Homeless Outreach Gets Boost As Cold Strikes NYC

NEW YORK, NY — New York City is ramping up its efforts to get homeless people off the street as temperatures plummet for the winter, officials announced Tuesday.

The Department of Homeless Services and the NYPD will now spend part of every day, rather than just two days a week, encouraging homeless people in Midtown Manhattan between 30th and 60th streets to enter shelters.

The city also plans to open 250 more beds in Safe Haven shelters, which are made for homeless people who are most reluctant to enter traditional shelters. The additional rooms will be opened in various parts of the city that need them most, officials said.

The moves expand Mayor Bill de Blasio's initiatives to curb the city's homeless population and get people off the streets. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development counted about 75,000 homeless New Yorkers last year, some 3,900 of whom didn't have shelter.

"It can take dozens or more contacts to convince homeless New Yorkers to come off the streets and into permanent housing," de Blasio said in a statement Tuesday. "The addition of these new beds and the expansion of the joint DHS-NYPD operations in Midtown will go a long way toward building the trust it takes to make these transitions happen."

The DHS and NYPD work to connect homeless people on the street with shelters and other services through the city's HOME-STAT program, which involves regular canvassing of homeless populations in neighborhoods across the city. The program has gotten 865 New Yorkers off the streets in the last year, the city said.

Increasing the frequency of HOME-STAT outreach in Midtown will likely get more homeless people indoors and connected to services more quickly, city officials said. A majority of homeless people living on the street have mental illnesses or other health problems, according to the Coalition for the Homeless, a nonprofit group.

In addition to the expanded canvassing, HOME-STAT workers will share data with the NYPD on where they encounter homeless people most frequently so cops can more easily find belongings left on the street, officials said.

Some people HOME-STAT workers encounter may get referred to Safe Haven facilities, which have private or semi-private rooms and are more flexible than typical shelters.

The city plans to add 250 Safe Haven beds in the next two years, bringing the total number of beds citywide to about 1,500. The facilities typically offer case management services that help the residents stabilize their livese and find permanent homes.

Some advocates praised the Safe Haven expansion, which they say has proven itself as one of the best programs for reducing street homelessness.

"These Safe Haven Programs are without question the most effective mechanism to bring people in off the streets," Scott Aurwarter, the assistant executive director of nonprofit BronxWorks, said in a city press release. "The recent cold weather is a reminder of the moral imperative to help give these vulnerable individuals a safe and warm place to sleep."

(Lead image: A homeless man sits in the cold in Manhattan on Dec. 27. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)