NYC Families Seeking Shelter Have to Prove They’re Homeless. A New Bill Would Simplify That Process. 

As New York City’s shelter population remains high, legislators are taking aim at an intake process that requires homeless families to prove they are indeed homeless to city investigators.

When someone shows up at a city shelter seeking assistance, it’s probably because they have no other choice. But homeless families still have to go through a screening process to confirm they are indeed homeless in order to be eligible for housing services.

A bill, introduced by Bronx City Councilmember Amanda Farías Thursday, looks to simplify the process so families get help faster.

“This bill is about removing what is now a bureaucratic barrier that’s actively preventing families in crisis from accessing shelter and really just stabilizing their lives,” said Farías.

When a family enters the shelter system, they’re first screened at an intake center in the Bronx or Manhattan. Social services staff interview entrants about their living situation to ensure they are in fact homeless.

If they need shelter, Department of Homeless Services (DHS) staff called “fraud investigators” or “family workers” verify the information provided at the interview—speaking with third parties, looking through documentation, and assessing if the person has other shelter options available to them.

The trouble, Farías said, is that the process can drag out and provide an unnecessary hurdle to families getting housing assistance. Instead, she wants DHS to take people at their word that they need shelter, saving time and resources.

DHS officials said that they would review the legislation after it gets introduced. “We are committed to ensuring that families in need are able to quickly access safe and dignified shelter options during a time of crisis, and we support efforts to enhance available services and streamline applications processes in ways that are responsible, comport with state regulations, and allow us to holistically assess a family’s circumstances,” said a spokesperson for the Department Social Services (DSS), which oversees DHS, in a statement.

Sometimes in order for a family to qualify as homeless, investigators may need to reach prior landlords—who may or may not pick up the phone.

“The city is wasting millions—I don’t know how many millions—of dollars on this bureaucracy of forcing people who are in crisis to enumerate for every single day of the relevant period, where they slept each night, and then reviewing that and demanding documentation of it, and verifying the documentation,” said Joshua Goldfein, a staff attorney with the Homeless Rights Project at the Legal Aid Society.

When people can’t locate the right documentation—not uncommon for families who have recently lost their homes—they can get rejected and have to apply again.

“The process currently forces families to return to [intake] on a reoccurring basis to reapply, instead of progressing through the system, which is what we want people to do,” said Farías.

Only homeless families, not single adults, are required to do housing history verification under DHS rules. Families with children must provide two years of housing history while an adult family, like a married couple, must provide one year. The majority of people in DHS shelters are part of families, according to City Limits’ shelter population tracker. One third of people in shelters are children.

While in the eligibility verification process, homeless families stay in shelters under “conditional” status, which prevents them from accessing housing services like the city’s rental assistance vouchers, CityFHEPS, the most common path into permanent housing for families in shelter.

DHS says the conditional placements can last up to 15 days. 

But Women In Need (WIN), the city’s largest provider of shelter for families with children, says many of their clients spend far more time—on average, 40 days—going through the validation process, many of them two or three times, according to the organization’s internal data, which covers one-in-nine New York City families with children in shelter.

“That’s adding a month-plus to the time people and children are spending in shelter,” said WIN CEO Christine Quinn. 

Conditional stays can also mean staying in one shelter during verification and then transferring to a more permanent shelter placement—a process that can be particularly challenging for families with school-age children. 

DHS says that the procedures are standardized by state regulations that require the social service agency to determine if a person has alternative housing available to them before entering shelter.

“There’s always going to be eligibility verification,” said Deborah Berkman, an attorney with New York Legal Assistance Group who works on homeless eligibility. “When you demand a verification that has to be provided by third parties it’s requiring people to give something they have no control over… that doesn’t really work.”

The Guiliana-era fraud investigation rules were intended to give the city more leeway to divert people from shelters, advocates say—connecting them with assistance or finding them alternative places to stay. 

According to the Fiscal Year 2025 Mayor’s Management report, 8.6 percent of families who applied at PATH were “successfully” diverted from entering shelter (though it does not specify where they ultimately went)

The “zombie” verification rules, however, can also prevent people from getting help faster at a time when the city has a higher-than-ever shelter population.

“The process is not really designed to confirm your homelessness,” said Quinn. “It’s designed to deter you from homelessness or deter you from getting shelter. But if you’re homeless, you’re going to keep going back.”

Farías’ bill would allow for a “self-attestation” where a family seeking shelter would affirm their housing history and need for shelter—eliminating the requirement for social workers to track down evidence of previous housing stays.

DHS was skeptical that a self attestation would satisfy their obligations to the state, which requires them to determine eligibility before providing assistance.

Advocates argue that the state does not specify the method social service agencies use to verify housing history, and the attestation would still enable the city to divert people when necessary or investigate alternative housing options without putting actually eligible families through the ringer because of documentation issues.

“Why do we have a process that makes it harder to help people where all the data shows that at the end of the process, there really is a statistically insignificant number of people who are not presenting honestly?” asked Quinn.

The City Council and the mayor are currently at odds on expanding the city’s housing voucher program, CityFHEPS, amid a budget deficit. More than 37,500 people used the vouchers in the most recent fiscal year to move from shelter into permanent homes—a record high—though spending on the program has increased five-fold since 2021. 

But Farías thinks that her bill could save the city money and make the government more efficient, a priority for the mayoral administration and the Council.

“We know we’re in an affordability crisis and we’ve been in the housing crisis for all of the time I’ve been in the Council. Delayed eligibility extends those shelter stays, it disrupts any pathway towards stability,” she said.

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