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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Senator Gillibrand coming up in about a half-hour. Now, let's spend some time looking at disturbing new numbers, shining a light on the plight of New York City public school children who are unhoused. According to the nonprofit, Advocate for Children, 146,000 students attending a New York City public school during the last school year were homeless. That's one in eight students in the whole system. Analysis of this data shows that's a 22% increase from the previous year.

If you have a child in a regular public school, it's highly likely that at least one student in their classroom is living in the shelter system or staying in the home of family or friends. Now, your first thought might be, "Oh, this increase is because of the influx of migrants the city received in that last year." Well, just yesterday, migrant children also made headlines as Mayor Adams lifted the 60-day limit on shelter stays for families with kids from kindergarten to sixth grade, allowing them to remain in their schools.

While children new to the city definitely make up some of this increase in homelessness, experts like Christine Quinn, president and CEO of Win, the largest provider of shelter and supportive services for homeless families in New York City, not homeless single people, homeless families, warns against writing the issue off as simply a "migrant problem." Christine Quinn is with us now to share how she's seeing this crisis unfold in classrooms and Win shelters and what might be done about it. Chris Quinn, welcome back to WNYC. Hi.

Christine Quinn: Thank you very much.

Brian Lehrer: First, give us your initial reaction to hearing that statistic. It comes from an advocacy group, not from the city itself. Do you take that number at face value?

Christine Quinn: Absolutely. Advocates for Children is just a top-notch, beyond-reproach advocacy group. They do this study or report on an annual basis, which is very important because then you can really compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. This is a 22% increase from last year's numbers. Now, listeners might get a little confused with numbers because there's a number of children in shelter.

We serve 3,600 children in shelter every night along with their parents. Then there's the number of children in shelter, families in shelter, and those living doubled and tripled up with family members. That's the number that advocates catches. There's nothing whimsical about living doubled and tripled up in New York City. It's not like there's a cottage in the backyard you can live in. They're probably living in an apartment.

That's a one-bedroom with a number of different branches of the family there and it becomes very, very difficult. It's just untenable to continue to live in those situations. You're absolutely right. People will write this off. The government will write this off as just the migrants as if those were individuals who didn't deserve help. It's not true. Probably of the increase, only about 20%, maybe at the most 30% are migrant families.

The rest are families who are fleeing domestic violence or families who have evicted. That's really the heart of the matter, kind of as we call it, the forgotten face of homelessness because, as you said, the homeless family is the child sitting next to your child in school. It's the person sitting next to you on the subway. We need to fully embrace all the facets of this crisis to solve it.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your phone calls and texts on this, especially if this issue of increased homelessness among New York City public school kids touches your life. Are you one of those kids listening right now?

Christine Quinn: Absolutely.

Brian Lehrer: Are you one of the parents of those kids listening right now? Are you otherwise personally involved with one of those kids and you're listening right now? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Are you a teacher listening on your prep period right now, we love that teachers listen on your prep periods, who has some of these students in your classrooms who are unhoused and want to tell us how you support them or how you think the system should better support them? 212-433-WNYC.

Maybe you don't have any direct contact, except your kid came home from school and told you about an unhoused classmate. Have you heard a story like that or anyone else with a story as relevant as it can possibly be or a question? 212-433-WNYC for Christine Quinn, president and CEO of Win, the largest provider of shelter and supportive services to homeless families in New York City. 212-433-9692, call or text. Just to follow up, Chris--

Christine Quinn: Hey, Brian, I want to just--

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. Go ahead.

Christine Quinn: Oh, I'm sorry to interrupt.

Brian Lehrer: Go ahead. No, you go.

Christine Quinn: I just want to correct one thing you said in the intro.

Brian Lehrer: Sure.

Christine Quinn: As we understand it, though, things could have changed, the city has not yet fully abolished the 60-day rule, which means if you're a homeless migrant family after 60 days in shelter, you get told you're going to be kicked out of shelter, and then you have to start the whole process all over again. God knows where you go in the interim. What I understand is that they said you will get kicked out of shelter once. Then if you get back into shelter through the arduous intake process, you will be allowed to stay in shelter. Now, I applaud this step forward and I'm grateful, but I'm not satisfied. I want what you said to have happened, the 60-day rule, to be gotten rid of totally.

Brian Lehrer: I'm glad you explained that and I stand corrected on that detail. Following up on your previous answer, it sounds like you were saying a large percentage of the increase in unhoused students in the public school system comes from recent evictions. Are we seeing a spike in evictions that would lead to a lot more unhoused children because the pandemic eviction moratorium expired?

