Housing and Homelessness

New York City is in the midst of a housing crisis which has left tens of thousands of our neighbors homeless and currently threatens hundreds of thousands more with the same fate. The citizens of Queens have tried to help. Five years ago the Flushing Armory was converted into a shelter for single persons. The need for this facility has only increased with the passing of time. More recently, several Queens churches have set up small shelters, mostly for single men.

Such efforts have provided much needed services for particular homeless persons and served to educate members of the civil and religious communities to the urgency of the crisis. Shelter, however, are not homes and are, therefore, at best stopgap measures rather than solutions to the problem of homelessness. As religious people, we have a responsibility to understand the relationship between the housing crisis and the problems of the homeless and to propose genuine solutions based on careful analysis and our deepest faith convictions.

There are an estimated 60,000 to 80,000 homeless persons in New York City.[1] Although the stereotype of such persons is that they are mentally ill single men, the reality is quite different.

There are at least 4,816 homeless families in New York, comprised of 11,773 children and 6,061 adults. Of these families, 3,600 are being housed in welfare hotels; 436, in City emergency shelters; and 780, in alternative, not-for-profit hotel and shelter facilities.[2] There is no indication that these families have a higher incidence of mental illness, drug addiction or behavioral dysfunction than is average for the socioeconomic level.[3] No information is available concerning homeless families still on the streets.

In addition to these families, there are also 3,500 households in relocation emergency housing: temporary shelter for persons burned out, removed from condemned buildings or left homeless by other emergencies and unable to afford new homes. There is not, at this time, sufficient information available to determine the composition of these households.[4]

There are 10,500 single individuals housed in the City's emergency shelter system, 1,000 women and 9,500 men.[5] Another 20,000 to 30,000 single individuals are estimated to be living on the streets.[6]

Of this total population of single homeless, only 25% have suffered milder emotional problems. The remaining 65% are, like the majority of homeless families and households, mentally stable people who are simply too poor to afford housing on the current New York market.[7]

The mentally ill and unstable among the homeless population are victims of cutbacks in federal expenditures on disability benefits and funds for hospitals. They are also victims of state and federal "deinstitutionalization" policies, persons turned away from hospitals with a promise of group homes and other community level support systems that never materialize. "Deinstitutionalization," once hailed as an advance in human rights, has turned out to be simply another form of budget cutting leading to inhumane neglect.

The mentally stable majority of homeless persons are primarily people who have suffered as a result of several national and local policies. Federal support for low income housing construction has dropped drastically under the Reagan Administration; so, too, has support for Public Assistance benefits which many poor persons need to pay their rent. City policy has tended to give the real estate industry a free hand, thereby drastically reducing the City's low income housing stock. The City lost 32,000 single room occupancy units to gentrification before any controls were put on the conversion process.[8] There are currently at least 60,000 privately owned apartments in New York City being held off the market ("warehoused") for speculative purposes. Under current law this practice is perfectly legal. The City has no official policy on how to dispose of the 100,000 empty apartments it owns in some 6,000 buildings, but many are being sold or given to developers for upper income housing and many more are being sold at auction to the highest bidder; a small percentage are being used for low income housing or transitional housing for homeless persons.[9]

In such a climate, is it any wonder that many landlords are tempted to use both legal loopholes and illegal strategies to remove low income tenants in the expectation of realizing greater income from their property? Is it any wonder that almost no housing is available which is affordable by 70% of New York households whose annual income is under $25,000?[10] If these trends continue, our current homeless population will be increased greatly by the presently "hidden homeless" who now cling by their fingernails to what may well be the last affordable housing they can find in our City.

Under such circumstances we who serve the One who came to "preach good news to the poor" and to proclaim "the acceptable (Jubilee) year of the Lord" are obligated to speak out and to act. In so doing we proceed under clear guidance from Scripture.

Scripture teaches us that it is the responsibility of the people of God to ensure that all members of our civil community, including the stranger and the sojourner, have the basic material resources and social supports to lead lives which reflect their essential dignity and holiness as human persons. These teachings are grounded in the words of Genesis, which tell us that humanity was created in God's image and animated by the divine "breath of life" (Genesis 1:26, 2:7). It is this vision of the sacredness of all human persons which underlies the teachings of the Mosaic Law regarding the justice due to the most vulnerable members of society.

When you reap the harvest of your land you shall not reap your field to its very border, neither shall you gather the gleanings of your harvest. And you shall not strip your vineyard bare, nor shall you gather the fallen grapes of your vineyard; you shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: I am the Lord your God. (Leviticus 19:9-10)

You shall not oppress or rob your neighbor. The wages of a hired servant shall not remain with you all night until the morning. You shall not curse the deaf or put a stumbling block before the blind, but you shall fear your God: I am the Lord. (Leviticus 19:33-34)

In the prophetic tradition, the honoring of God's image in marginalized and afflicted persons is declared to be the essential "fast" or service which God demands of the covenant community.

