>>>zyphus lebrun: onthis special edition of independent sources. homelessn.y.c. concerns that more people are sleeping onthe streets in the city and what is being done to addressthat. our special look coming up on independent sources. ♪ [theme music] ♪ >>>zyphus lebrun: welcometo independent sources bringing you news from new york's ethnicand immigrant communities. i'm zyphus lebrun. walking thestreets of new york these
days and it's hard not to seethem. men and women swaddled in layers of clothing allhuddled together for warmth in the shadow of a building. theyare the drawn faces of the city's homeless. one statisticfrom the coalition for the homeless estimates thatthere are nearly sixty thousand people sleeping inmunicipal shelters each night. there are those who believethat's only the tip of the proverbial iceberg. so are thenumbers increasing or aren't they? with me instudio to answer these and
other questions are jeffforeman, the director of policy at new york citycare for the homeless and mira garrett bayonne,co-founder and broker at skyton group. skyton groupis a boutique brokerage firm that works with thecity to provide affordable housing units to homelessclients. thank you both for joining us in studio today. >>>jeff foreman: thank you. >>>mira garrett bayonne:thank you for having me.
>>>zyphus lebrun: all rightbefore we start i'd just like us to take a look at thispiece produced by abi ishola. >>>abi ishola: have younoticed more homeless people in new york city? >>>victor lee: no. it'snot that i've noticed more people just they are notbeing i guess reached out to and as a result they're stillthere and they are there for a long time and it's a funnything i believe the department of homeless maybe theindividuals should be reaching
out to them but idon't see them. >>>abi ishola: so haveyou noticed more homeless people in the city? >>>yardan vilcom:recently i did yeah. people around the city? >>>astonio allen: i have. ihave. like in the subways. actually on the streets aswell i just gave someone a dollar a 5th avenue just now so- >>>abi ishola: howdoes it make you feel?
>>>astonio allen: scared.i mean it's like a sign of the times and it could beanybody. it could be me. could be you. so yeah it'sa scary thing. scary. >>>marisa caramanico: they'reall populated in certain areas where it's warm like overthe grates and they camp out there for a while or ilive near a bridge, it's under the bridge, so yeah- >>>marisa caramanico: alittle uncomfortable. i mean i also feel reallybad and wish that they
would just find a place togo but what are you going to do? people choose to live that way. >>>abi ishola: do youthink that the city is doing enough tohelp homeless people? >>>marisa caramanico: idon't know. i think that some people chooseto live that way. >>>abi ishola: do you think thecity is doing a good enough job with letting peopleknow what they can do? >>>victor lee: i cannotreally comment on that
because i myself as a cityemployee and we try out best but a lot of timesthere are so many different arms attached to it you justdon't know who you're suppose to be reaching out to. >>>yardan vilcom: i'm asmall business owner and to some degree i do feel it whena lot of homelessness around my business you fear the peopleare afraid but personally no, i don't think it's affected me. >>>abi ishola: whatkind of business?
>>>yardan vilcom: thoseshops, the holiday markets. >>>abi ishola: so when homelesspeople are around sometimes it just makes other peoplenot feel comfortable? >>>yardan vilcom: correct.it's most of businesses rely on tourists andthey're kind of scary. at the end of day thehomeless are human being. you don't want to hurtanyone but people out of new york are afraid of it. >>>abi ishola: what about forthe crime rate? does it make
you feel like it will go up? >>>astonio allen: no. i'mnot so worried about that. people have needs so whenyou're homeless like your concern is shelter youknow security you know a place to lay down withoutfeeling like compromise and in the streetsit's just not safe so- >>>abi ishola: do youthink the city is doing enough? >>>astonio allen: i reallydon't know what the city can do. i did hear about de blasiopushing with a homeless shelter,
trying to get a lot of peopleoff the streets and i did hear about the policei guess going in the subways getting the homeless peopleout of the tunnels and stuff like that but i mean ifyou don't have a place to go that's hard. i don't know. >>>marisa caramanico:they can go to homeless shelters and i've talkedto people before and they're like, i'm like,"what are you doing?" they're like, "i have family."like people have family.
