In NYC's Schools, 1 In Every 10 Kids Is Homeless

NEW YORK — The number of homeless students in New York City schools increased again last academic year to a figure more than twice the capacity of Yankee Stadium and larger than the entire population of New Hampshire's biggest city, newly released data show.

Of the city's roughly 1.1 million students, 114,659 — more than one in 10 — were identified as homeless in the 2017-18 school year, according to the data compiled and published Monday by the New York State Technical and Education Assistance Center for Homeless Students.

That number reflects a 2.7 percent increase from the prior year and a staggering 65.5 percent spike from the 2010-2011 academic year, according to data from the center, a project of the advocacy group Advocates for Children of New York.

The Department of Education has worked to expand services for homeless students in recent years amid the city's ongoing homelessness crisis. But the continued growth in the schools' homeless population proves the city must step up further to get those kids to school and provide them the support they need, said Kim Sweet, Advocates for Children's executive director.

"While the City works to address the overwhelming problem of homelessness, it must take bold action to ensure that students who are homeless get an excellent education and do not get stuck in a cycle of poverty," Sweet said in a statement.

About three quarters of the 152,839 homeless students across New York State last school year were in New York City, according to the data pulled from the state Education Department’s Student Information Repository System.

Nearly 62 percent of the city's students that were classed as homeless were "doubled up," meaning they shared housing with someone else. More than 37,000 lived in shelters and another 5,600 stayed in cars, parks, campgrounds, trailers or abandoned buildings.

Nearly 40,000, or close to 35 percent, were in The Bronx, where a single geographic district had more than 10,000.

The growth came amid Mayor Bill de Blasio's "Turning the Tide" plan to combat homelessness, which aims to keep homeless people closer to their communities by ultimately opening 90 new shelters across the city. The peak number of families with children staying in shelters has dropped to about 40,600 so far this year from about 43,200 in 2014, according to the Department of Homeless Services.

The city has ramped up spending on services for homeless students in recent years. The Department of Education said it plans to place 70 social workers at 43 elementary schools with high concentrations of students living in temporary housing and has doubled the number of after-school reading clubs at city shelters.

"Meeting the needs of our students in temporary housing is deeply important to me," schools Chancellor Richard Carranza said in a statement. "... We will continue to expand and deepen our investments, and we will have more policy updates to share in the coming months."

The DOE this month brought support for homeless students into the Office of Community Schools. Those community schools have reduced chronic absenteeism by 9.4 percentage points, more than five times the citywide rate of 1.8 percent, the department said.

The Education and Homeless Services departments have also worked since this summer to place nearly 200 homeless families in shelters closer to their youngest child's school, officials said.

The drop in the number of families in shelters has helped DHS implement its "borough-based approach by offering hundreds of families who faced long commutes to school the opportunity to move closer to their youngest child's classroom," department spokesman Isaac McGinn said in a statement.

But there's still a need for long-term funding for the school social workers meant to help homeless students, Advocates for Children said. More than 100 schools with at least 50 homeless students still lack them, according to the group.

"Given the persistent problem of student homelessness, the City must redouble its efforts, including providing long-term funding for social workers to help ensure that these students can get to school every day and receive the counseling and academic support they need to succeed," Sweet said.

(Lead image: People attend a service at Judson Memorial Church on National Homeless Persons' Memorial Day on Dec. 21, 2017 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images)