Providing shelter one street at a time

We asked, ‘do you want a bed tonight?’ and he said, yes.”

Councilman Eric Dinowitz

It was a bitter night on Jan. 30 as hundreds of volunteers across NYC canvassed the alleys, train stations and parks after midnight as part of the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) annual Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE.)

Councilman Eric Dinowitz joined the effort as he walked the streets of Kingsbridge, Riverdale and Van Cortlandt Park alongside volunteers, offering shelter to the unhoused.

Since 2005, the initiative has conducted thousands of surveys across the city. Last year, HOPE deployed 1,181volunteers and identified 4,140 individuals experiencing unhletered homelessness, as opposed to homeless individuals in shelters. searching for individuals sleeping on the streets and offering them housing. Volunteers receive a brief training on the day of the canvassing and are given a questionnaire to ask the people they come across.

“There was one gentleman who accepted the offer for shelter,” Dinowitz said of an unhoused individual he came across near his office on 231^st Street a 1:30 a.m. “We asked, ‘do you want a bed tonight?’ and he said, yes.”

The man found sleeping on the streets told his story to Dinowitz. He came from Morocco in search of a better life and found work in Connecticut. Things were looking up. But he was later laid off and subsequently lost his home. He resorted to entering the shelter system in NYC.

Once volunteers find someone seeking shelter, they are instructed to call BronxWorks – a community organization providing Bronxites with several services to improve their economic and social well-being. A van then comes to the location and takes the person(s) to their intake shelter in Manhattan.

Homelessness is defined both as sheltered and unsheltered, those living within the shelter system or on the street, respectively. When both statistics are combined the Coalition for the Homeless concluded that more than 350,000 people were homeless in NYC in December alone, with Blacks and Hispanics making up the bulk of homelessness, totaling 88 percent of the population.

 According to the coalition, the city has reached the highest levels of homelessness since the Great Depression. The city comptroller’s office attributes this increase to the tens of thousands of migrants seeking refuge in the city within the past few years. As a result, the city imposed 30 and 60-day limits on shelter stays but doesn’t guarantee housing.

In 2022 and 2023, Eighth and Ninth Avenues in Midtown looked like a shelter as hundreds of migrants slept on the sidewalks and in abandoned storefronts. 

Programs like DHS rely on federal funding to keep their services running. And although President’s Trump federal funding freeze has been rescinded, it remains a possibility.

As for the area within the confines of Bronx community board 8, several shelters provide housing to the homeless, keeping them off the streets, especially when the weather is unfavorable.

“You know, while you're walking, you want to find people because you want to engage in the work,” Dinowitz said. “But when you're walking and you find nobody, it's actually a good sign.”