Christine Quinn: Absolutely. We have seen the number of families that we are serving who have been evicted go up since the pandemic moratorium on evictions expired. We at Win and other advocates said to the city and the state, "When this expires, we're going to see a huge spike." We proposed creating a one-time emergency COVID voucher. Those folks who use the moratorium could get a voucher, pay their arrears, and stay in their apartment.

Now, people might hear that and say, "Oh, you're spending more money." It would have cost less than putting all those people into shelter and starting the housing process over. I wish the city and state had done that because we wouldn't see these numbers as high as we do if they had done that. The families, most importantly, the children, wouldn't have had to go through the trauma of living in shelter until they found a new apartment.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes in a text message, "Why is it so hard to make people in power care about unhoused individuals, especially with these statistics of public school students? I would hope the city would understand that this is a policy issue." Well, I'd say they do understand that this is a policy issue, but what do you think about the current leadership at city hall or, for that matter, at the state level? Do they not care enough to solve the problem better than they're solving it?

Christine Quinn: I think that elected officials don't think about unhoused people as a voting bloc. They certainly don't think of unhoused children who, obviously, can't vote as a critical voting bloc. People worry about getting re-elected. People worry about the constituents who most often call or email into the office.

I do think it's incumbent on us as advocates to do a better job of not telling people who to vote for because we're mostly 501(c)(3)s but registering people to vote when they're in shelter so they can vote at that address or helping them go back to their old address if that's where they want to continue to vote. We've done efforts in the past, but not as broad-based or aggressively as I think we should to show elected officials that that assumption is wrong.

Brian Lehrer: Another listener writes, "Shame on Democrats. We started saying 'unhoused' instead of 'homeless' but have done nothing to get people in homes." Nothing may be a little bit strong, but this is your party. For people who don't know your history, you were the Democratic speaker of the New York City Council. Is this a failure of your party?

Christine Quinn: I think this is a failure of our city. Have we as Democrats done enough? No. If we had done enough, we wouldn't have a 22% increase in homeless, unhoused, whatever word you want to use, children in school. Not enough has been done. When Bill de Blasio was mayor, most of his housing plans didn't include substantial numbers of units that were affordable to people who were trying to exit shelter.

I think what Mayor Adams is doing with his City of Yes efforts to do rezonings and other things to generate more truly affordable housing is a step in the right direction. The listener is correct. Not enough has been done and more needs to be done. I actually believe that if we were really to invest in making our shelters full of more services, particularly job training to help people get jobs that will pay the rent, and we really build more affordable housing at lower rent levels, we can end the family homelessness crisis. We don't have to live in a city with this number of children who don't have a permanent home.

Brian Lehrer: Should I ask you now? You ran for mayor once. Are you considering running for mayor again next year? A lot of people are.

Christine Quinn: A lot of people are [chuckles] more and more every day when you turn on the radio or read the paper. I've said I'm not running again against Mayor Adams and I'll leave it at that.

Brian Lehrer: If he decides not to run, that would open a new question for you?

Christine Quinn: I'm not running against Mayor Adams. I'm just going to leave it at that. I loved being an elected official. It was really the greatest honor of my professional life, bar none. It's an amazing thing to be an elected official because you have such potential power to make the city a better place for its residents. I've said I loved it. If there's an opportunity to do it again, I would relish that. I'm not running against Mayor Adams.

Brian Lehrer: Sarah in Nyack, a former New York City public school teacher. Sarah, you're on WNYC. Hello.

Sarah 1: I wanted to add to the conversation that I am still teaching, just not in the city. One thing I am noticing is that a lot of my students are coming in acting like they're hungry, meaning they're taking other students' food or maybe they're coming in not smelling good. Those are the things that I'm noticing. They're not turning in their homework. It's really hard to carry books around when you're going from place to place. I'm wondering, what are you seeing and what can we do to be noticing and what can we do as people of the city to be helping each other?

Christine Quinn: Well, thank you for teaching in the city and thank you for teaching wherever you're teaching right now. I think you really painted a picture of what's happening in our schools nowadays and painted a picture of how teachers have become, in addition to educators, social workers. That's a lot to ask of any one person. The prior city council under Corey Johnson's leadership and continued under Speaker Adams' leadership created and funded within the Department of Education, what we call "Bridging the Gap" social workers.

The schools with the highest number of homeless kids had extra social workers who could help with those challenges and other challenges that homeless students were having. We need to expand that program, make sure every school that has a significant number of homeless children have those kind of social workers so they can work as a team with the teachers and parents and shelter providers to make sure those students are getting all that they need. Also, we see a lot of bullying of homeless children. These social workers can help with that as well and help with the learning deficits that some homeless children do have.

