A growing number of families, especially women with children, make up the ranks of those seeking housing in homeless shelters. On an average night 10,177 children and their 8,024 adult family members stay at homeless shelters. Seventy-eight percent of shelter residents are families or single women. Of these, some 500 families who have qualified for shelter because they are seeking refuge from domestic violence have to sign up for housing each night at the Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx because they have been given housing for only one day at a time.  
 
National increase
According to Martin Oesterreich, the city commissioner for homeless services, the increase is happening across the United States. A 25-city survey showed a 17 percent increase in homeless applicants for assistance.

One development contributing to the number of people with no homes is the rising cost of apartments in the city. Steven Banks, counsel to the Coalition for the Homeless and the Homeless Rights Project of the Legal Aid Society, told the New York Times, "What we're seeing now is that work isn't enough to keep people out of the shelter system. The $5.15 per hour minimum wage is not enough to cover rents greater than $700 or $800 a month."  
 
'Affordability gap'
A 1996 New York City study on housing showed that the median contract rent of housing units not regulated by the city's rent control laws was $690. The study found that 25.6 of those renting unregulated apartments and 29.1 percent of those in rent stabilized households paid more than half their income for rent and utilities, something the report's authors cynically called an "affordability gap." "The city report listed 30 percent of income as the "affordability standard."

As a result of this gap, more working people are falling behind in the rent and getting evicted. Landlords were successful in obtaining 122,000 eviction warrants in New York City in 2000, up from 114,000 in 1999.

During January, according to state court documents, the Emergency Assistance Unit in the Bronx was overcrowded on a daily basis, with more than 700 people staying there each night. Up to 32 families were relegated to sleeping on the floor at the facility. In addition, the court found that there was no cleaning staff, which "makes it an extremely unhealthy place for a particularly vulnerable population."  
 
Garbage on the floor
The Times reported that when journalists arrived to interview residents of the shelter, guards ordered them not to speak to them. One woman went around the corner to a pay phone and called a reporter to say, "This place is horrible. There's garbage on the floor. They've been busing us at night to a place in the Bronx where they do a full body search, even on the children."
 
 
Related article:
Affordable housing is a right  
 
 
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