When a fire broke out in Jessica Beltran’s Brooklyn apartment last year, she and her two children moved into a homeless shelter while they figured out their next steps.
Ms. Beltran, 37, had worked as a receptionist in medical and dental offices, but she had lost her job after she could not find child care for her 5-year-old son, Logan, who is autistic. A year after the fire drove them out of their home, she is still trying to get together the paperwork to apply for government-subsidized housing.
This can happen to anyone, Ms. Beltran said. Flooding, fire, the loss of a job — all it takes is one unexpected problem to cause a person to end up homeless. And in New York City, more children than ever are.
At least 146,000 public school students in New York City, about one in eight, did not have permanent housing at some point during the past school year, a record number and a 23 percent increase from the year before, according to Advocates for Children of New York. The group released the data, gathered by the New York State Education Department, on Monday.
Almost all of those students were living either in shelters across the city or “doubled up” temporarily with friends or family, according to the group, which focuses on supporting children from low-income families.
“These numbers are staggering,” said Christine Quinn, the chief executive of Win, the city’s largest operator of homeless shelters. “They are, quite frankly, an indictment of all parts of our city that this many children are living in shelter.”
In recent years, the city’s shelter system has been strained by an influx of migrants who arrived after crossing the southern border. Over 210,000 migrants have come to the city since 2022. Most were from Latin America, and others came from Africa and Asia.
But Ms. Quinn said that was just one factor.
“They’re going to write this off as a migrant problem, and it’s not,” she said, referring to city officials. She added, “To just write it off really downplays the situation in a way that is both incorrect and dangerous.”
The number of homeless students in New York City has topped 100,000 for nine straight years, according to state Education Department data. The figure has remained high amid a continuing housing crisis, with few apartments available and affordable options hard to find.
A spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education said in a statement that homeless students were a “continued priority.”
“Every student deserves a high-quality education,” the statement said. “To support the whole child, we have long established many critical supports to help students and families in temporary housing.”
Those efforts include “transportation and access to counseling as well as access to food, clothing and hygiene supplies,” the statement continued.
Most families who end up in a shelter stay for about a year and a half, Jennifer Pringle, a director at Advocates for Children of New York, said.
Childhood homelessness has many ramifications. It has an outsize effect on children of color, with 94 percent of students living in shelters identifying as Black or Hispanic and 35 percent speaking a first language other than English, the state data shows.
Homeless children are more likely to be homeless as adults and less likely to graduate from high school, Ms. Quinn said.
Ms. Beltran was homeless as a child herself. She and her siblings moved into a homeless shelter when she was 15 after their mother was evicted from the family’s apartment in Queens. Still, Ms. Beltran managed to graduate from high school and to study medical administration at a trade school.
After she and her children moved into a shelter in the Brownsville neighborhood last year, Ms. Beltran enrolled her 8-year-old daughter, Sophie, in a nearby public school. But Sophie was bullied for being homeless, Ms. Beltran said, so she transferred her back to her old school in Cypress Hills.
“I explained to her that some kids, you know, they’re different, they are not the same as everybody understands,” Ms. Beltran said. “And not to feel bad, because everybody can be in the same position we are.”
Ms. Beltran said that Logan had been placed in a school with special programs that have helped him with his disabilities. Usually nonverbal, he has begun to sing when watching music videos and has begun to try to speak. The only downside is that the school is in Flushing, Queens, about 10 miles from the Brownsville shelter.
The city’s Department of Homeless Services places roughly 40 percent of families in shelters in a borough other than the one where their children attend school, Ms. Pringle said.
She added that this was a primary cause of disruptions like absences: In the 2022-23 school years, over half of the city’s homeless students were chronically absent, missing at least one in 10 school days. One in every 32 homeless students was suspended from school, the group said.
“Oftentimes, parents are put in the position of having to choose between what they need to do to secure permanent housing and making sure that their kids’ educational needs are being met,” Ms. Pringle said. “The city makes it that much harder by creating these ridiculously long commutes for families back and forth to school.”
In a statement, a spokesman for the Department of Homeless Services said that the department increased the rate of families living in the same borough as the school of their youngest child to 80 percent last year.
“We recognize that education is not a privilege but a right for every child, regardless of their housing status, and we work diligently with N.Y.C. Public Schools and our shelter providers to minimize educational disruptions, whenever possible, for all families in our care,” the statement read.
As for Ms. Beltran, she is studying to take the state’s notary public exam next month, hoping that it will open up a new path to a stable income. She also makes homemade jewelry that she sells in flea markets on Staten Island and through online marketplaces like Etsy. Little by little, she said, she is rebuilding.
“I’m trying my best to get out of the system,” she said. “And I know that one day I’m going to have my life back.”
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