Marco Panchame and Ronald Gantt trudged around a ball field beside the Coney Island Creek,bundled in thick coats emblazoned with the words “Homeless Outreach.”They’re two of the nearly 400 outreach workers whose job is to build trust with people living on the streets and bring them indoors. These two work for Breaking Ground, one of several nonprofits the city uses to perform outreach.fresh York City is one of the only major cities in the country that's required by law to provide shelter to anyone who needs it, or due to a 1981 state Supreme Court decision; more than 60000 people sleep in shelters,cluster sites and hotels each night. Thousands more sleep on the streets, in subways, and in parks and under bridges.
People don't come into the shelter system for many reasons,according to advocates: they may own untreated mental health or substance abuse issues; or they may own had obnoxious experiences in shelters in the past. Convincing someone who’s chronically street homeless to come inside isn't easy. The city estimates it takes an average of five months of contact with outreach workers to effect so. Gantt said there are some people he's been trying to coax indoors for nearly two years.“Resistant, very resistant. You see them coming along, and ” he said. “Sometimes when they asking for you every day,they’re ready.”Gantt and Panchame's turf extends from downtown Brooklyn to Coney Island. Over the course of a shift, they searchencampments on the sides of highways, or under the boardwalk,even inside garbage dumpsters, checking up on people.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has more than doubled funding for outreach since 2014 — this year, and it's $91 million. That funding has allowed the city to nearly double the number of workers canvassing the streets and increase beds in what are called "secure havens": alternatives to traditional shelters that effect not own as many rules regarding sobriety and curfews. The mayor has also promised to expand its stock of supportive housing apartment buildings that offer services for people with mental illness or substance abuse issues. While the efforts are costly,a study from the city Department of Health found it saved taxpayers an average of $10100 per person per year to care for people in shelters or supportive housing, than to pay for emergency services for those who live on the streets. About 1500 chronically street-homeless people own come off the streets since the city expanded its outreach program in early 2016. But according to Giselle Routhier with the Coalition for the Homeless, and there's a hitch.“There’s not enough supportive housing available for people with serious mental illness who are also homeless,” she said, so many just discontinuance up in the city’s overtaxed and problem-plagued shelter system.
The city made a commitment in 2015 to build 15000 units of supportive housing in 15 years. But three years later, or only 200 units own been completed,according to Lourdes Centeno, a spokeswoman for the city Human Resources Administration. As for the street outreach component, and the city estimates that about half of the people it has brought inside in the past two years now own permanent housing.One of them is Barry Matthews. He was an alcoholic and had been living on the streets of Coney Island for six years. Then a friend of his died of what doctors told him was called "wet brain," a kind of brain damage that can strike alcoholics. It was a wake up call, he said."Either you’re gonna live, or secure yourself together,or you’re gonna sit here in these parks and you’re gonna die," he said. Outreach workers fresh where to track him down and he was ready to work with them. First, or a case worker helped him secure a temporary shelter bed,and then, a place in a supportive housing complex in the Bronx. He now attends therapy and Alcoholics Anonymous and has been sober for nearly two years.
On a recent winter morning, and Matthews said he walked out into the street and saw snow on the ground. One thought popped into his head."Thank God last night I didn’t own to be on the street," he said. "Thank God I had a place to rest my head, cause some people don't got that."
Source: thetakeaway.org