Chair Stevens on Legal Aid settlement and minors turned away from shelters

In 2017, Legal Aid Society sued the city over access to shelter for runaway and homeless youth.

Under the resulting settlement, the city was required to prioritize 16- and 7-year-old...

For placement in RHY shelters.

The settlement expired in 2023.

Since the settlement expired, the number of minors turned away from RHY shelters has increased dramatically.

Comparing the three reporting periods immediately before the settlement expired with the three reporting periods immediately after, the number of minors turned away from shelters increased by 3,000%.

How does DYCD explain the significant increase in minors being turned away from the shelters following the expiration of the settlement?

I'm going to turn to my colleagues to dig into that number a little bit more closely, but we continue to, that policy to prioritize minors made good sense in terms of like the younger runaway and homeless youth are the more vulnerable,

and we still want our providers to prioritize 16 and 17-year-olds over 18, 19, 20-year-olds if absolutely necessary.

So that policy still stands.

We want to support our providers to adhere to that.

I'm not sure about the numbers in that report.

You want to speak to that?

The minor numbers?

Sure.

It would be a case of education and outreach.

Right.

I'm not sure where those numbers come from, Chair.

But we do not turn away minors.

We do service minors.

As you know, our drop-in centers go from the age of 14 to 24.

So we have minors.

In the drop-in centers.

As far as our residential programs, according to OCFS regulations, we are allowed to have a minor under the age of 16 at a crisis shelter for 72 hours as we're looking for

placement and speaking to parents and speaking to ACS.

So I'm not quite sure where that number originated from.

We got it from one of our providers, and it was a report called Local Law 90.

I mean, 79.

Okay.

So that will be the shelter access report.

And for our shelter access report, we have 111 youth.

No, I'm sorry, 316 youth were turned away this quarter.

The quarter before, it was 599 youth.

Which is a reduction of 280 youth not being turned away.

That, you know, that's what we found in our report.

And as far as the age, those would not be considered minors.

Those are not minors.

16 to 17.

Okay, so the 16, I'm sorry, I thought that you were talking about under 16-year-olds.

So the 16 and 17-year-olds are the minors.

And there were minors on that report with the 316.

But like I said, it's a reduction of 280.

The minors, we have a minor policy that we adhere to.

And minors are not just turned away.

There is absolutely work done with those minors prior to them leaving our sites.

We have really good relationships with ACS.

We have a liaison that comes to our provider meetings and talk to them.

Don't you worry.

I got questions on that, too.

Oh, you do?

Of course.

I can wait.

Can we commit to following up on any minor who shows up on that shelter access report to make sure providers are clear about it?

The priority.

We will follow up on that.

And you guys know I get real iffy about language.

Because even when we're saying it's a reduction by like 200, it was still 200 kids turned away.

And so I want us to make sure we emphasize that.

Because I don't want us to be like, oh, it's better.

Still 290-something kids, which to me ultimately is a problem.

So I just wanted to make sure I said that because everybody knows I get real crazy about language with the babies.