Brian Lehrer: Sarah, I'm glad you raised that topic and asked that question. Thank you very much. Here's another former Brooklyn, New York City public school teacher, Jessica, now in South Orange. You're on WNYC. Hi, Jessica.

Jessica: Hi. Super happy to be here. I'm calling because you were saying that, most likely, your child is sitting in a classroom with a child who's unhoused. I want to point out that these children are not spread out evenly across the city, even across districts. There are some poorer areas that have many unhoused children. Even within the same district like District 15, there are some schools that have maybe one or two kids who are in these sad situations and other schools that have many. It's not like an equal sharing of pain.

Brian Lehrer: Absolutely.

Christine Quinn: You're absolutely right, yes. That's a really good point to have raised, so thank you. That's where Bridging the Gap came from, from the social worker structure it put in place because I understand there might not be the resources to add extra social workers at every school, for argument's sake, but then let's target it to the school that has the most. That's one point. Two, shelters have historically never been contributed--

Brian Lehrer: Do they not do that? Do they not already take a census of where the homeless or unhoused students are because they would be concentrated and allocate more resources?

Christine Quinn: Well, they take a census. Through the council's work, they allocate more social workers. There isn't like all of these schools are now the high priority for X, Y, and Z because of homeless kids. No, that is not a uniform thing. It is something the city should do as well because we can't undo where the shelters are. We should, moving forward, and I give Bill de Blasio credit for trying to do this, cite the shelters more equitably. They're not only in low-income, mostly neighborhoods of color.

Brian Lehrer: Related question. Listener writes, "Are they better-matching families to a shelter near their children's school?" Listener writes, "I've seen kids being bused one to two hours every AM and PM between the shelter and the school, which, as you can imagine, has a very detrimental effect on the child." The question they ask is, are they better-matching families to a shelter near their child's school?

Christine Quinn: They say they are. I'm very skeptical. I'm very skeptical. I will give, again, Mayor de Blasio credit for his turning-the-tides effort where they began to cite shelters, one, where they weren't, as I said, and, two, in neighborhoods that had a high number of homeless families or homeless individuals but didn't have shelters. That's why we opened one on the north shore of Staten Island and in Coney Island. High number of homeless families there, no shelter. That allows kids and families to stay in the school that they're in, but we need to do more of that. No question.

Brian Lehrer: Can you name the neighborhoods in the city where there are these concentrations of unhoused students?

Christine Quinn: Sure. There's a lot in Coney Island. Given it's Staten Island, there's a fewer number, but percentage-wise for the island, a lot on the North Shore, Staten Island, East New York. Brownsville has a high number. The South Bronx or others that have high numbers.

Brian Lehrer: Listener writes, "There's no accurate baseline regarding migrant impact on our shelters. Because during the prior mayor's reign, there was a 'don't ask, don't tell' policy regarding legal status. If you can't measure it, you can't manage it. Now that the mayor invited everyone here, we are counting," or maybe they should say, "Now that Governor Abbott of Texas has sent everyone here, we are counting."

Christine Quinn: Right, right. [chuckles]

Brian Lehrer: What about the underlying thought there? Did the de Blasio administration drop the ball in a certain respect for taking a census of migrant kids in shelters?

Christine Quinn: One, the big influx of migrants did not happen in de Blasio's administration. Two, it's a complicated point. I've had the same reaction when I started at Win, believe it or not, nine years ago as the listener did. You want to know how many of anything there are where they're distributed because it's often said, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it," but we are sanctuary city. Inherent in that is we do not ask people what their citizenship status is, right?

We have to carry that sanctuary city philosophy into our shelters and not ask, though people will tell you unsolicited at times, and you can just know from what type of benefits, et cetera, you're able to access for the person. There's a balance there, right? Two, now that, God help us all, Trump is going to be president, we don't want any lists of anybody, lest the federal government be able to get those lists and come with their threatened mass deportations.

Brian Lehrer: How are you at Win? If you're just joining us, listeners, we have a few more minutes with Christine Quinn, president and CEO of Win, the largest provider of shelter and supportive services for homeless families in New York City, on the new statistic that 146,000 students attending a New York City public school in the last school year were homeless. That's more than a 20% increase from the previous year. Are you doing anything to protect the families in your system from the coming mass deportation?

