reside, sleeping in rooms with
many people close together.
Prior to the pandemic, New
York City paid $3.2 billion a
year on costly shelter beds and
commercial hotels. We pay far
more to shelter families than it
would cost to supplement their
rent and provide them with a
permanent home. According
to the Mayor’s Management
Report, it costs over $6,000 per
month to provide shelter for a
family with children, and approximately
$3,900 per month
to shelter a single adult, and
those costs will rise this year
to accommodate Covid-19 public
safety measures. Meanwhile,
the average length of
stay in shelter has only gotten
longer. According to last fi scal
year’s reporting, families with
children average 443 days at a
shelter and single adults average
431 days—despite the thousands
of vacant apartments
waiting for renters.
New York City needs to
be bold and start using these
empty apartments to house
our homeless.
The city should start by
renting apartments directly,
then sublet to homeless New
Yorkers. While we currently
spend over $6,000 per month to
provide shelter, median rents
in Manhattan have dropped to
below $3,000. Even by renting
apartments in expensive Manhattan
neighborhoods, the city
would see savings and could
cover utilities, groceries and
social services.
With historically low mortgage
rates, buying condominiums
and cooperatives to house
the homeless would be an even
better long-term investment. In
fact, there are more than 4,600
homes and apartments for
sale in New York City with
2 bedrooms or more, whose
monthly payments would
come in far below the $6,000
budgeted limit. The $6,000 a
month high-water mark opens
up our city’s wealthiest neighborhoods
from the Upper East
Side to Brooklyn Heights.
Money saved on apartments at
the lower end of the cost spectrum
would bring savings and
help pay for stabilizing social
services from providers in the
community. This would end
the status quo where homeless
shelters are disproportionately
sited in poor neighborhoods,
and it would help desegregate
and open doors to all communities
for formerly homeless
New Yorkers.
We’ve tried incremental solutions
that have not proven
enough. The city offers a
rent supplement called City-
FHEPS that can be accessed
by both those currently residing
in shelter and those on
the brink of eviction. Unfortunately,
the voucher only allows
rent well below Fair Market
Rent, making it virtually impossible
to use. Short of more
sweeping action, passing City
Council bill, Introduction 146,
authored by General Welfare
Chair Steven Levin would improve
the functionality of this
voucher by increasing the
amount of rent it can cover.
The State must also step up
and do its part. There are two
bills in the State legislature to
create state-wide housing subsidies:
Assembly Member Andrew
Hevesi’s Home Stability
Support and Senator Brian
Kavanaugh’s Housing Access
Voucher. Home Stability Support
would provide a housing
voucher that covers 85% of
market rent to those who qualify
for Public Assistance and
are either homeless or face
an eminent loss of housing.
The Housing Access Voucher
would be accessible to households
with an income at or below
250% of the Federal Poverty
Level (or less than $54,300
annually for a family of 3), and
recipients would pay 30% of
their income towards rent.
These bills would go a long
way toward enabling the city
to fi nally secure permanent
housing for all.
As many New Yorkers
who are housed struggle to
weather the economic storm
caused by the pandemic, it
might seem unfair to take
such drastic measures to
house the homeless. A New
Yorker just barely making
rent might worry that their
new neighbor is dealing with
drug and mental health problems
and getting a handout
without having done the same
hard work. One might even
fear that their new neighbor
has lied or exploited the
system in some way, an echo
of the infamous myth of the
“welfare queen.”
The reality is that evictions
and lack of access to affordable
housing are the primary
cause of homelessness.
As for the relatively small
percentage of homeless New
Yorkers who face mental
health or substance use disorders,
we must not criminalize
these conditions, but rather
introduce social services to
help stabilize their lives. We
know that housing fi rst models
work, and that in order for
anyone to begin the process
of receiving mental health
treatment or reducing their
substance use, they fi rst need
their most basic needs met: a
warm bed to sleep in, a place
to shower, and 3 meals a day.
Ultimately, the introduction
of any new social safety
net program will raise concerns
about who is benefi tting
most and who is losing
out. But when we begin to
treat housing like a human
right, this zero-sum game
will take a back seat to meeting
the basic expectations of a
society that believes all people
deserve a home.
Where some see New York
City as dead with thousands
of vacant apartments, we see
the opportunity to permanently
house our homeless.
This is a once-in-a-generation
opportunity. We can wake up
in a city that is full and thriving,
with housing occupied by
families, children, and grateful
neighbors. That’s a city we
want to live in.
Ben Kallos is a New York
City Council Member and Co-
Founder of the Eastside Taskforce
for Homeless Outreach
and Services (ETHOS).
Frederick Shack is Chief
Executive Offi cer at Urban
Pathways, a leading nonprofi t
serving approximately 3,700
at-risk and homeless New
Yorkers each year through a
full continuum of services including
street outreach, transitional
housing, and permanent
supportive housing
residences.
Photo via Getty Images