Senate Bill S3711

                                BILL NUMBER:S3711

TITLE OF BILL:
An act
to amend the administrative code of the city of New York, in relation to
requiring the department of homeless services to maintain an intake
center in Manhattan

PURPOSE:
Requires the Department of Homeless Services to maintain a
facility 24/7 for processing applications for shelter.

SUMMARY OF PROVISIONS:
§21-316 is added to amend Section 1, of the
administrative code of the city of New York to read as follows:
Intake for single men. The department shall maintain a facility in
Manhattan, which shall be open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week, to accept and process applications for shelter from single
homeless men. Any individual who is in the process of applying for
shelter as of ten o'clock in the evening on the day such individual
sought shelter shall be provided temporary shelter placement for that
night, at that facility. The facility shall have a greater capacity
to shelter single homeless men than any other intake facility in the
city.

EXISTING LAW:
              

New

JUSTIFICATION:
The Department of Homeless Services (DHS) is charged with the
responsibility of housing the homeless people throughout New York
City. The 2008 Homeless Outreach population Estimate (HOPE) results
showed that there are an estimated total of 3,306 street homeless
individuals citywide. There are 1,263 unsheltered individuals in
Manhattan, 279 in the Bronx., 336 in Brooklyn, 135 in Queens, 152 in
Staten Island, and 1,141 in the subway. 58% of the City's street
homeless were on the streets of Manhattan while only 16% were living
in Brooklyn. Although the Department of Homeless Services argues that
23% of the homeless people report that they are from Brooklyn, the
fact still remains that 77% of the other homeless individuals are
coming from boroughs other than Brooklyn, points to the need for a
Manhattan location because of its' centralization.

DHS claims that on average only 40 people enter the Bellevue shelter
every day. This number however, only takes into account those
homeless individuals who are new to the systems or have not been in
the system for more than a year and does not include people who
return to seek shelter again within a year. In contrast, when the
number of new entrants to the shelter system is combined with the
number of individuals already in the system, it appears that on
average 50-150 individuals enter Bellevue's intake center each day.

When the weather takes a turn for the worse, whether a frigid day in
the winter or a rainstorm in the summer, large increases in the
number of
homeless that enter the Manhattan shelter are observed. On January 3,
2008, the coldest night of the year in 2008, the temperature was 12
degrees Fahrenheit and the intake center had 241 men come in off the
street.

Outreach teams serve the chronically homeless population and are
charged with transporting people to intake or to "safe haven" beds,
of which there are only 298 according to DHS's latest numbers. The
"safe haven" sites are smaller decentralized shelters that try to
encourage entry by reducing the bureaucratic barriers to entry that
often deter homeless from approaching the shelter system. Opponents
to the closure of the intake center point out that 500 proposed "safe
Haven" beds are grossly inadequate for the more than 22,000 homeless
men that Bellevue served in Fiscal Year 2007. Additionally, opponents
maintain that the "safe havens" cannot serve the broad range of
homeless men that Bellevue serves because the "safe havens" are
targeted to serve a smaller niche of the chronically homeless.

These points factored in weigh heavily in favor of an intake center
remaining in a Manhattan location rather than the proposed transfer
of its functions to the Brooklyn Bedford-Atlantic Armory site.
Although the intake will not be able to remain in Bellevue because of
plans to sell the building to a developer, another Manhattan location
must be identified.

FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
None to the state.

LOCAL FISCAL IMPLICATIONS:
Unknown

EFFECTIVE DATE:
This act shall take effect on the sixtieth day after it shall have
become a law.