A leak that drips on a mattress when it rains. A sewage smell in the front desk lobby. Windows that don’t open.
These are the conditions inside some of New York City’s homeless shelters outlined in a report released Monday by the city’s oldest shelter operator. The report details how the city’s slow and cumbersome process for repairing its aging fleet of shelters is fueling poor conditions for residents, driving people to sleep on the street — and costing taxpayers more in the long run.
“That is tangible for the people living in those environments. They can feel what we think they deserve. How we design our shelters and what money we put into them reflects that commitment,” said Kaitlin Abrams, public policy manager at Volunteers of America - Greater New York, who authored the report.
The city’s shelter population remains at record-high levels with more people sleeping outdoors than in the last 10 years. While the Mamdani administration has promised to create better conditions for homeless New Yorkers, shelter providers say the city needs to come up with a comprehensive plan on how it’s going to fund and fix hundreds of shelters that are in desperate need of repair.
“It's really a matter of basic improvements taking months, if not years, to get approved and really a lack of flexibility and autonomy for the organizations,” said Jeffrey Ginsburg, CEO of Volunteers of America.
“It may be boring. These might be small details, but they add up to a very inefficient and very ineffective system,” Ginsburg said.
A rendering of how Volunteers of America wants to redesign some common spaces at the Schwartz Men's shelter on Wards Island after the city approved a renovation project.
A spokesperson for the city’s Department of Homeless Services said the Mamdani administration has already taken meaningful steps to transform the system such as shuttering a massive decrepit shelter and embracing the construction of new trauma-informed facilities to help people move out faster.
“This administration inherited a shelter system comprised of many older, often repurposed buildings that, while providing critical capacity, do not offer the dignified and humane spaces New Yorkers experiencing homelessness deserve,” spokesperson Nicholas Jacobelli said in a statement.
“We take the conditions at our shelter facilities very seriously — conducting regular inspections and working closely with providers to address necessary repairs in a timely manner.”
He said the agency shares the same goal as Volunteers of America, to create more welcoming spaces with better conditions and outcomes.
The report says the administration is moving in the right direction but recommends the city create a fund for shelter renovations, transfer ownership of some city-owned shelters to nonprofits and conduct a capital needs assessment.
‘Obscenely onerous’
The report, which looked at Volunteers of America’s shelters as a case study, said the city doesn’t have a dedicated pool of money to make fixes at shelters. Providers have to request repairs, and get contractors approved by the city. Even then, repairs are patchwork and don’t fix infrastructure needs, which ultimately costs more over time, the report said.
City officials said they regularly assess capital needs, make repairs in a timely manner and are always trying to find ways to streamline the process. Officials didn’t respond to questions about whether some short-term fixes can cost more long term.
In one example, the city emptied a family shelter due to fire safety concerns that has remained closed for two years. Volunteers of America said as it waits for repairs, city officials hired personnel to make sure a fire doesn’t break out in the vacated building. While replacing fire panels would cost $800,000, hiring staff costs $3 million a year, the organization said.
“The city is definitely in its own way, and there's a lot of capital needs that are not met because the processes are so obscenely onerous,” said David Giffen, executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group that routinely inspects shelter sites.
Another example cited by the report are the windows at Schwartz, a 335-bed men’s shelter on Wards Island. The windows let in water and cold air but the city told Volunteers of America to use shrink wrap for insulation while its request to replace the windows remains pending. That means the windows can’t be opened for fresh air or light.
The windows at the Schwartz Men's shelter on Wards Island with a plastic covering to keep water and wind out.
The city finally approved improvements for Schwartz after a decade of disrepair, which includes renovating the dorm rooms and some common areas, Abrams said. She said Volunteers of America and the city are still working out a budget and timeline for fixes.
Better facilities, better outcomes
Providers said the shelter system started as an emergency response more than 40 years ago where institutional buildings such as former schools, prisons or psychiatric wards were converted into shelters.
Dan Lehman, CEO of HELP USA, another shelter provider which was not involved in the report, said the city has historically prioritized adding more beds as the shelter population has grown but that it’s time it focused on quality, too.
“Better facilities mean better outcomes,” he said. “ People show up at shelter not at the best point in their lives, and the more that we adopt trauma-informed design, the more quickly we can stabilize people from day one, the faster we're going to move them out of shelter. This is part and parcel of the homelessness response.”
He said requests to make repairs often “go back and forth, and back and forth, and back and forth, multiple times” between agencies and some projects have to be pushed off for another year.
But he said when improvements are made, the results are tangible — not just on the structure but on the clients. One of the men’s shelters HELP USA runs on Wards Island had air conditioning installed this year and the number of incidents — such as fights between residents, medical crises or other emergencies — plummeted.
“ The entire feel of the building is different. It literally brings the temperature down and figuratively as well. It's quieter, calmer,” he added.
The report said some shelter sites feel institutional with fluorescent lights, metal bunk beds, ceiling tiles and large congregate dormitories. The shelters can be noisy, smelly and without any space for kids to do homework or for people to decompress.
City officials said they want to open new, nicer sites, but they need buy-in from communities who often push back, sue and delay plans to open shelters in their neighborhoods.
Ginsburg, from Volunteers of America, said some fixes can be as simple as providing a lamp for a single mom who wanted to work while her child slept but couldn’t with an overhead light.
“ We put in just a little side table with a lamp, and now the lamp is enough for her to work by, but dark enough for the child to sleep. That is not an expensive change, but it allows this person to apply for a job and get the independence they need,” he said.
“We should want the shelter system to be designed for someone that we love.”
