New York City Comptroller’s Office Releases Pre-Pandemic Audit of Repeated Family Shelter Application Denials

NEW YORK, NY – The New York City Comptroller’s Office released an audit, conducted prior to the pandemic, that found that the Department of Homeless Services (DHS)’s Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing (PATH) intake center personnel denied 42% of 46,200 family applications during the audit period without adequately investigating housing history. DHS has since begun to implement the audit’s recommendations to prevent wrongful application denials.

“Families seeking shelter should not have to face homelessness and be subjected to a revolving door of denials due to the failure of PATH intake personnel to run an online search,” said Comptroller Brad Lander. “I applaud DHS for implementing necessary policy updates in order to secure a shelter spot for families, especially as we headed into a pandemic that caused immense housing insecurity and highlighted our need for housing to avoid severe illness.” 

DHS is required to verify two-year housing histories through phone calls, interviews, and online searches that include New York State Welfare Management System, Worker Connect, and LexisNexis in order to determine that no other residences are available to these families. The audit, conducted during the prior administration, closely sampled fifty applicant families. Out of those 50, DHS rejected twenty-one families due to non-cooperation, but auditors found that DHS did not adequately track down the information needed to verify housing history.

Those twenty-one families filed on average fifteen reapplications, and DHS ultimately found fourteen of the families eligible. One family was denied thirty-eight times before finally having their application accepted. According to a recent analysis by THE CITY, sixty-two percent of families accepted into a shelter had applied more than once, 31% more than three times obtaining shelter.

DHS has begun adopting four of the audit’s recommendations, including:

• Properly investigating all applicant families’ housing histories.
• Revising intake staff guidelines and procedures who report a hospital stay as part of the family housing history and to assist in obtaining hospital records.
• Updating guidelines and procedures to ensure staff run web-based database searches.
• Regularly distributing clear and updated policies to all of its employees and conducting new trainings.

Prior to the pandemic, families with children seeking emergency shelter were required to bring their children to the PATH intake center in the Bronx to be evaluated and unable to stay in shelter while re-applying. During the COVID-19 pandemic, family evaluations were allowed to move to online video chat and families were allowed to stay in shelter while re-applying. Family shelter providers and homelessness advocacy organizations released a letter calling on the Mayor and the agencies to make these changes permanent. Comptroller Lander joins the advocates’ call.

“Hauling children repeatedly to the Bronx while their family seeks shelter is destabilizing and overly burdensome to families in desperate need of stability,” continued Comptroller Lander. “Our shelter providers and housing advocates are absolutely right — these pandemic procedures should be made permanent. The City needs to focus on removing barriers to emergency shelter and permanent housing, not adding more unnecessarily.”

“Homelessness is an especially difficult, destabilizing process for families with children,” said David R. Jones, President and CEO of the Community Service Society of New York. “The city must make the intake process for accessing emergency shelter and permanent housing as straightforward as possible.”

“For too long, the city-run intake center that is supposed to welcome and help homeless families has operated as a barrier to shelter. That’s why we called for the Comptroller’s Office to audit PATH — because we should be helping women and children in need, not repeatedly traumatizing them,” said Christine C. Quinn, President & CEO of Win, the largest provider of shelter and supportive services for homeless families in New York City. “This audit is an important step toward fixing our shelter system. The results reinforce what countless homeless families have been telling Win for years, providing concrete evidence and hard data to show just how broken the PATH intake center is. With a new Mayor in office who is committed to ending homelessness, this report should serve as a clarion call for the Adams Administration to fundamentally reform PATH. Our families deserve pathways to shelter, support, services, and housing, not bureaucratic roadblocks.”

Read the full report here.

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