When Educating Homeless Children, Community is Key
By Commissioner Linda Gibbs
Hubert Humphrey once said that the impersonal hand of government
could never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.
New York City spares no effort or expense in assisting homeless
families-we are the only jurisdiction in the nation in which
every homeless family is guaranteed the right to access temporary
emergency housing. However, there's no doubt that the work
of community-based service providers and our neighbors can
make the most important difference when it comes to ensuring
academic achievement among at-risk and homeless children.
The city's newly released five-year action plan to end chronic
homelessness, Uniting For Solutions Beyond Shelter, aims to
shift our services to a more nuanced, community-based approach
in which family connections to schools, as well as to religious
institutions, local medical providers, and other supports,
are maintained and strengthened. With more than 9,000 families,
including 16,000 children, currently in emergency housing in
New York City, achieving success is critical.
Take, for example, our current work to provide shelter services
to at-risk and homeless families in their home communities.
In the past, a family from central Brooklyn would as likely
be sheltered on the west side of Manhattan as they would in
their own neighborhood-leaving parents with the difficult choice
of either sending their kids on long commutes to existing schools
or relocating them to new ones. In the 2003-2004 school year,
we placed 39 percent of homeless families in shelters in their
childrens' school districts and 88 percent of families in their
home borough-marking a 78 percent increase over last year's
results.
The five-year action plan also calls for a shift toward prevention
and other interventions that solve homelessness, offering promise
that many children who might otherwise end up in a shelter
instead become stabilized in their existing homes. Beginning
this fall, the city will roll-out a new $12 million homelessness
prevention program in six high-risk communities-South Bronx,
East Tremont/Belmont, Bedford Stuyvesant, Bushwick, East Harlem,
and Jamaica. Through a series of data-driven outreach techniques
that target families at high-risk of homelessness, community-based
organizations contracted by the city will provide casework
services, referrals to job training, short-term financial assistance,
credit counseling, and anti-eviction services to stabilize
those households. As best practices are established, the city
will expand the model to additional high-risk communities.
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's efforts to bring about these
shifts in the homeless services system, coupled with the promising
reforms underway at the NYC Department of Education, offer
the best hope yet that housing instability or the actual loss
of housing does not mean that children lose their educational
hopes and dreams too. With more homeless children in New York
City shelters than in nearly 95 percent of the school districts
nationwide, we have every reason in the world to make these
reforms succeed.#
Linda Gibbs is Commissioner, Department of Homeless Service
