Thread by @humandotnyc

For the past three years, we’ve worked directly with street homeless New Yorkers to map out the process they must go through to secure permanent housing. Tweets will never do this justice, but here’s a broad overview featuring the voices of our street homeless neighbors.

Thread:

First, people told us they felt safer on the streets than in the shelters.

It’s not that people are “service resistant.” Rather, the shelters are not suitable for many people. @NYGovCuomo called the decision to leave the shelters “a rationale choice.”

Once someone decides to avoid the shelter system, their first step towards housing is to be assigned a case manager, most likely from an outreach team.

But before they qualify, they need to be “sighted” at their sleep spot, at night and at random, a certain number of times.

Furthermore, people must live outside for AT LEAST 9 months before they are considered “chronically homeless” under the NYC definition.

At this point, they become eligible for a Safe Haven, NYC’s most common form of “transitional housing.”

Meanwhile, they wait.

People tell us they prefer Safe Havens to traditional shelters because they have fewer/no roommates and they get a room key.

They often move into a Safe Haven before moving onto permanent housing, as Safe Havens are lower threshold.

But to be clear: Safe Havens ≠ Housing.

Case managers work to help people secure necessary identification and documentation. This step can be especially daunting for people who were born out of state and people who have lost original copies of certain documents.

And like many other steps, it requires more waiting.

Once all documents are in place, case managers determine which type of housing people are eligible for through a series of evaluations and appointments.

Most likely, they will be eligible for supportive housing (housing with supportive services) and/or a housing voucher.

Like we said, we can never truly get across how difficult this process is over Twitter, but hopefully we’ve shown that people are trying so hard to come inside.

That’s why it’s so frustrating when the administration says people need to be *convinced* to come into housing.

For those lucky enough to be approved for permanent housing, there is, again, a waitlist. Quite simply, the demand far exceeds the supply, and like every other step, red tape can slow down the process.

In other words: More waiting.

If you’ve found this overview helpful, you can learn more at human.nyc, and you can send the link to your City Council Member. If you don’t know who your City Council Member is, you can use this link: mygovnyc.org

Feel free to ask us questions!

We are so extraordinarily grateful to each and every person who took the time to share their story with us, and we wanted to give a special shout out to the members of @pthny who spoke with us.