Ending homelessness, one person at a time

There are more than an estimated 4,100 unhoused persons living on the streets of New York City, according to the most recent federally-mandated Homeless Outreach Population Estimate survey. Nonprofit Urban Pathways, entering its 50th year in operation, is dedicated to eradicating street homelessness, one person at a time. Through its array of outreach, support and housing services, Urban Pathways helps some of the most vulnerable New Yorkers find a safe place to live and rebuild their lives.

Just ahead of the organization’s annual “Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day” event, to be held on Wednesday in conjunction with Care For the Homeless, CEO Frederick Shack spoke with New York Nonprofit Media about what it means to create pathways to a better life for the homeless community.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Thank you for speaking with us today. In your own words, what does Urban Pathways stand for, and what does it do as an organization?

Urban Pathways is an organization that is focused on addressing issues that impact unhoused, single, adult New Yorkers. So, the folks that New Yorkers come in contact within public spaces – transportation hubs, on the streets of the city – that’s our client population. Our objective is to end their homelessness by connecting them to services and housing. We have a full array of services that is basically designed to engage unhoused New Yorkers. It starts out with outreach, where we have teams that work in various parts of Manhattan and Queens to engage individuals who are in public spaces, like Port Authority, JFK Airport, LaGuardia Airport, the PATH terminals and we have contracts with the [Garment District NYC] and the [Flatiron Nomad Partnership] BIDs in Midtown Manhattan. Our outreach workers are out there engaging individuals and offering them services. We operate two drop-in centers in Manhattan, where individuals who are housed on the streets can come in for a series of services, including case management, some medical services, meals, showers, clothing, referrals. But the long-term objective is to engage them in a way that can help them in their homelessness and moving to permanent housing. 

There are a lot of homelessness nonprofits in New York City. What makes Urban Pathways unique? What does it do differently from other organizations?

I think Urban Pathways, we have a very clear focus. We don’t operate shelters; we don’t work with children and families. We are specifically looking at and working with those individuals that are most visible on the streets of the city and working to engage them to end their homelessness. We also are fairly innovative in the way we approach our work. We use the information that we learn from the people that we engage in public spaces to build and to model our programs. Our focus on Safe Havens really came as a result of having conversations with folks who were on the streets of the city and unwilling to come indoors, and asking them, what do they need in order to help them make a determination to come indoors. What they really described was a Safe Haven model, not a shelter model. So, we built out that part of our portfolio. We also have worked really hard to understand what the long-term needs are of this population once they’re indoors. And, so, one of the things that we offer in many of our residential programs, is a program that we refer to as our Total Wellness Program, which is really designed to help our individuals connect with primary health care while they’re in housing. Many of the folks who spend years on the streets of the city come in with very significant chronic health conditions that have gone untreated for a number of years. What we want to do is want to break that cycle by providing them with high-quality access to primary care. While there are some organizations that do that, I think that we do that in a very unique way.

How did Urban Pathways come to be? What’s its history?

We’re entering our 50th year. There were a group of settlement houses that came together in the early ‘70s, really trying to figure out a way to address the issues that were impacting Midtown Manhattan. We were part of that group of organizations that came together initially and, then after a period of time, the determination was made to spin-off and to have a free-standing organization.

What does success look like for Urban Pathways?

Every day that we’re able to engage with someone who’s been on the street for years, in some cases decades, convince them to come indoors and they take us up on that, that opportunity is a success. We really work to end homelessness, one person at a time – but to completely end it. What we found in terms of success is, once we’re able to get a person indoors, we’ve had real good outcomes in terms of keeping them indoors, getting them permanent housing, providing them with support and then engaging them in their own recovery. And so, if you ask me what a success is, it’s every day that we’re able to end homelessness for an individual represents a major success for the individual, for Urban Pathways and for the city.

Urban Pathways is holding its “Homeless Persons’ Memorial Day” event tonight. What is the event about?

It’s an opportunity for us to acknowledge and recognize the losses that we’ve incurred over the year of people who have died because of their homelessness. These are folks who either died on the streets of the city, individuals who died while in shelter and, in some cases, individuals who died while in housing, but the primary cause of their death was associated with the number of years that they spent living on the street. It’s a way of celebrating their lives, acknowledging them, eulogizing them. We do that in partnership with other homeless New Yorkers. We have support from some elected officials who come and read names or eulogies at the service. We typically have well over 200 people in attendance. It’s an opportunity to acknowledge the lives of people who are lost, and to put a spotlight on the harshness of homelessness and how detrimental it is to the health of the individuals who are impacted by it and the health of the city.

Why do you do this work? What drives you to work in this space?

It’s the impact. Knowing that there are things that can be done effectively, done to end very difficult and challenging social problems. What inspires me, what keeps me coming back, is knowing that I’m part of an organization that is really making a difference. I know that for many New Yorkers, this appears to be intractable and a problem without a solution. We can live every day working for an organization that ends it every day, one person at a time, but that establishes the fact that there are real solutions, and that this organization has been able to identify those solutions and execute them in ways that have changed lives for thousands of New Yorkers over the 15 years we’ve been doing this work.