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AUGUST 2004

When Educating Homeless Children, Community is Key
By Commissioner Linda Gibbs

Hubert Humphrey once said that the impersonal hand of government could never replace the helping hand of a neighbor.

New York City spares no effort or expense in assisting homeless families-we are the only jurisdiction in the nation in which every homeless family is guaranteed the right to access temporary emergency housing. However, there's no doubt that the work of community-based service providers and our neighbors can make the most important difference when it comes to ensuring academic achievement among at-risk and homeless children.

The city's newly released five-year action plan to end chronic homelessness, Uniting For Solutions Beyond Shelter, aims to shift our services to a more nuanced, community-based approach in which family connections to schools, as well as to religious institutions, local medical providers, and other supports, are maintained and strengthened. With more than 9,000 families, including 16,000 children, currently in emergency housing in New York City, achieving success is critical.

Take, for example, our current work to provide shelter services to at-risk and homeless families in their home communities. In the past, a family from central Brooklyn would as likely be sheltered on the west side of Manhattan as they would in their own neighborhood-leaving parents with the difficult choice of either sending their kids on long commutes to existing schools or relocating them to new ones. In the 2003-2004 school year, we placed 39 percent of homeless families in shelters in their childrens' school districts and 88 percent of families in their home borough-marking a 78 percent increase over last year's results.

The five-year action plan also calls for a shift toward prevention and other interventions that solve homelessness, offering promise that many children who might otherwise end up in a shelter instead become stabilized in their existing homes. Beginning this fall, the city will roll-out a new $12 million homelessness prevention program in six high-risk communities-South Bronx, East Tremont/Belmont, Bedford Stuyvesant, Bushwick, East Harlem, and Jamaica. Through a series of data-driven outreach techniques that target families at high-risk of homelessness, community-based organizations contracted by the city will provide casework services, referrals to job training, short-term financial assistance, credit counseling, and anti-eviction services to stabilize those households. As best practices are established, the city will expand the model to additional high-risk communities.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's efforts to bring about these shifts in the homeless services system, coupled with the promising reforms underway at the NYC Department of Education, offer the best hope yet that housing instability or the actual loss of housing does not mean that children lose their educational hopes and dreams too. With more homeless children in New York City shelters than in nearly 95 percent of the school districts nationwide, we have every reason in the world to make these reforms succeed.#

Linda Gibbs is Commissioner, Department of Homeless Service

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