New City Rules Make It Harder to Access ‘Low-Barrier’ Homeless Shelters: Lawsuit

The lawsuit targets new criteria around who qualifies for safe haven and stabilization shelters, saying it makes it harder for street homeless people to access those beds and discriminates against recently arrived immigrants.

Lea la versión en español aquí.

Homeless advocates are suing the city over new criteria around who qualifies for safe haven and stabilization shelters—facilities intended for street homeless people, which typically offer more flexible rules and greater privacy than traditional shelters.

The lawsuit, filed earlier this week by attorneys with the Urban Justice Center–Safety Net Project, says the new Department of Homeless Services (DHS) policy makes it harder for unsheltered New Yorkers to access those beds and discriminates against recently arrived immigrants.

The rules, which DHS implemented in September, detail the placement process for the agency’s Joint Command Center, which coordinates shelter placements with the city’s street homeless outreach teams.

To be referred to a stabilization bed, a person must have six months’ history of street homelessness on file in the city’s outreach database, called StreetSmart. The same applies for a safe haven referral, but the person must also have documented significant mental health, medical illness, or substance use/abuse issues.

This criteria forces “vulnerable individuals to languish on the street for months before they can access a safe haven or stabilization bed,” according to Kathryn Kliff, staff attorney at The Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project. 

“Forcing unhoused individuals to jump through a series of needless bureaucratic hurdles before they are given access to safe shelter is cruel, regressive, and—particularly in the freezing winter months—extremely dangerous,” Kliff said in a statement. 

The policy also says outreach teams should direct migrants experiencing street homelessness to “a designated intake center for NYC asylum-seekers.” This, the lawsuit says, amounts to their being “systemically barred from placement in a Safe Haven or a Stabilization bed.”

This will exacerbate existing hardships, the advocates say. Recently arrived immigrants and asylum seekers, tens of thousands of whom have arrived in New York City over the last two years, are already subject to 30- and 60-day shelter time limits. 

“We’re reviewing the suit at this time but cannot comment on ongoing litigation,” a spokesperson for the city’s Department of Social Services, which oversees DHS, said in an email. But the agency pointed the city’s recent $650 million investment in street homelessness programs, including one that offers unhoused New Yorkers being treated for mental health issues a place to stay after they leave the hospital.

Mayor Eric Adams said he’ll also add 900 new safe haven beds to the existing network of around 4,000. The administration says it’s placed more than 2,800 New Yorkers in permanent housing from low-barrier beds since Adams took office in 2022. 

But requiring people to have a documented history with the city’s outreach database will exclude many in need of such beds, advocates say. 

“Most homeless outreach interactions are not documented in City databases at all, and many homeless people who have been homeless for significant amounts of time would have no ‘history of street homelessness’ and would not have their health conditions documented in City homeless databases,” the Safety Net Project said in a press release announcing the lawsuit. 

“There are people that have been on the street for years,” said Eduardo Ventura, a Safety Net Project client and organizer. He’s currently staying in a Safe Haven, saying he prefers it to traditional shelters because he has his own room. More crowded group settings with people “fighting each other in one room” is not an effective route to housing stability, he added.

“If you’ve got single rooms it’s better for dealing with each person differently and personally, one by one, so you really know what they need,” he said. 

To reach the editor, contact [email protected]

Want to republish this story? Find City Limits’ reprint policy here.