NYC Homeless Student Numbers Reach Crisis Levels

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Roughly one out of every 13 children in the New York City public school system is now homeless. This shocking information was uncovered in a new report by the New York City Public School System on its homeless student population. These numbers include students living in the public shelter system as well as in other “temporary” living situations, such as staying with friends or relatives.

The report, entitled “Not Reaching the Door: Homeless Students Face Many Hurdles on the Way to School,” found that the majority of the programs that were designed to help these transient students are “insufficient” or “poorly executed.” In New York City (28.82% Latino population), this group of students is already at high risk and they now face very tall educational obstacles. Figuring out solutions to this problem is the next step.

“What is it about the shelter living situation that makes reaching the door at school so difficult?” said Liza Pappas, an education policy and budget analyst at the Independent Budget Office, who wrote the report. “The key issue is getting to school. Children living in shelters attend school significantly less than other students”

There has been a surge in family homelessness in the last five years in New York and this has strained the current system in place to “its breaking point, or perhaps beyond it,” The New York Times reports. Two-thirds of the students living in family shelters were classified as being either “chronically absent” or “severely chronically absent” during the 2013-2014 school year. Severely chronically absent students attended school less than 80% of the time.

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During the 2013-2014 school year, the report determined that nearly 1,500 homeless students attended three or more schools, something “rarely observed among the permanently housed.” A major concern is the location of the shelters where homeless families are often placed. Homeless students, by law, are given the right to attend their original school even if they move. The city tries to place families in shelters near the schools of their children, but that is not always the case.

During the 2014-15 school year, less than 50% of homeless families were placed into shelters in the same borough as their youngest child’s school. This represents a 30% drop since 2011, and families are being increasingly moved from the neighborhoods they know.

“Homeless New Yorkers are best served when they can stay in their communities, near work, school and their support systems,” Steven Banks, commissioner of the Department of Social Services, said in a statement to The New York Times. “Right now, the city has a very limited ability to keep homeless households in their home borough due to capacity issues — that’s why we are continuing to expand our homelessness prevention and permanent housing programs and working to open more shelters across the city.”