they're just, maybe they're,i don't really know many homeless people so- >>>zyphus lebrun: all right. alot of varying views there. a lot of intriguing viewsthere. first question to you jeff is are thenumbers increasing? >>>jeff foreman: i thinkthat's an interesting question. we have a very exact figuresfor people who are in the various shelter systemsand they are precise day by day so we know that theyare in fact increasing numbers
in the shelter system. the realquestion i think is people who are not in the system,street homeless people, and there's an annual on thestreet count but that's a very difficult thing to do. peoplequestion the accuracy. there are however a fewways i think there are two important ways to look at thatquestion. first there are some evidence-based statistics,for example, calls to the 311 line about people who arehomeless. people who use drop in centers orsafe havens, which are
typically for people whoare homeless and on the street. those measures areway up, which would lead you to believe that thereare more homeless people living on the streets. ithink the second important way is new yorkersanecdotally see more people on the streets soi do feel there are more homeless people and in thevarious systems the fact that it's up so high wouldalso lead you to believe that. >>>zyphus lebrun: now thething too is just to clarify,
when you say the varioussystems, you're talking about one on one level, thereis what the city's doing and then there are you knowgrassroots organizations and nonprofits that are also tryingto address this correct? >>>jeff foreman: welli'm actually talking about something more specificthan that. the number that people use that you see inthe media all the time is the number of peoplewho live in the city department of homelessservices homeless shelters.
early in december thatnumber went over fifty eight thousand for the firsttime in many many months and it has been going up. that'sthe number that always gets used when you see a story in thepaper. when you see coverage on television. typicallythey will cite that number as the number of people who arehomeless but there are other homeless shelter systemsthat are run by the city of new york they justaren't run as department of homeless serviceshelters, for example, we
have a large domesticviolence shelter program. those people are alsohomeless. in fact that's a time limited program whenyou have the end of your time there most ofthe victims who are in domestic violence sheltershave a choice. go back to their abuser or go to ahomeless shelter. there are eight thousand eighthundred and eighty beds in the domestic violenceshelter system. there's a separate system underthe hiv aids services
administration thathas an emergency and a transitional program forhousing for people who have hiv aids. those twocategories, emergency and transitional, not countingtheir permanent housing, that's over three thousandbeds. we have a separate system for beds forrunaway and homeless unaccompanied youth.there's three hundred fifty beds in that system.so when we say fifty eight thousand that's reallyif you count the other
systems we're well overmaybe sixty five thousand or more and that doesn'tget to the street homeless people or the nonprofitusually church based shelters. >>>zyphus lebrun: so mira,in your experience what's contributing to this increasein numbers that we're seeing? >>>mira garrett bayonne:well it's multi-faceted. there's a few differentcomponents to it. first of all i would point out thatnew york city is unique in that it is a right to sheltercity so stemming back from the
legal president from 1979 ofcallahan versus carey where basically it stated that pernew york state constitution that it is the city's and thestate's duty to have housing for these people in emergencysituations where they have nowhere to go. so if youhave nowhere to go in the city you have the rightbasically to go into any intake center and theymust provide you by law with housing that samenight. now with that said there are a lot of migrantscoming into new york city
who know that if i haveno place to go i can go there so you have a lot of peoplewho are in the homeless shelters who are not from new yorkcity but they know that they can come and it's a safehaven. so that's increasing the numbers particularlyin this economic climate. secondly after superstorm sandya lot of new yorkers were displaced. their homeswere damaged or destroyed and some of them went tolive with family and then as the economy continuedto tank now your family is
in financial trouble andnow you have to, you need to leave or you havenowhere to go. so there are a multitudeof reasons why. >>>zyphus lebrun: nowyou know you said you mentioned this whole rightto shelter because new york state, new york city,falls into the category. one of the women in thepiece talked about this notion that you know heylisten that people who are homeless essentiallychoose to be homeless.
