Survey Finds Queens, NYC Have Fewer Homeless
by linda j. wilson

There are an estimated 335 homeless people living on the streets of Queens, according to a survey conducted by the city Department of Homeless Services. Jay Bainbridge, who represented DHS, told the Queens Borough Board at its December meeting that the survey, in Queens conducted in Astoria, Jamaica, Forest Hills and in the Howard Beach, Ozone Park, South Ozone Park and Richmond Hill neighborhoods of Community Board 10, had found an estimated 4,395 “unsheltered” individuals in the city as a whole as of March 7. The survey treated the subway system as a borough in its own right. “These people have a right to access the shelter system, but they’re not coming in,” Bainbridge said.

The Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE) survey of 2005, the first to count the homeless population throughout the city, was part of a five-year plan initiated by Mayor Michael Bloomberg in 2004 to end chronic homelessness in New York City. The survey showed that, compared to the rest of the country as a whole, New York City’s rate of street homelessness is among the lowest of any major city for which street count data was available and confirmed, survey results said. The 2005 estimate, compared to a survey of Brooklyn, Manhattan and Staten Island conducted last year, found no significant difference in street homelessness in those three boroughs over 2004.

Bainbridge was joined by Katie Appel, DHS Office of Policy and Planning special assistant. Both explained that the 2005 survey had incorporated a new quality assurance adjustment called a Shadow Count, which was overseen by research scientist Kim Hopper of the Nathan Kline Institute. Teams of decoys were deployed throughout the five boroughs to determine whether volunteer enumerators successfully found and counted the visible homeless people in their assigned study areas. The estimate was then adjusted to account for homeless individuals who might have been missed.

While there were some situations where the decoys were clearly missed by volunteer teams, other situations were less clear. Accounting for the clearly missed decoys only would have resulted in a 15 percent increase to the original estimate. Accounting for all of the missed decoys, including the ambiguous misses, would have resulted in a 29 percent increase. DHS chose to adjust the original estimate by the midpoint of 22 percent. Comparisons to past years’ data can be made with the original estimates prior to the quality assurance adjustment.

Most of the city’s homeless are found in Manhattan, with 1,805 homeless individuals counted and statistical adjustments factored in. The subways had the next highest number, 845, followed by Brooklyn, with 592, The Bronx, with 587 and Queens, with Staten Island having the lowest homeless count at 231 individuals. Manhattan has perhaps the most transit hubs and more storefronts where homeless individuals can be found.

For HOPE survey purposes, Queens, The Bronx and Brooklyn were divided into 2,373 areas, defined as high density if at least one homeless person was anticipated to be in the area, with 182 areas actually surveyed. A random sample of areas was selected to be covered on the night of the survey. Teams of volunteers were assigned areas during a four-hour period in the middle of the night to enumerate unsheltered homeless individuals. The quality assurance procedure used in 2005 placed decoys throughout the five boroughs to determine whether volunteer enumerators had successfully found and counted the visible homeless people in their assigned study areas. The estimate was adjusted based on those decoys that were not enumerated to account for homeless individuals who might also have been missed.

Fifty-five homeless individuals were actually counted in the 182 areas. The average for all areas was .30, and taking the original estimate of 274 individuals and factoring in the quality assurance adjustment of 61, the final adjusted count was 335 individuals for the borough.

“Queens has tree-lined streets with homes,” Borough President Helen Marshall noted as a possible explanation for the relatively low count in the borough. “We do have people who sleep in [some of our parks], though.” She asked how intake methods might be changed in order to bring the numbers lower. “We want to focus on placement, not making contact, and we want social service agencies that contract with the city to bring in their clients.” She noted that there exists no drop-in shelter in the entire borough of Queens, which, she said, would enable more homeless individuals to access services more easily.

A number of district managers pointed out that Queens, like the rest of New York city, is sorely in need of affordable housing, citing illegally converted dwellings as a widespread indication of the problem.

The 2005 estimate, as it is the city’s first five-borough survey, will serve as the baseline by which successes in reducing the number of street homeless individuals by two-thirds by 2009 are measured. The HOPE survey will also evaluate the effectiveness of current strategies aimed at reducing the number of homeless individuals. Considering solutions beyond the shelter system, “action items” under consideration include establishing a citywide outreach/drop-in center coordinating council; reconfiguring outreach services; creating an accessible citywide clinical database; expanding the capacity of drop-in centers; decentralizing the current men’s intake procedure; conducting an annual citywide street estimate; expanding “housing first” options for those on the streets; expanding transitional programs with low threshold/progressive demand, and creating community street population estimates, targets, and accountability mechanisms.