Author: Patrick Markee

December 5th marks an important anniversary: Thirty years since the first landmark court ruling in Callahan v. Carey affirming the legal right to shelter for homeless New Yorkers. When modern homelessness first emerged in the late 1970s, the City of New York ..Read More

The front page of Sunday’s New York Times was a stark reminder of the harsh impact of the current economic downturn: One in eight Americans now uses Food Stamps to supplement their food budget, and the number of Food Stamps recipients is rising rapidl ..Read More

An alarming new report from the Federal government shows that hunger is on the rise across the United States. As the New York Times reported this week, a new U.S. Department of Agriculture report shows: “The number of Americans who lived in households ..Read More

Following the past year’s cutbacks in drop-in centers and other services for homeless New Yorkers sleeping on the streets, Bloomberg administration officials recently announced plans to close the largest drop-in center in the city — and made it cle ..Read More

New York City reached a truly sad milestone recently. As the Coalition revealed in an October 13th report based on newly-released City data, the number of homeless children and adults residing each night in municipal shelters exceeded 39,000 people for the f ..Read More

As the New York Times reported this past weekend, the Bloomberg administration has implemented a new policy requiring homeless families with employment income to pay for some of the cost of shelter. If they do not comply with the misguided new rules, the pol ..Read More

Last week, Coalition for the Homeless released the tenth annual “State of the Homeless” report, which documented how the economic recession, coupled with the worsening housing affordability crunch, has driven family homelessness in New York City to ..Read More

The New York Times has offered New Yorkers a rare look inside one of the dozens of illegal boarding houses increasingly used by the City of New York to shelter homeless adults. This week’s “Rooms” photo-essay spotlights an illegally-converte ..Read More

Yesterday, the New York City Department of Homeless Service released the results of its annual – and annually disputed – HOPE survey of street homelessness, and this year the City’s claims were met by extraordinary skepticism. City official ..Read More