i mean is there any credenceto that or is she like way off base? >>>mira garrett bayonne:no i think there is some truth to that. again thereare a lot of components to homelessness and you havea lot of mental health issues, substance abuse,so clearly you know if you have some mental healthissues that cloud your judgment and logicalchoices you may end up on the street or a lot of peopleend up on the street because
they say don't feel safein the homeless shelters. there's a lot of you know movingparts to that so in essence there are some peopleon the street who do choose to be on the street because partof that right they could have shelter if they chose to. >>>zyphus lebrun: now youmention something mira and i want to pick this up withyou jeff is this notion of folks do not feel safe in theshelters. is that something that's pervasive, is thatsomething that's kind of
like one off, have youheard anything like that? >>>jeff foreman: i thinkthere are a lot of people who do not feel safe inthe shelter system and to be honest there are awide variety of types of shelters and conditionsand qualities in shelters so there are some verygood shelters in the city and i think most peoplewho are in those shelters would feel relativelysafe. i've have never met anyone who wanted to livein shelter. you know i
always refer to that asbreaking into a shelter, nobody wants to break intoa shelter, they're all trying to get out but someare safe. there are some shelters that really aren'tvery safe and i can understand why people would bevery uncomfortable and even feel unsafe in them. >>>mira garrett bayonne:and there are some shelters that are very comfortable.we've heard of a few where you know they even do yourlaundry. of course some people
aren't really because youknow we deal with people and trying to get them out of theshelters and we found suitable housing for many peoplewho've turned it down believe it or not. >>>zyphus lebrun: really?and why was that? did they give you a reason? >>>mira garrett bayonne:well a lot of people say that, "oh it's too far away." youknow, they wanted to be in a particular areas. now thatthey have a voucher i guess
they're thinking well it's myyou know i can start over and i want to be in a particularplace or you know and they're kind of comfortablewhere they are. you know there's a lot of things you don't haveto worry about when you're in the shelter. you knowthat you have a place to stay. you don't have to worry aboutrent, you don't have to worry about a lot of things. nowcoming out of that i think there's a transition ofok now yes i want to be integrated back into typicalevery day independent society
but now i'm on my own.you know there's not that support system. you know youhave your caseworkers and things like that when you'rein the shelter now you're on your own. for a lotof people that is a transition. that can be scary. >>>zyphus lebrun: alright,we'll stick a pin in there and when we come backwe'll talk a little bit more about what's beingdone to help alleviate some of this homelessnessin the city. before that
crystal lowe hassome other news. >>>crystal lowe: here'sa look at some headlines from the ethnic andcommunity media. brooklyn based reports onrefugees welcome. a storefront sticker a campaign createdin response to the syrian refugee crisis. thepremise is simple. the organization createsstickers intended for display in storefrontwindows and doors that make it clear that refugeesare welcome at that place
of business. the idea forthe project was launched by strategists, activists andbosnian refugee veda partalo. she teamed up with the businessowners of a minneapolis creative studio called burlesqueof north america to create the transparent refugeeswelcome stickers, which can now be purchased byvisiting their website at burlesquedesign.com sixsouth bronx natives have come together to createan exhibit titled barrios capturing over three decadesof images featuring the
bronx and its raw form.the hunts point express takes a closer look at these sixphotographers who collectively called themselves seis del sur.they all started taking pictures of the southbronx in their teens with most of the images beingshot during the early 1980's. now professional photographersand filmmakers they describe the two floor exhibitas their story. documenting their personal liveswhile chronicling the boroughs rebound from despair andneglect. barrios is running now
through march 16th atnew york university. in other news new york's indianjews strive to preserve their heritage. news india timesreports on baghdadis and the bene israel inbollywood and beyond, an exhibit that explores thelargely forgotten history of the bene israel of india.they exhibit comprised of books and memorabilia from the kennethand joyce robins collection explores how indianjews, women in particular, were leaders in bollywoodand beyond at a time when
customs and traditions keptthem out. the exhibit will be on display at the center forjewish history in new york city until april 1st. and finallythe museum of the city of new york helped celebratefolk singer delores "dee" dixon and others in anexhibit titled folk city: new york and the folk musicrevival. the riverdale press reports the exhibit willfollow the rise of folk music in new york city and its influenceon american society in the 1950's and 60's. dixon,the sole female member of
the new world singers,along with her band mates recorded one of theearliest versions of the protest song made famousby bob dylan called blowin in the wind. she alongwith other civil rights era folk music artists allmade music in the name of social change. themultimedia exhibition featuring original instruments,hand written lyrics, video and film footage, will be ondisplay at the museum of the city of new york until january10th 2016. those are just
the few headlines from thecity's ethnic and community media. independentsources will be right back. >>>zyphus lebrun: thanksfor staying tuned to our special look at homelessnessin the city. mira, before we went to break we were talkingabout you know people not necessarily kind of likingthe system because they have support. what i wantedto talk about now is kind of what's in place on the citylevel i guess for assisting people? forinstance i know that there is a
linc program that you areinvolved with. could you talk a little bit about that program? >>>mira garrett bayonne:sure. the linc program is relatively new. it is agovernment aid system where they're giving people, peoplein shelters vouchers to find private housing now that couldbe rooms or apartments, standard apartments, and they'repaying basically for either a portion or for the wholemonth's rent throughout the lease to get thesepeople out of the shelters.
