Vol. 73/No. 23      June 15, 2009

Authorities had announced in early May that shelter operators would begin requiring working residents to pay a certain percentage of their paycheck. The amount could be as much as 50 percent of their monthly income, officials said. The move is part of the push by Mayor Michael Bloomberg, with bipartisan support, for across-the-board cuts in funds for education, health care, transportation, and other social services.

On May 21 the deputy commissioner of the Department of Homeless Services said that the rent program was shelved until “technical issues” were resolved.

Vanessa Dacosta, who earns $8.40 an hour as a cashier, received a notice under her door in early May informing her that she owed $336, nearly half of her $800 monthly wages, to the Clinton Family Inn, a shelter in Manhattan where she has lived since March.

“It’s not right,” Dacosta told the New York Times. A single mother, Dacosta said she spends nearly $100 a week on child care for her two-year-old. “I pay my baby sitter, I buy diapers, and I’m trying to save money so I can get out of here. I don’t want to be in the shelter forever.”

City officials said they were simply enforcing a state law passed in 1997. “Everyone else is doing it,” Bloomberg said, “and we’re told we have to do it, so we’re going to do it.”

A state official said the rent collection will affect about 2,000 of the more than 9,000 families in New York City shelters. More than 500 families were informed that they were being charged rent starting May 1.

“Families have been told to pay up or get out,” said Steven Banks, the chief attorney for the Legal Aid Society. “We’ve already had a case of a survivor of domestic violence who was actually locked out of her room.”

Shakiema Johnson has lived with her two young children in a shelter in Harlem since March of this year. Johnson told the Militant that city officials had denied her application for a shelter many times, insisting she instead live with her grandmother. It took her grandmother’s death for her to get into a shelter.

Johnson described the scrutiny applicants undergo to gain admission. “They look into where you have lived, or where you got mail,” she said. “This new policy is not fair. If I had enough money to pay rent, I wouldn’t be here.”

Sinnamon Jackson lives at the same Harlem shelter with her child. “Everyone here has some kind of income,” she noted, “a job, unemployment compensation, Social Security, welfare. Eventually they are going to want everyone to pay some rent.”

Dan Fein is the Socialist Workers Party candidate for mayor of New York City.
 
 
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