Modern Homelessness in New York City
At this time, the number of homeless people in New York City is at an all-time high. With a population of more than 8.3 million people, one in every 106 New Yorkers is homeless, amounting to almost 80,000 men, women, and children. The COVID-19 pandemic, which put more than 50,000 individuals at risk of eviction this year, exacerbated an already raging homelessness crisis. While homelessness is not a new phenomena in the United States or in New York City, it is undeniably a historical event that began in the late 1970s. Homelessness has never been so prevalent and evident in the city since the Great Depression of the 1930s, affecting such a diverse range of people and communities. As Koch began his first term with the conversion of SROs into luxury hotels, modern homelessness initially appeared in the late 1970s as a result of the drop in single-room housing units. With Koch’s housing plan, some progress was made, but his inability to grasp the complexities of the homelessness epidemic ultimately hindered the city from implementing long-term changes.
The homeless population in New York City increased enormously in the late 1970s, and the subject of homelessness became a major political issue. The city’s housing stock saw substantial changes at this time, the most notable of which was the decline in the amount of single-room housing units. Single-room occupancy (SRO) units and residential hotels are examples of single-room housing, which has played an important role in accommodating New York’s homeless population. According to The Coalition for the Homeless, this population consisted of “poor single adults, childless couples, and even families (until regulatory enforcement in the early 1960s prohibited occupancy by families)” (Coalition). Single-room housing was also necessary for patients discharged from psychiatric institutes and hospitals, especially after the state established a new strategy of “deinstitutionalization” for thousands of mentally ill people in the 1950s. This led to thousands of mentally ill patients being released from centers and hospitals while the government neglected to invest the money saved from letting these patients go into community-based housing. Because of this, “many deinstitutionalized individuals living with mental illness had no alternative but to move into single-room housing” (Coalition).
Single-room housing stock began to diminish significantly in the 1970s as a result of conversion and demolition, with the number of single-room units dropping by more than 100,000 by the end of the decade. Presently, the city has what is known as a right to shelter. As Sarah Gonzalez said in Counting The Homeless, this means that “New York City is legally obligated to find a bed for every person who needs one — every single adult, every family, every couple — every night of the year” (Gonzalez, Helm). This law did not exist in the late 1970s, thus thousands of homeless New Yorkers were forced to live on the streets and fend for themselves. The city lost approximately 800,000 residents during this decade, and “as a result of these large population losses, together with rising maintenance costs and stagnant tenant incomes, entire neighborhoods in the city were devastated by waves of abandonment and arson” (Furman). The Callahan v. Carey lawsuit was one of the most pivotal moments in the history of homelessness. In 1979, lawyer Robert Hayes filed a lawsuit against the City and State, claiming that New Yorkers had a constitutional right to shelter. The complaint cited the New York State Constitution, which states that “the aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such of its subdivisions….” (Galie, Bopst). A New York State Supreme Court judge ordered the city and state to give shelter to all homeless men by the end of the year.
However, in the 1980s, the city’s homeless population only grew, and a new problem of family homelessness appeared. In the early 1980s, rising family homelessness became visible for the first time as a result of “the deep economic recession, along with dramatic cutbacks in Federal housing programs by the Reagan Administration, accelerated the rise of family homelessness” (Coalition). Throughout the decade, the number of homeless families grew rapidly, eventually accounting for two-thirds of the city’s homeless population living in shelters and welfare hotels. The conversion of numerous single-room-occupancy hotels (SROs) into luxury apartments at the start of Koch’s first term contributed to the rising homelessness situation in the 1980s. The SRO hotels were designed to provide refuge for individuals in need, but as noted in Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City, “Leventhal and Koch were so focused on rehabilitating housing that they failed to perceive the harm in SRO conversions” (Koch). The city council’s renewal of the J-51 program in November 1979 ignored the fact that tax-subsidized renovation would evict thousands of SRO tenants.
The lack of low-income housing, however, was only half of the problem; diminishing social services and rising drug addiction led to an increase in the number of individuals living on the streets. In a few years, a new generation of homeless people emerged, known as “The New Homeless,” who had developed addiction at a younger age and were in worse state than the older homeless populations. Their early addiction made them “unemployable,” and increased unemployment, combined with the severe recession precipitated by Federal Reserve chair Paul Volcker, was another factor in the homelessness epidemic. Volcker’s 20% hike in interest rates and revaluation of the dollar resulted in increasing poverty and the first-time homelessness of a huge number of families.
There was widespread consensus that something needed to be done about New York City’s homelessness situation, which was only getting worse with time. As a result, in 1985, Mayor Koch introduced what is now known as the city’s Ten Year Plan for Housing, and in his speech, according to the Furman Center’s Housing Policy in New York City, he described a “five-year $4.4 billion program to build or rehabilitate around 100,000 housing units for middle class, working poor and low-income families and individuals” (Furman). increasing the number of units to 252,000, while the financial plan was extended to $5.1 billion three years later. The proposal was risky because no one in Koch’s administration knew where the money would come from, but it worked out, making it one of Koch’s most successful initiatives. While Koch advocated funding the scheme with rent earnings from Battery Park City and cross-subsidies from luxury properties, the majority of the money came from the city’s capital budget. One of Koch’s financial advisers, Biderman, explained, “We quickly realized that if we wanted to have a real program, a meaningful program, that we needed to start spending a lot of our own capital dollars” (Koch). The in-rem housing stock was the focus of the majority of the Ten Year Plan, and the city was able to rehabilitate “virtually all of its in rem buildings and developed virtually all of its vacant land” (Furman). Koch’s initiative also resulted in the relocation of thousands of homeless families to new residences. As a result, from 1988 to 1990, the number of homeless families in the shelter system decreased by 29%.
Despite some of Koch’s plan’s accomplishments, housing issues persisted. The early 1990s economic collapse resulted in an upsurge in family homelessness. According to the Counting The Homeless podcast, “Last year, the city spent $364 million — about a million dollars a day — using hotels as shelters” and even more on traditional shelters (Gonzalez, Helm). Even the Coalition For The Homeless, which advocates for the right to shelter, did not anticipate the city to turn to hotels for accommodation, especially because permanent housing is both cheaper and more humane. Most homeless individuals just require a little aid for a short period of time before they can get back on their feet. The chronically homeless, a small percentage of the homeless population who are battling with addiction and mental health challenges, require the constancy and security of a permanent home. Given the amount of time they spend hopping between shelters, emergency rooms, hospitals, arrests, and jail, providing them with housing help would be more cost-effective than allowing them to be homeless. While there have been some partially successful measures to alleviate homelessness throughout the years, most of them have focused on the economic aspect of the problem while disregarding the social side.
Works Cited
“18. Homelessness.” Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City, 2010, pp. 276–289., doi:10.7312/soff15032–018.
“19. The Koch Housing Plan (1986–89).” Ed Koch and the Rebuilding of New York City, 2010, pp. 290–304., doi:10.7312/soff15032–019.
Galie, Peter J., and Christopher Bopst. The New York State Constitution. Oxford Univ. Press, 2012.
Gonzalez, Sarah, and Sally Helm. “Counting The Homeless.” NPR, NPR, 18 May 2019, www.npr.org/2019/05/17/724462179/episode-913-counting-the-homeless
Housing Policy in New York City: A Brief History. (n.d.). Retrieved December 19, 2020, from https://furmancenter.org/files/publications/AHistoryofHousingPolicycombined0601_000.pdf
Why Are So Many People Homeless? (n.d.). Retrieved December 19, 2020, from https://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/why-are-so-many-people-homeless/
