Police Officers and Other New York City Agencies Visit Homeless Encampments - The New York Times

NYRS, No. Manhattan RN, Rockaway RN

4 cover

homeless, housing, vulnerable

> http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/nyregion/police-officers-and-other-new-york-city-agencies-visit-homeless-encampments.html?_r=0 <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/03/nyregion/police-officers-and-other-new-york-city-agencies-visit-homeless-encampments.html?_r=0>
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> Police Officers and Other New York City Agencies Visit Homeless Encampments
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> Photo
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> Police Commissioner William J. Bratton at 1 Police Plaza discussing the measures the city has taken to address a rise in homelessness. Credit Benjamin Norman for The New York Times
> As police officers, mental health workers, lawyers and others visit homeless encampments in New York as part of a City Hall initiative, a prime mission will be determining how people wound up on the streets.
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> “They’ll be asking questions such as: ‘Why are you out here? Where are you from,’ ” Carlos M. Gomez, the New York Police Department <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/n/new_york_city_police_department/index.html?inline=nyt-org>’s chief of patrol, said on Wednesday. “We want to take a deeper look, as to the issues, and how we can help them.”
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> The chief detailed officials’ plans to address a rise in homelessness at a wide-ranging briefing on Wednesday by Police Commissioner William J. Bratton <http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/william_j_bratton/index.html?inline=nyt-per> at which he outlined measures that the city had taken in the past two weeks and framed the issue as a priority in a time when overall crime had decreased.
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> Mr. Bratton said there was “no city in America” that did more for homeless people than New York, where the law requires officials to provide shelter to all homeless people. The shelter population hovers from 55,000 to 60,000 adults and children, he said.
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> “It’s a number that’s been growing over a period of time,” Mr. Bratton said. “It’s reached a tipping point, however, I think, to use that term, that it did become more visible this summer.”
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> In addition to those living in shelters, there are 3,000 to 4,000 people living on city streets — the unsheltered homeless whom Mr. Bratton called “service-resistant.” About 40 percent of them are estimated to have significant emotional issues, he said. An additional 2 percent, he said, “scare the heck out of everybody,” and are those who typically attract complaints of irrational or violent behavior.
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> Officers with extra training are now moving through about 80 encampments across the city that have so far been identified, offering shelter to anyone in need, Mr. Bratton said. But he cited legal limitations. Begging, for instance, is constitutionally protected, he said. Aggressively begging, particularly within 10 feet of a bank’s A.T.M., or setting up an encampment, he said, are not.
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> “The begging,” he said, “if it is not intimidating, if it is not creating fear, that it is something that — those people you see sitting on the sidewalk with a sign: ‘Hungry. Need help.’ — that there is no legal way that we can deal with that person unless they are creating fear or intimidation of passers-by.”
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> Laura Mascuch, the executive director of the Supportive Housing Network of New York and member of the Campaign 4 NY/NY Housing <http://www.nynycampaign.org/>, credited Mr. Bratton on Wednesday with calling attention to the need for more resources.
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> “Supportive housing is a national model for housing and helping homeless individuals, even the hardest to serve,” Ms. Mascuch said in a statement.
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> As an antidote to the record number of homeless in the city and the state, she urged Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, to sign a statewide agreement to provide 35,000 additional units of supportive housing in the state. Such housing often combines rent-subsidized apartments with services like mental health counseling and job training to help residents live independently.
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> During the briefing, Chief Gomez said that a mayoral task force including the Police Department’s Homeless Outreach Unit and sanitation and homeless services workers had been joined by other city agencies to try to help homeless people. Now, he said, personnel from the city’s Parks and Recreation Department, the Emergency Medical Service, Transportation Department and others have been on the teams visiting encampments and hot spots (where people congregate throughout the day).
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> Their work amounts to a more thorough chronicling of the population.
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> On the police side, members of the department’s Legal Bureau are moving through the encampments “to provide legal advice and assistance,” the chief said, along with the Technical Assistance and Response Unit “to document and record a visit.” Officers who normally patrol the area will also be there.
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> As of Wednesday afternoon, the police had visited 50 encampments since Aug. 17, made 161 contacts and had 10 people accept an offer for shelter. Ten locations, Chief Gomez said, have been “physically cleared of structure, debris, bedding,” after inhabitants were given a week’s notice of an impending cleanup.
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> Going forward, the chief said, precinct officers will relentlessly follow up at those spots. He did not identify them.
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