Christine Quinn: Yes, I'm not going to say everything we're doing because not that I'm paranoid, but I don't want to tip our hand. I will say folks might remember that when Trump was president the first time, they did broad-based raids across the country that were really focused resources. In response to that, we did aggressive training of our security staff to make sure they understood that if ICE comes to immigration and et cetera, comes to the door, ICE comes through the door, they have to have a warrant issued by the judge. They have to be accompanied by the NYPD, et cetera, et cetera.

We move folks around because we are lucky enough to have, in this situation, 16 shelters. We move folks around to theoretically make them harder to find. ICE came to one of our Win shelters without the proper warrant, without the proper documentation. We sent them away and we'll do all of that and more. I've had conversations recently with city officials, who said they're going to keep the kind of aggressive documentation requirements that the de Blasio administration had. I'm very grateful to the city that they're going to do that and maybe even do more.

Brian Lehrer: One more call, then we have Senator Gillibrand coming up next. We're going to be talking about mass deportation with her as well as other things. Sarah in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. An emergency room doctor, I see, right, Sarah?

Christine Quinn: Oh, wow.

Sarah 2: Yes, so I work in an emergency room in a New York City public hospital. I see a lot of migrants, a lot of migrant families come in, and a lot of migrant families with children come in, and a lot of just shelter-domiciled families with children come in. A lot of the struggles that I see them face is being moved from shelter to shelter. They don't have access to their doctors. I had a patient who lived in the Bronx and was being seen in Jacobi and was moved to domestic violence shelter in Queens.

I had to get all the way to the Bronx to Jacobi to get to her primary care doctor, which is obviously really difficult. I've also had mothers of migrant children ask me to write doctors' notes requesting that they keep their housing, that they don't be evicted from their shelter for medical reasons because the kids are disabled or have chronic medical conditions, which seems like an adequate way to address this problem.

Brian Lehrer: Is there something you can do on the front lines there? Thank you for your service, God bless, like every emergency room doctor ever. Is there something you can do in addition to treat their immediate medical conditions that's more systemic or anything you would recommend?

Sarah 2: It's such a systemic problem. I do everything I can for the patients. I prescribe their chronic meds. I give them three-month supplies. I give them referrals to primary care. I give them referrals to social workers and caseworkers. I write the doctors' notes that I can, but I'm really busy. I'm limited in what I'm able to do. I feel helpless to help these patients that are coming to me for help, honestly.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for saying that out loud, Doctor.

Christine Quinn: Well, let me just say first of all--

Brian Lehrer: Chris, go ahead.

Christine Quinn: You're the opposite of helpless. I'm working with some public hospital doctors and maybe I'll follow up with Brian and, if it's okay with you, get your contact and we can talk a little bit about how to loop you into that network. You are incredibly helpful. We hear it from our clients all the time that there's hospitals that they can go to where they're treated with respect and given the care that they need and their children need.

Thank you so much for doing that. You're not just an ER doc nowadays. You're a case manager, you're a social worker, you're a psychologist. Really, thank you for that. Every time I see one of our clients transferred to a hospital, if it's a public hospital, I breathe a little bit of a sigh of relief. No offense to the others because I know you're going to treat our clients with a great deal of dignity. Brian, can I mention one other thing before we get off if that's okay?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Christine Quinn: Which is that we've talked a lot about the 60-day transfers, myself included. You get a notice, right? You have a period of time and we can work with you. Because if you have working papers, you're less likely to get transferred. If you have a psychiatric diagnosis, you're less likely to get transferred, et cetera, et cetera. The city has, which they should have, an administrative transfer policy.

You usually use that, say, if it's a domestic violence client and their batterer has found out where they are. We have to transfer them quickly for safety or things like that, or the child is at a hospital, as the caller said, in the Bronx, but they're in Queens. We have to move them to get close to their child, et cetera, et cetera. The city is using the administrative transfer policy to move migrants around below the radar.

You only get 48 hours, so the idea of getting them on public assistance or a psychiatrist, psychologist, et cetera, is not doable. I believe that they're using that in a very opaque way and that more migrants are being moved around that way. That's what we're seeing at Win than through the 60-day notice. At the hearing today, I'm going to hopefully explore with the council members what we can do about that legislatively at the city or state level.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for giving our listeners so much context on that. My guest has been Christine Quinn, president and CEO of Win, the largest provider of shelter and supportive services for homeless families in New York City. Important conversation at any time. Our news hook was the news stat that 146,000 New York City public students were unhoused, according to data from the last school year, a 22% increase over the year before. Chris, thank you so much.

Christine Quinn: Thank you very much. Take care. Happy Thanksgiving. Bye.

Brian Lehrer: And to you.

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