Pet policy at city shelters keeps homeless New Yorkers on streets. Could that change?
After four years of couch-surfing and sleeping on the streets, Kathie Brewster was finally ready to enter a homeless shelter. But when she tried to check in with her 4-year-old Yorkshire Terrier, Pinks, shelter staff told her, “Absolutely no dogs.”
Brewster found a friend to look after Pinks. Without that help, she said, she would have been forced to walk away from the shelter back in 2017. “I really don’t know where I’d be,” said Brewster, 55, who now has a voucher for permanent housing.
City shelters accept service and emotional support animals, but homeless people with pets face an agonizing choice: give them away, or remain on the streets together.
This plight is the target of new legislation in the City Council, which would require the Department of Homeless Services to track how often shelter residents are separated from their pets and develop a plan to accommodate them.