Housing as a Human Right in the South Bronx, NYC
Diana* had arrived in New York City just one week ago and did not understand how the subway worked. Puerto Rico, her home, was still without power and water after Hurricane Maria. She was pregnant and alone, and when I met her she told me, “I don’t want to bring my baby back to the shelter. I can’t sleep at night anymore. My worries keep me up all night. They are making me work until I am 28 weeks or something; I am so tired.”
I am a Global Health Corps fellow at the Children’s Health Fund (CHF), a national nonprofit dedicated to caring for America’s most medically underserved children. I spend the majority of my time at Community Pediatric Programs, a cluster of federally qualified health centers partnered with CHF to serve families and children in the South Bronx, the second poorest congressional district in the U.S.
At the clinics, we hand out a questionnaire to pregnant patients asking about the amount of stress they experience as a result of social factors such as finances, child care, family function, and food access. A resource navigator, such as myself, meets with patients and helps them get connected to local resources. I usually start my conversation with something like: “I see that you’re experiencing some stress in your life. Could you tell me a bit about that?” and let the person in front of me direct the conversation towards their stressors, priorities, and goals. As they are talking, I take notes and start thinking about resources that they would find useful and referrals that I can make. However sometimes, the best — and only — resource I can provide is to listen to their story and show that I care.
In Diana’s case, I was able to connect her with Nurse Family Partnership, a nurse home-visiting program for new mothers; Room to Grow, a program that connects women living in poverty with a social worker and necessary baby materials until the baby is three years old; Prenatal and Well-Baby Group Care at our clinic; a free breast pump from her insurance company; and a free doula who accompanied her before, during, and after the birth of her child, a healthy baby girl.
However, I was not able to help her with her housing situation. Diana, living in a shelter under curfew, obligated to work several hours during the week and unable to make the food she grew up with using only a microwave, felt trapped and depressed. She gained an unhealthy amount of weight during her pregnancy and suffered from mild anxiety and depression.
Housing is the most pervasive stressor in our South Bronx community. Unfortunately, housing is also the stressor we find most challenging to address and the one that has the greatest impact on the health and wellbeing of the families we serve.
Families living in the South Bronx experience homelessness at a rate that is three times higher than all of the 5 NYC boroughs combined and six times higher than the national level. In April 2018, an average of 22,742 parents and 22,801 children slept in homeless shelters every night in New York City. On any given day, more than 60,000 people are homeless in New York, the “Greatest City on Earth.”
The housing situation in New York City is complicated. On one hand, there is the issue of the health, safety and dignity of people living in shelters and temporary housing. On the other hand, there is the issue of people living in unsafe, unregulated, derelict privately owned apartments and houses. At the clinic, children are tested to see if they have too much lead in their blood from the water that they drink in their homes and schools. Women have children with asthma living in apartments full of mold, fungus, and rats that sometimes leave bite marks on their infant’s skin. Overburdened mothers do not have adequate space for their children in their one bedroom apartments with rent that costs more than half their paycheck. On the same street where I work, several blocks uptown, a fire killed 12 people, four of them children, in a 1916 building made of non-fireproof materials with six open housing violations.
The housing crisis has reached such a state that people choose houses like these over dropping headfirst into the dark abyss of the housing system. In many cases, even that choice is not available, as rising rent forces people out onto the streets.
Homelessness in New York City has reached numbers not seen since the Great Depression, increasing by more than 80% in the last 10 years. The major reason for rising homelessness among families and children is a lack of affordable housing.
More than half of South Bronx residents are cost-burdened, spending more than 30% of their income per month on rent. With so much money going to pay for substandard housing, the rest is stretched thin for other basic necessities — transportation, childcare, food, and education. When families lose their homes, they live in homeless shelters for an average of 414 days, over one year. While the government has a mandate to house children near their schools, space shortages force homeless students and families far away from support networks, schooling, and their communities. Apartments are bursting at the seams with overcrowding. Shelter beds are full every night.
The Declaration of Independence states that all are “created equal…with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” What started as a lofty goal with a radical, if not fully intentional, meaning in 1776 has been left unaccomplished in 2018. First of all, we are not all born equal — racial and socio-economic disparities in health and housing make this very clear. In NYC, for example, almost all family shelter applicants are Black (52.8%) and Latino (40.0%). The U.S. is a country built by immigrants and people of color, however it is precisely these fellow human beings who are most often dying instead of living, incarcerated instead of free, and suffering instead of thriving. Secondly, without stable and safe housing, can anyone achieve these unalienable, “American” rights?
As author Matthew Desmond has said, housing is a human right because without it, “everything else falls apart.” Home is the foundation for education, family, safety and health. However, a roof over your head does not make a home. People do not want to live in shelters, stripped of their rights, under curfew, away from family and community. People do not want to lose their homes. Can you call a home a place where you fear that rats will bite your newborn child? Can you call a home a place that has broken fire detectors and trash outside your door? Can you call a home a place where you feel physically, mentally, and emotionally unsafe or where you suffer from abuse and harm? In between shelters and homes like these, where can families go?
The women and caregivers I work with in the South Bronx are fighting every day to achieve their basic human rights. They are fighting for a safe and healthy home for their families. They are fighting landlords who turn a blind eye to atrocious public health hazards and threaten eviction when pressured to fix things. They are fighting a housing and shelter system burdened by the daily weight of more than 60,000 lives.
Health and housing are deeply linked. Without a proper home, health is difficult to maintain and easy to lose. Without health, every day is a struggle against our own bodies. In the U.S. neither health nor housing are recognizing as human rights, despite the fact that our ability to live by the declaration of independence is dependent on both of them. However, we do not need any declaration to know that this situation is unjust and inhumane — and it is our duty to fight with our communities to create a more just and equal world.
*Names have been changed to protect privacy.
If you see someone who may be homeless and needs help in New York City, call 311.
If you want to learn more about the housing crisis in America, read “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City” by Mathew Desmond.
If you want to learn more about the people who are affected by
homelessness check out these resources:
Odette Zero is a 2017–2018 Global Health Corps fellow in the U.S.
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