Q&A
Evaluation of shelter time limit policy efficacy and case management
1:15:50
·
4 min
Council Member Diana Ayala questions the efficacy of the asylum seeker shelter time limits policy. Director Molly Schaeffer explains the rationale behind the policy and how its effectiveness is being evaluated.
- The policy is paired with case management to support asylum seekers through the process
- Evaluation metrics include work applications, shelter system occupancy, connections to resettlement programs, and training
- The policy has helped reduce the number of asylum seekers in shelters from 69,000 to 57,400, allowing for the closure of some larger sites
Diana Ayala
1:15:50
How are how are you evaluating the efficacy of asylum seeker, shelter time limits?
1:15:56
Like, what's, what's been the, the, the benefit of that?
1:16:00
I mean, I, I, I agree with my colleague.
1:16:03
I, you know, I and I get it.
1:16:04
It's not it's a very difficult position, for everyone involved.
1:16:10
We have the highest number of individuals that are unhoused in New York City.
1:16:15
Add to that, you know, as many, migrant families that unfortunately have, you know, exhausted sometimes every other possibility and end up in shelter, that you know, it it concerns me that we have a policy that, you know, would impose for the stress.
1:16:36
It's it's you know, I think you have to kind of you have to experience homelessness to understand the level of fear and just not belonging anywhere, right, not not having that level of stability.
1:16:52
And when you're alone, at least, you know, you're alone, but when you have children that you're responsible for, I mean, these are things that keep you up at night.
1:16:59
So I'm not gonna debate whether or not the policy is a good one or not.
1:17:03
I believe it sucks.
1:17:04
I think our colleagues all concur.
1:17:06
I think many of you would feel the same way, but I understand that these are, you know, things that the administration has has felt, would help expedite and encourage folks to start looking elsewhere.
1:17:21
For that but how do you determine the efficacy of this policy?
Molly Schaeffer
1:17:25
Thank you for the question.
1:17:26
I wanna just first zoom in on the numbers a little bit.
1:17:28
I think you said a lot of this, but I just wanna get those.
1:17:31
So we've had almost 224,000 asylum seekers come through the city since, since this response started.
1:17:39
We currently have about 57,400 asylum seekers in our shelter system.
1:17:44
Before we had these policies in place, and I really wanna talk about these policies paired with case management because they are you can't have one without the other.
1:17:54
We we announced them both at the same time.
1:17:56
We rolled them out both at the same time.
1:17:58
They're they're paired, because we really wanted to make sure that we were helping people through this process, and that we were giving them support as they went through this.
1:18:09
But before this policy was enacted, our numbers every week just kept going up and up and up, and that was, difficult from a space perspective.
1:18:18
We couldn't open sites fast enough to deal with the more than sometimes 4,000 people that came a week.
1:18:24
We couldn't get staffing, we couldn't get nonprofits, we couldn't even get the big conglomerates to give us staff to be able to open sites fast enough.
1:18:32
And so this really was intended to, make sure we support people in their most vulnerable time when they first come with us, give them the support through case management, and really protect our shelter system, which has again grown more than 3 times in the last 2 years.
1:18:48
When we talk about the efficacy of these programs, we really think about how many people have applied for work, how many people, how many people are in our shelter system at any one point, how many people have been connected to resettlement programs, how many people have been connected to training.
1:19:08
It's sort of all in the same, you know, doctor Ted Long really talked about the different types of outcomes we're looking at, both process and then eventually, these times of downstream outcomes, and so that's what we're really looking at.
1:19:21
And I think, you know, when we were at the peak of this response, we had 69,000 people every day, every 69,000 asylum seekers or migrants that we were sheltering at any one point.
1:19:33
We now have 57,400, which has allowed us to do things like close Randalls.
1:19:38
You know, Randalls is such a image of this response, and to be able to close it and to be able to really think about, giving temporary shelter in smaller sites that are more, throughout the city is a really big outcome for us.
