It's harder for NYC homeless families without young kids to get shelter beds, data shows

In the last year, homeless families without young children in New York City are increasingly having to apply for permanent shelter placement several times before they’re approved for a bed, a Gothamist analysis found.

City data dating from 2017 to May of this year shows that a majority of so-called adult families — usually couples with no dependent kids or older children living with their parents — are consistently denied permanent placement in homeless shelters, forcing them to apply several times to the Department of Homeless Services to plead their case. Homeless advocates say it’s harder for this group to meet the city’s rules and required paperwork because they’ve lived on the street or are more likely to have a disability.

But the Department of Homeless Services , which runs the main intake center for adult families seeking refuge, said under the Adams administration, the number of reapplications has dropped significantly and has been much higher in previous years. Spokesperson Neha Sharma said in some months in 2019 and 2020, as many as 25% or 35% of families were approved for shelter after applying six or more times.

The city’s application statistics from May 2023 to May of this year show since last fall, 15% of adult families had to reapply at least six times on average before they were successfully placed in a permanent shelter. The numbers also show that 60% of adult families have had to apply more than once on average before they were found eligible for shelter. Families are typically assigned temporary shelters for 10 days while the Department of Homeless Services decides whether they are eligible for permanent shelter.

The new analysis comes as an affordable housing shortage and the end of several federal and state pandemic-era assistance programs push more New Yorkers to the city's streets and shelters, and as the Adams administration ramps up encampment sweeps and efforts to house homeless people . The city’s street homeless population reached a 15-year high earlier this year , according to an annual point in time count. The number of homeless people residing in city-run shelters is also at a record high, driven largely by the arrival of new migrants.

Adult families who want to shelter together must demonstrate their housing history and prove their marriage or domestic unions to city officials — single adults seeking beds aren't subject to these requirements. Families with children, meanwhile, need to show they don’t have other housing options in order to qualify for shelter.

“The adult family eligibility process has been designed to screen out the people who need shelter the most,” said Tim Campbell, deputy executive director of programs for the Coalition for the Homeless .

Campbell said the process that adult families must go through to qualify for shelter is too onerous and discourages them from trying again. While families with children are often coming from homes or fleeing domestic violence, it’s much harder for adult families to prove where they’ve been living if they’ve been on the streets.

“They're often faced with higher rates of disability, higher rates of medical issues, higher rates of mental health issues that they're coping with, all of which makes the eligibility process particularly taxing and difficult to make it through,” he added.

Stats from mid-2017 through the first half of this year show adult families were denied shelter 75% of the time on average. The worst rejection rates, which topped 80%, were in 2022 and 2023. Families with children were denied 64% of the time on average in the same time period, the numbers show.

Sharma, the DHS spokesperson, said the number of migrant families with kids moving into shelter elevated the eligibility rate for families with children. She added that pandemic-era changes allowing remote applications and the asylum seeker crisis suppressed overall eligibility rates for adult families since the agency stopped making determinations amid the thousands of migrants who needed immediate shelter every week but didn’t meet the requirements. Sharma said remote applications accepted between 2020-2023 also meant there were several duplicates and fewer adult families met the requirements.

About 1,900 adult families are residing in Department of Homeless shelters, making up about 5% of the overall homeless population in the agency’s care, according to the latest city counts .

The agency has previously said the administration is prioritizing outreach to people living on the street and has boosted the number of shelter beds that are easier for individuals to quickly access.

“What the city has said in certain circumstances is that, well, you can separate and go to a single adult shelter, but you're basically saying to separate from your loved one,” Campbell said.

He said many adult families choose to return to unsafe situations or go back to living on the street and are discouraged from reapplying to shelter.

City data from May 2023 to May 2024 shows fewer adult families are applying for shelter. The number of families who applied for shelter in May dropped 45% compared to the same month in 2023. While an average of 600 families applied monthly in the first half of this year, that’s down from the average of 750 families who applied in the last half of last year.

Campbell said DHS officials have started exercising discretion and approving permanent shelter beds for adult families even if they don’t strictly meet every requirement with the correct documentation.

But Campbell said that discretion only applies after a family has applied five or more times, and most families give up along the way.

“This essentially means that a family must persist in applying for shelter for more than 50 days, through repeated denials that offer no hope of being found eligible for shelter, before such discretion is applied,” he said.

“The real tragedy is that people are going back to unsafe conditions and unsafe situations. That's the bottom line of this. We don't have a system where 80% or 90% of people applying don't need shelter. What we have is a system where 80% or 90% of people are being found ineligible for shelter,” Campbell said.