Keeping Track of Family Homelessness in New York City

Published August, 2017

CCC’s Keeping Track of Family Homelessness in New York City report analyzes the relationship between income and rent data and family homelessness across the city’s 59 community districts, and examines the risks to well-being faced by children and families living in communities with the highest rates of families entering homeless shelters.

The key findings of the report include:

• Over 60 percent of families with children who entered homeless shelters in 2015 came from 15 of New York City’s 59 community districts with the highest rates of family homelessness:  Mott Haven, Hunts Point, Morrisania, Concourse/Highbridge, University Heights, East Tremont, Bedford Park, Unionport/Soundview, and Williamsbridge in the Bronx; Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Brownsville and East Flatbush in Brooklyn; Central Harlem and East Harlem in Manhattan.
• Several Bronx communities with high shares of households in rent-stabilized units (i.e. Concourse/Highbridge, University Heights and Bedford Park) experienced small decreases in family homelessness, even while experiencing declines in median incomes.
• Family homelessness grew in some middle and upper income areas (i.e. Chelsea/Midtown; the Upper West Side in Manhattan; Astoria in Queens) where there are pockets of high poverty. Though these pockets are often found in areas with a concentration of public housing, there is also a limited number of section 8 voucher utilization, rent stabilized housing, and homeless prevention services.
• In the communities with the highest rates of family homelessness, children and families are confronted with a multitude of risk factors in addition to those related to economic security and housing, from poor infant health and lack of access to early educational resources to exposure to domestic and community violence.

CCC’s goal in producing this report is to focus attention on the needs of children and families living in –  or at-risk of entering – homeless shelters. The data points to the importance of ongoing efforts to ensure that children and families have access to services and supports to meet their health, mental health and educational needs – as well as their economic and housing stability – before, during and after stays in homeless shelter.