Is this not the fast that I choose: to loose the bonds of wickedness, to undo the thongs of the yoke, to let the oppressed go free and to break every yoke? Is it not to share your bread with the hungry and bring the homeless poor into your house; when you see the naked to cover them, and not to hide from your own flesh? (Isaiah 58:6-7)

In the portion of the Hebrew Scriptures know as "The Writings," we find the story of Ruth, the Moabitess, one of the most marginalized of the sojourners in Israel, a non-Israelite widow. By insisting on her full personhood and her right to Israelite justice, she became the great-grandmother of King David, and thus in Christian tradition, an ancestor of our Lord Jesus Christ.

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus instructs us to see and serve him in the persons of the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, the naked, the sick and the prisoner (Matthew 25:31-46). Indeed, we are commanded to see such persons as continuing incarnations of Christ; they must be accorded the same honor and dignity that we accord to Him.

The many voices of Scripture are thus united in calling on Christians to express their love of God by loving the aspect of divinity present in every human person. Moreover, we are taught that this love must be particularly directed to those who are vulnerable, marginalized and even despised in our civil community. Scripture further instructs us, by numerous examples in varied contexts, that this love is best manifested by the fair distribution of material resources and the establishment of just social institutions. Any Christian policy on the issues of housing and homelessness must be rooted in these teachings.

Therefore, we take the principle that housing is a human right as the cornerstone of a just policy. This means that makeshift, temporary, dehumanizing "solutions" (such as barracks-type shelters for the homeless or the "doubling up" of low income families) must be rejected. Churches and individual Christians must seek permanent solutions which respect the personhood of those affected by homelessness and the shortage of affordable housing.

Such solutions include:

• Maintaining and expanding the stock of low and middle income housing in New York City.

• The construction of interim housing for the homeless which could be converted into permanent housing if the homelessness crisis is resolved. These interim housing facilities would also provide the medical, psychological, economic, and vocational training and support services necessary to help homeless persons reintegrate themselves into society.

• The establishment of a sufficient number of high-quality public medical and psychiatric facilities to accommodate those homeless persons who will need long-term care and/or rehabilitation for physical and mental illness.

• Requiring that current housing laws are not abused by landlords intent on greater profits, thereby assuring that people can retain their homes.

Some strategies for achieving these solutions which Churches and individuals may wish to consider are:

• Support increased Federal appropriation for low income housing.

• Support of legislation requiring the use of vacant City-owned buildings for interim and low income housing.

• Support of legislation to stop the "warehousing" of privately-owned apartments.

• Support the development of a City land-use policy which uses City resources in proportion to the actual needs of New York's residents.

• Sponsor an "eviction watch" project which checks for landlord abuse of eviction laws and challenges such abuse in court.

• Sponsor the work of tenant organizers in your community.

• Support efforts to have SRO and "Welfare Hotels" acquired by either the City or nonprofit agencies. This would ensure that these properties remain in the City's transitional and low income housing stock and make it more likely that they will be managed for maximum benefit to their residents.

• Support efforts to create a national health care system and to return federal funding to programs which provide medical, psychological, legal, and education services to the poor.

• Organize or support pastoral care, worship, or other forms of religious witness with homeless persons or those in transitional housing. Such a presence can be of crucial importance to people in the process of regaining self-esteem and empowerment.

• Fund and coordinate the rehabilitation of construction of transitional housing in your community.

• Establish a group home in your community for homeless persons in need of psychological support services.

These suggestions of goals and strategies are not meant to be exhaustive. We believe they move us in the direction of God's call for just resolution of our City's housing shortage and homelessness crisis.

Notes

1. Statistics provided by the Coalition for the Homeless as of April, 1987. No borough by borough statistical breakdown is available.

2. March, 1987, monthly report on homelessness by New York City Human Resources Administration.

3. A Shelter is Not a Home: Report of the Manhattan Borough President's Task Force on Housing for Homeless Families, 1987, p. 6.

4. Information provided by the Community Service Society as of May, 1987.

5. Human Resources Association, March 1987 Report.

6. Community Service Society Statistics as of May, 1987.

7. The Council of the City of New York: Report of the Select Committee on the Homeless, 1987, p. 15.
8. Ibid., p. 11.

9. Factsheet prepared by the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing for a May, 1987, meeting with City Councilman Archie Spigner.

10. Ibid.