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DECEMBER 2004

Home and Schools:
The Top Priorities of Homeless Kids

By Eva Moskowitz

During the last school year, homelessness hit an all-time high in New York City. Since 1998, the shelter population increased by 73 percent to the highest number in city history: more than 36,400 homeless, 15,300 of them children. Some 77 percent of those living in the shelters are families with children.

I have supported Coalition for the Homeless in their efforts to enhance the lives and the education of homeless children by funding a summer camp. At a national summit of homeless youth convened by Coalition for the Homeless in New York City this summer, children identified their top concerns as: 1) housing and 2) education.

The City must do more to address the pressing housing issue. A suit brought by Coalition for the Homeless and Legal Aid Society on behalf of a homeless mother made its way through the courts for more than two decades until the parties reached a settlement late last year. A court-ordered panel then urged the City this year to improve the dilapidated Emergency Assistance Unit (EAU) in the Bronx, the first stop for families when they lose the roof over their heads.

While the Bloomberg Administration's plans to revamp the EAU will help, more affordable housing is also needed. The number of homeless families declined after the Koch Administration spurred the construction of 150,000 new units of affordable housing, 10 percent of them for homeless families, two decades ago. We now have twice as many homeless people, but Mayor Bloomberg is proposing only 65,000 units, with a much smaller share for homeless families.

The City must also work harder to keep uprooted families connected to their children's schools. The federal McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act requires the Department of Education to place liaisons in shelters to help homeless children get to school. However, these liaisons do not exist at shelters for families escaping domestic violence, which means the Department of Education is missing roughly a third of the homeless students, according to Advocates for Children, a non-profit group that helps homeless families.

Advocates for Children also reports that the Department of Education denies transportation to many homeless students, and that the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance tells homeless parents that they are ineligible for transportation vouchers to take their small children to school. These actions violate the provisions of the McKinney-Vento Act that guarantee homeless children transportation to the school they attended before they became homeless.

When children lose their home, they should not lose their teachers as well. Now that the mayor directly controls the school system, it should be easier for the Department of Education to coordinate with the Department of Homeless Services and other government agencies to make sure that homeless students are identified and helped.#

Eva Moskowitz is the Chair of the New York City Council Education Committee
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