Next Generation NYCHA Should Prevent Family Homelessness, Not Encourage It

The New York City Housing Authority is confronting the worst financial position of its history: a $98 million operating deficit this year alone and a backlog of over $16 billion in deferred repairs, exacerbated by a crumbling infrastructure and funding shortages. 

Mayor Bill de Blasio has responded with NextGeneration NYCHA, a comprehensive plan to stabilize the city’s public housing system. A key element of the plan is to boost revenue by increasing rent and fee collection. A staggering 54,000 NYCHA households—one out of every four—are delinquent on rent, and NYCHA seeks to increase annual revenue by $30 million. Clearly, recovering lost rental income could be vital to NYCHA’s viability. Considering that over half of NYCHA households have no family member employed, however, collecting rent from many delinquent tenants may not be easy.

As NYCHA implements its new plan, what will happen to families for whom even affordable housing is not affordable? Families struggling with extreme poverty and unemployment teeter on the brink of losing their homes and entering the city shelter system. A study by the Institute for Children, Poverty and Homelessness found that 1 in 6 families entering a shelter between 2002 and 2012 came from public housing—over 1,100 families per year. Depending on how NextGeneration NYCHA is implemented, these numbers could rise or fall. The public cost of homelessness is substantial—over $36,000 per year per family. If even 10 percent of families presently delinquent on their rent to NYCHA became homeless, this unintended consequence of NextGeneration could cost the city upwards of $200 million.

Many families struggling with unemployment, poverty and incomplete educations cannot pay even a rent other low-income families would find affordable. In order to ensure that these families are being helped rather than pushed into the shelter system, the de Blasio administration should take at least two steps. First, NextGeneration NYCHA should identify households that are delinquent on rent because they are unable to pay, and connect these families with services to increase their financial stability. This will enable them to pay their rent in the long term and save the city millions of dollars in shelter costs. Needed services will vary by household, but should include job training, adult education, child care and legal assistance. Promising strategies like the Jobs-Plus employment initiative should be rigorously evaluated, and then quickly scaled and replicated if found to be effective. Second, the city should use the number of families entering shelters from public housing as an outcome measure of the success of NextGeneration NYCHA: If the program is implemented successfully, the number of families entering shelter from public housing should decline.

Addressing the underlying causes that put families in public housing at risk of homelessness will take both time and investment on the city’s part, but the alternative is for the city to simply shuffle its financial cards and transfer NYCHA’s operational deficit to the city’s shelter system.

Ralph da Costa Nunez, PhD., is president of the Institute For Children, Poverty and Homelessness, a think tank focused on the impact of public policies on poor and homeless children. He has held a faculty position at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs for the past 30 years.