✰PREMIUM
Spotlight:
The challenges of supportive housing

January 9, 2025 Jesse Goodman

Officials and leaders helped plant a tree at the new supportive housing complex’s housewarming celebration. Photo courtesy of the Services for the UnderServed

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Just before Christmas, a homeless woman named Debrina Kawam was set on fire while she slept on the F train. In November, a homeless man named Ramon Rivera stabbed three people in Manhattan while suffering from an acute mental health episode. They are familiar stories in New York City, ones that point to the urgent need for safe housing and mental health resources for our city’s homeless. Supportive housing is designed to address both needs.

Supportive housing is defined as permanent, affordable housing with onsite supportive social services, intended for homeless individuals who may need psychiatric or substance abuse care and their families.

By all accounts, New York City has no shortage of supportive housing units. According to Seth Frazier of the Safety Net Project, there are nearly 4,000 empty supportive housing beds that are available right now. But getting a spot is a different story.

The Department of Social Services and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene tracked all 955 unhoused people who were approved for supportive housing over a period of several months last year. Of that total, only 175 people, or 18%, successfully obtained a spot.

Why are so few applicants getting access?

The problem is the application process. A homeless person looking for placement in one of the thousands of units of supportive housing, which may have been sitting vacant for months or years, is often subjected to multiple rounds of application submissions, lengthy delays, several interviews and a vast burden of proof. They are required to navigate an immensely complicated system without recourse or clear instruction — all while suffering from the daily physical, mental and economic toil of homelessness.

According to data obtained by Craig Hughes, a housing social worker at Bronx Legal Services, approximately 400 of the 955 homeless people tracked were still waiting to be referred to a provider for an interview, 131 had their applications expire without obtaining placement, 33 people were rejected and four died before they could be housed.

“It is a true indictment of the deep bureaucracy of discrimination and of other issues that have riddled supportive housing application placement for years,” Craig Hughes told THE CITY.

Other traditional options are fraught with safety issues. Without mental health services, medical services or sufficient resourcing, shelters are too often ill-equipped to handle the needs of the city’s homeless population.

“You know, violent things happen in these shelters, such as stabbings and other things,” Johnny Grima, a homeless man in Manhattan, told Brasil de Fato last January. “That’s too dangerous, man … nobody wants this kind of life.”

Mayor Adams has promised to improve this issue since his election in 2021. “This administration has made it clear we are not going to just walk past our brothers and sisters who have fallen on hard times, our fellow New Yorkers,” he said during a speech announcing the launch of the Homeless Assistance Fund in 2022.

There have been some notable improvements. According to city data, 2024 saw a 19% jump in supportive housing placements from the year prior. 8,861 supportive housing units have been built since 2022. Of the approximately 36,000 supportive housing units in the city in total, 94.4% are occupied.

But for the hundreds of unhoused people still waiting for acceptance to the remaining 5.6% — about 2,000 rooms — it’s not enough. “It just seems impossible by design,” said Corey O’Connor, a supportive housing resident, during a hearing with City Council in December 2023.