we're working with thecaseworkers directly from these homeless sheltersand with the department of homeless services tobasically facilitate getting the demand and the supply andwe are kind of running into some walls with landlords just notreally knowing much about the program or having falseperceptions of who this market is coming into. >>>zyphus lebrun: and whenyou say false perceptions you mean?
>>>mira garrett bayonne:when you think homeless people coming from a homeless sheltera lot of people think, "oh, it must be you know mentalhealth issues or substance abuse or just peoplewho don't want to do anything for themselves." whichis not the case. we have, most of the peoplethat we work with are working, have some savings, and aretrying to get themselves back out there and integrated backinto a private sector living. >>>zyphus lebrun: now, are thereincentives for the landlords for
when they allow folks tocome in and use their homes? >>>mira garrett bayonne:yes there are incentives. first of all you're able to rentrooms so we found with a lot of our landlords thatwe've worked with we're able to get them hundreds of dollarsmore over what they were asking just on the privaterental market because you're able to now breakyour apartment, if you have a three bedroomapartment, you can break it up into three rooms and rent themout eight hundred dollars
per room. now forapartments, studio, one bedroom, there's a thousand dollarbonus, signing bonus, and if you bring in a veteranthere's up to twenty five hundred dollarsin bonus money. >>>zyphus lebrun: so thecity's making it look good for these landlords. >>>mira garrett bayonne: they'retrying to give incentives so that you would at leastgive it a chance. have the conversation, meetsome of these people you know?
>>>zyphus lebrun: rightabsolutely. jeff do you find that there are a lot of programslike this in the city that people just don't know about? >>>jeff foreman: i thinkthat's true people don't know about the link program.there are actually six separate linc programs for differentcategories or and they have two additional rental assistanceprograms. one based on a federal program to avoidevictions and another one a tenant based program. and allthose programs the tenants
pay thirty percent of theirgross income towards the rent so it's affordable.that's a hud definition of affordable for affordablehousing. it's affordable to the tenant many of whom areeither in very low wage jobs, usually minimum wage jobs, ormaybe on some form government benefit like a social securitydisability income but whatever their income is they paythirty percent of it and then the city would pick up the restto the limitation so there are those programs. andthere's a lot of other
things the city does,for example, i think it's really important that thecity has increased their aid for prevention programsthat will help people who are at risk of homelessnessand in the first year of the new administration theydoubled that amount for that program and then they added50% more the second year and that seems to be working toavoid evictions and prevent people from losing housing andthat's important too. >>>zyphus lebrun: but oneof the things though is
that you know the mayor'sbeen criticized a lot. he's been criticized verysharply because a lot of folks feel that he's not doing enough.is that accurate description of him not handling thehomeless situation? >>>jeff foreman: well he's anadvocate for homeless policies. we would always like to seethem do more. i think that the two things they are mostconcerning about city policies are number one are they toscale, to the scale of the problem and numbertwo are they fast enough?
so for example one of thegreatest things that the city can do is to create supportivehousing. the city just announced a program to createfifteen thousand units of supportive housing.that would be a remarkable increase but it's overfifteen years and that's not really fast enough.so you know we would have some criticism for some ofthe policies. i think it's moving in the right direction.the real problem has been and i think it goes to theproblems that linc has been
having that there just aren'tenough units available in that price range. that's why thecreation of new units, like the supportivehousing, becomes so important. >>>zyphus lebrun: andnow there's a great a push towards that. i mean isthere any sense that you know things may change?you were saying about the scale of it. is there any sensethat on the ground at least from the governmentperspective that they're heeding this call? that hey listen weneed to create those units?
