Charging Rent to Homeless
This is how the poor get poorer and the rich get richer.
Princess Seyborn and her daughter live in a New York City public shelter where they are now being asked to pay rent. Imagine youre a single mother. Youre living in a homeless shelter making barely enough at your job as a day care worker to feed your daughter and pay the bills. Now what would you do if that shelter suddenly told you in order to stay you had to pay rent? This is the reality for Princess Seyborn and hundreds of other working homeless families in New York City. The city is starting to charge working homeless families like Seyborn to stay in the citys publicly run shelters. Seyborn now has to pay $345 dollars a month in rent. I tried to explain it on my best behalf, Seyborn said. I dont have it and all Im getting is pens and paper in my face saying sign here and sign here, and I refuse to sign.
If everybody was jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge would he jump too. :irked:The policy is based on a 1997 state law, which requires shelter residents with jobs to use a portion of their earnings to pay rent. The amount varies according to family size and which shelter is being used. So why is the city implementing the law now? One reason could have to do with the results of a 2007 state audit. The city was required to pay back $2.4 million in housing aid that should have been supplemented by working homeless families. The citys mayor, Michael Bloomberg, defended the policy saying, Everybody else is doing it, and were told we have to do it, so were going to do it.
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