City to charge rent to homeless shelter residents with jobs

Adam Lisberg
DAILY NEWS CITY HALL BUREAU CHIEF

 

Originally Published:Tuesday, April 13th 2010, 5:00 PM
Updated: Tuesday, April 13th 2010, 7:18 PM

 

Platt/Getty

The city plans to start charging rent to homeless shelter residents with jobs later this year.

Homeless to pay rent?

Nothing's free in New York - not even a stint in a city shelter.

Homeless people with jobs are going to have to start paying the city rent to stay in shelters, officials said Tuesday.

"Open-ended handouts, we know, don't work," Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said. "This is not a moneymaker. We're not doing this to close budget gaps. It's really the principles that are involved."

Shelter residents would have to pay as much as 44% of their income in their first year in the program.

After that, it would be that amount or half the cost of their housing - whichever is higher.

Critics say the plan penalizes people who are already struggling.

"It makes far more sense to allow those families to save their meager funds in order to be able to get out of the shelter system sooner," said Steven Banks, chief attorney of the Legal Aid Society, which may sue to block the plan.

"This is an extreme policy that has no discernible benefit, that will end up hurting the families and costing the taxpayers money," Banks said. "If necessary, we'll certainly go to court." 

The first bills would likely be sent in September, Gibbs said, raising an estimated $2 million to $3 million a year.

The city first tried charging rent last year but dropped the effort after Legal Aid threatened to sue. 

State law requires New York to charge rent to the homeless who can afford it. The city never did, but has been pressed to do it since a state audit last year.

Only about 15% of shelter residents make enough money to have to pay rent, which is calculated on a sliding scale, Gibbs said. A family of three making $10,000 a year would pay $36 a month, while the same family making $25,000 a year would pay $926 a month.

Gibbs said the city tried to set up an alternative system to make rent less steep at higher incomes, while also setting up mandatory savings programs.

She said the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance turned that plan down, saying it did not comply with the law.

"The city is working to come into compliance with budgeting income for all public assistance recipients," said OTDA spokesman Anthony Farmer. "It would be premature to discuss that as we're continuing to work with the City on it."

"You can't get blood from a stone," said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst at the Coalition for the Homeless. "You don't balance budgets in the middle of the greatest economic crisis since the Great Depressionon the backs of homeless families and children."

Lawmakers in Albany are pushing to bar the state from charging the homeless rent at all. 

Assemblyman Keith Wright (D-Harlem) and Sen. Daniel Squadron (D-Brooklyn) said they had both heard recent discussions about the city's plan to charge rent again, and believed they had the votes to cut it off at the state level.

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/ny_local/2010/04/13/2010-04-13_city_to_charge_homeless_people_with_jobs_rent_to_stay_in_shelters.html#ixzz0l1jFgyxb