- Homeless families could face eviction over rules, By Julie Bosman, July 27, 2009, New York Times: “Homeless families can be kicked out of city shelters for repeatedly breaking rules like staying out past curfew or for refusing apartments offered to them, according to a tougher policy that takes effect Tuesday. The new policy gives the city greater latitude to push families out of the shelter system, which had swelled to a near-high of 9,720 families as of Sunday. Families could always be evicted for illegal behavior like bringing in drugs or weapons, but they can now be ousted for any of 28 violations, including failing to sign in and out or not keeping an active case file with city welfare agencies…”
- City aids homeless with one-way tickets home, By Julie Bosman, July 28, 2009, New York Times: “They are flown to Paris ($6,332), Orlando ($858.40), Johannesburg ($2,550.70), or most frequently, San Juan ($484.20). They are not executives on business trips or couples on honeymoons. Rather, all are families who have ended up homeless, and all the plane tickets are courtesy of the city of New York (one-way). The Bloomberg administration, which has struggled with a seemingly intractable problem of homelessness for years, has paid for more than 550 families to leave the city since 2007, as a way of keeping them out of the expensive shelter system, which costs $36,000 a year per family. All it takes is for a relative elsewhere to agree to take the family in…”
IRP Poverty Dispatch
Poverty-related issues in the news, from the Institute for Research on Poverty
