The goals of the EAU working group are to implement, change, and improve:

Picture the Homeless Access to EAU
We are working through the Brennan Center to include in the pending legislation access to the EAU and shelter system, and organizing other grass roots groups such as Voices of Women and Partnership for the Homeless to get broader support to push inclusion of the EAU. We are also working to gain access through a law that says we already have access to the EAU.

Food
We have a lot of written documentation via surveys about spoiled and just bad food. The other issue is the times that meals are served. They don’t coincide with the fact that folks are coming in 24 hours a day.

Education of Homeless Children

Kids/parents of kids that aren’t yet placed have to get a pass and metro card every morning (if the kids don’t have a student pass) just to be able to leave the EAU and get to school. They have to wait on 3 separate lines to do this, which places unreasonable barriers to get homeless kids to school on time or at all.

Repeated attempts at proving eligibility means delays in establishing a home and parents choice of keeping kids in (previous) home school or transferring them to new school in new neighborhood or elsewhere based on new No Child Left Behind guidelines.

Health problems associated with the EAU also cause problems with school attendance.

Excessive absences from school lead to ACS charges of Educational neglect which for some parents is the opening of an ACS file and for others may add to an existing file making it harder to keep custody of the kids.

DHS is a target for not having a better process while families are applying for shelter so that kids can stay in school, for not having placements correspond to the borough of origin so kids can get to school directly from the shelter and not the EAU.

Eligibility

Families are denied eligibility dozens of times. After a 10 day placement paperwork is slipped under their door informing them that they have to return to the EAU to appeal, for which they have no legal representation. When families file for a fair hearing they have no legal epresentation. Families, who already face significant barriers in obtaining documentation of homeless status, are repeatedly cycled through the 10 day placement system for lacking documentation of homelessness. Families that max out their time in the domestic violence system have to “start over” to prove their eligibility for homeless shelter although they clearly are coming from a parallel homeless system when they get there.