A controversial new report may provide more fodder to home-owning opponents of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s plan to open new homeless shelters across New York City.
In a study released Wednesday, the Independent Budget Office concluded that condos and one to three-family homes in Manhattan within roughly a block or two of an adult homeless shelter sold for at least 7.1 percent less than those residences located farther away. In cases of homes located within 1,000 feet of two or more shelters, the discount was even greater, selling for an estimated 17.4 percent less than residences located within 1,000 feet of only one shelter.
The IBO also found that residences within 500 feet of a shelter for homeless families with children sold for an estimated 6.4 percent less than a similar residence located 500 feet to 1,000 feet away.
The study, which was commissioned by Manhattan borough president Gale Brewer, looked at the impact of 39 shelters on the sale of 6,237 Manhattan residences from 2010 through 2018.
Specifically, the analysis is limited to so-called congregate shelters, in which individuals share common spaces such as bathrooms and, in some cases sleeping quarters. The IBO differentiates these types of shelters from supportive housing, which it describes as "longer-term affordable housing that provides on-site services" for issues like substance abuse, mental illness, living with HIV, or having recently aged out of foster care.
That distinction, however, is untrue, according to the city and homeless policy experts. All of the city's new shelters have on-site support services. The only ones which have not traditionally benefited from on-site support services are cluster units.
As the IBO study itself notes, the analysis and methodology is very different from a 2008 report by the NYU Furman Center, which analyzed the impact of supportive housing on residential sale prices over a long period of time. After looking at 30 years of residential property sales data in New York City, the authors, which included the current deputy mayor for housing and economic development, Vicki Been, found that being located close to supportive housing had no impact on housing prices.
Brewer argued that the report's findings show that the city should be directing its resources toward building more supportive housing.
She said in a statement: "The IBO study I requested shows how housing property values are affected by certain types of homeless living quarters nearby. Transitional shelters appear to drop property values only modestly, and then only within a very short, under 1000-foot range, while permanent supportive housing doesn’t affect values at all. Facts unearthed by solid research like this are what public policy should be based on, and permanent shelters are clearly what the Administration should be focused towards."
In 2017, the mayor announced a goal to reduce the city’s homeless population by 2,500 between 2017 and 2022. Under the plan, known as Turning the Tide, the city has been moving away from cluster sites and the use of commercial hotel units and has set out to create 90 new homeless shelters. To date, the city has opened 25 new shelters and identified 23 other sites, according to a recent Daily News story.
The building of new shelters has been met with fierce opposition in many communities, such as the Upper West Side and Park Slope.
Homeless advocates and other policy experts immediately criticized the report, finding fault with its methodology, such as the small sample size, the decision to focus only on congregate shelters, and failing to account for various other factors that might explain the difference in housing prices even within a small radius. The study also left out the sale of co-ops, which make up a significant portion of the city's housing market.
In a statement, Giselle Routhier, the policy director for Coalition for the Homeless, accused the report of "stoking NIMBYism" and called on the IBO to retract it and acknowledge errors.
"The city's shelter system saves tens of thousands of men, women, and children from being cast to our streets, and is the reason we don't have the massive tent cities we see in other localities," she added. "Because of the flawed conclusions of this report, it will serve to advance harmful stereotypes and elicit discrimination against people of color, people with disabilities, and families with children in violation of the Fair Housing Act."
Among the errors found by critics was the IBO's definition of congregate housing, which the Coalition for the Homeless says does not apply to families. Some also said the report elides significant policy changes around homeless shelters during the period of the study. The report referred to many shelters that close during the day, forcing homeless individuals to leave, a practice used under the Bloomberg administration. In 2016, the de Blasio administration said that shelters had to remain open at all times.
Avery Cohen, a spokesperson for the mayor, said in a statement: “This report is not only wrong on the facts, it’s morally indefensible. Anyone who would withhold help from a family in need to make a bigger profit reselling a home has to take a hard look in the mirror.”
The report has also spurred scrutiny on a nonpartisan and publicly funded agency that has long been respected for its rigorous and detailed analyses on the city budget and tax revenues. Former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, the president and CEO of the social service agency Women In Need (WIN), said of the report, "It is below the high level standard that the IBO has long held."
She said the report was "useless at best, but at worst, it is an incorrect set of data that is out in the city that incorrectly furthers stereotypes shelters and homeless people."
The Furman Center also chimed in on the report, with a series of tweets that highlighted some of the differences between the IBO analyses and its own 2008 study.
The IBO did not make the author of the report, Yaw Owusu-Ansah, available for an interview. He is described on the IBO's website as an economist specializing in the city’s property tax system.
George Sweeting, the deputy director of the IBO, stood by the report, saying, "We wouldn't publish it if we didn’t think it was solid work and the results can be trusted."
He later added that the agency was working on a fuller response.