>>>jeff foreman: you know,in the current year budget the city budgeted for overeight thousand vouchers but i can tell you thatthere are thousands of people who are holdingvouchers that can't find units. that's why it's so importantyou know that people are helping them find units butthere just aren't enough units out there so i think that'sreally the crux of the problem and it's going to take alittle while to deal with it but we've really got to dothat. if we had continued to
put as much money into publichousing as we did in the 1960's and especiallythe 1970's we probably wouldn't have that problemtoday. but lots of studies have shown we've lost atremendous amount of units in the last decade or sofor extremely low income or people livingin deep poverty. >>>zyphus lebrun: and whyis that? i mean i kind of know the answerto that but- >>>jeff foreman: well youknow i think one of the
ways to answer that isthat we are sort of a victim of our own success,that is we've had an incredible boom ofbuilding in new york city, any new yorker can seethat, i can see it from my window every day butthose are mostly what most people would think of asluxury apartments. you know, high rise glassenclosed places that are never going to be for thepeople that we represent and the places that gotknocked down to build them
in many cases were yearsago were sro's, the single room occupancy, placeswhere poor new yorkers traditionally foundhousing and in more recent years it was just lowincome housing. but so there was a recent studythat came out from street easy, the real estatewebsite, that said we did we've lost four hundredthousand units of a thousand dollars or less.there was a study that was done towards theend of the bloomberg
administration by thecommunity service society that said we had lost oversix hundred thousand units that were affordable topeople at 200% of poverty or lower. that's ithink one of the answers. >>>zyphus lebrun:absolutely. absolutely. ok, we're due for a secondbreak and when we come back we'll get a couple offinal thoughts from you. >>>zyphus lebrun: welcomeback. with me in studio are jeff foreman and miragarrett bayonne.
thanks again for being with us.so i just wanted to kind of wrap up our conversation,which been a really good one with some final thoughtsand mira i'll let you go first. just kind of a general sense ofmaybe what you think is next for addressing homelessnessin the city you know? >>>mira garrett bayonne:well i think that that the city is definitely makingstrides to rid the problem and to get it under control.where i stand from what i do at skyton group, my husbandand i, every day we are just
trying really hard to helpfacilitate what's being put in place and just trying to rampup the supply to meet the demand. so what i wouldreally like is just for the landlords out there tojust give it a shot, let's have a conversation about it,see if it's mutually beneficial and see where we can gowith it because there's a lot of incentives out there for helpingyou know opening your eyes and helping with thehomeless market. >>>zyphus lebrun: is there a waythat perhaps these folks can
get in touch with you,landlords or people who may be interested. >>>mira garrett bayonne: sure.they can visit our website. there's tons of informationthere. www.skyton -s-k-y-t-o-n-regroup.com. >>>zyphus lebrun: great.and jeff finally some final thoughts from you. >>>jeff foreman: well there'stwo things i was thinking about. one is, i think it's importantto note and we haven't
mentioned that it'sagainst the law for landlords to discriminate against peoplebecause of the source of funding of their rent so that'ssort of a last alternative but people should not discriminatebased on where the rent money is coming from andit is illegal to do so. the second thing i want to sayis you know as an advocate i feel strongly and confidentthat we could end homelessness and we could do it in thenext several years if we committed ourselves to itand i feel strongly that
we could do that because wecould do it for not more money than we're already spending.it's much cheaper to find housing for people than it is tospend over one billion dollars a year in new yorkcity for shelter. so i really would love to seeus commit ourselves to solving this problem and it's great forthe victims of homelessness, it's great for ourneighborhoods, it's the right thing to do andit will actually save us money over time.
>>>zyphus lebrun: you mentionthe fact that folks should not be discriminated against,do they have any kind of recourse if theydo feel that they have been discriminated against? >>>jeff foreman: the humanrights commission is where they should go. theyshould file a complaint. you know as i said it'ssort of a last resort. what they really want ishousing not to get into an argument with a landlordbut that's what should happen.
i know that many organizations,legal aid societies and the department of homelessservices are aware that there's a lot of discriminationgoing on and are thinking about how to handle bringing cases. >>>mira garrett bayonne:and part of it is proving it so if we brought more educationto the landlords and give them you know this is what itis, this is what it's not maybe they'll be more open andmore you know more open to the idea.
>>>zyphus lebrun: ok. wellthank you mira and thank you jeff. there's so muchmore that we could talk about but i guess we justdon't have the time right now. and that's all thetime we have this week. i'd like to thank myguests once more. jeff foreman and mira garrettbayonne for coming in. on behalf of all the good folkshere at independent sources i'd like to wish you andyour family happy holidays.
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