Alarming reports that 154,000 New York City public-school students are “homeless” rely on a dubious definition used in no other context.
Per the city Department of Homeless Services, fewer than 31,000 children now live in the shelter system. In fact, the entire count is just 86,000 people, roughly half the number of schoolchildren you’re being told are homeless.
What gives?
A federal law that lets homeless kids attend the same school, even if they leave the district, defines homelessness as lacking a “fixed, regular, and adequate nighttime residence.”
But this has come to include, for instance, a single mother and her children staying with a relative, or even a teen mother who still lives with her own mom.
Living “doubled-up” like this may not be ideal, but it’s not living on the streets or in shelters.
That’s why Homeless Services doesn’t count people the doubled-up as homeless, and why it up doesn’t prioritize you for public housing: To city housing agencies, living with a relative counts as housing.
The number of children living in shelters has doubled the last few years, but that’s thanks to the migrant crisis. Even today, the city is housing an extra 35,000 people — adults and kids — than before the Biden border boom.
Living in close quarters isn’t enviable, but even many well-off New York City kids share bedrooms.
Advocates and agencies may think that juking stats this way serves some higher cause, but such rank dishonesty only discredits their cause.