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EAU
How We Do Our Work
Direct Action: The EAU Committee holds rallies and actions to pressure those in authority as a means of getting our message across. We work very closely with the media, holding press conferences so that the public is aware of the conditions and issues homeless families face in the EAU. We also meet and correspond with “movers and shakers” like Department of Homeless Services’ Commissioner Linda Gibbs.
Research & Documentation: Picture the Homeless staff and volunteers conducted random surveys of 100 homeless families outside the EAU, in the spring of 2002, to identify issues and patterns of concern on the part of families directly affected by the EAU. We conducted separate surveys on issues around homeless families with disabilities in the EAU during the summer of 2003. An intensive training on outreach and interview techniques was provided to all survey team members. A report was made from the data in these surveys called, Abuse and Neglect: How New York City Violates the Human and Civil Rights of Homeless Famiies inside the EAU.
Public Education: We enlighten homeless families, especially those within the EAU, by giving them the tools to advocate for themselves and others. In addition, we also educate legislators and policymakers about issues and conditions within the EAU.
Grassroots Organizing: The EAU committee holds meetings in the park and at Picture the Homeless, and outreach to Picture the Homeless members and other homeless families in the EAU. Members, through networks of people they know, invite people to meetings and actions; but also take information to people where they are, asking for input and bringing in issues from the EAU to each organizing meeting. Attendance at meetings is not a prerequisite for any voice to be heard.
Leadership Development: New members are quickly oriented to our organizational goals and identify issues that they want to work on; some consistently participate and quickly move into leadership roles. Training is provided as members identify needs such as planning actions, and public speaking. Members are encouraged to participate in direct actions and other public events as soon as they join.
Research & Documentation: Picture the Homeless staff and volunteers conducted random surveys of 100 homeless families outside the EAU, in the spring of 2002, to identify issues and patterns of concern on the part of families directly affected by the EAU. We conducted separate surveys on issues around homeless families with disabilities in the EAU during the summer of 2003. An intensive training on outreach and interview techniques was provided to all survey team members. A report was made from the data in these surveys called, Abuse and Neglect: How New York City Violates the Human and Civil Rights of Homeless Famiies inside the EAU.
Public Education: We enlighten homeless families, especially those within the EAU, by giving them the tools to advocate for themselves and others. In addition, we also educate legislators and policymakers about issues and conditions within the EAU.
Grassroots Organizing: The EAU committee holds meetings in the park and at Picture the Homeless, and outreach to Picture the Homeless members and other homeless families in the EAU. Members, through networks of people they know, invite people to meetings and actions; but also take information to people where they are, asking for input and bringing in issues from the EAU to each organizing meeting. Attendance at meetings is not a prerequisite for any voice to be heard.
Leadership Development: New members are quickly oriented to our organizational goals and identify issues that they want to work on; some consistently participate and quickly move into leadership roles. Training is provided as members identify needs such as planning actions, and public speaking. Members are encouraged to participate in direct actions and other public events as soon as they join.
( categories: EAU )
EAU Campaign Goals
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
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.
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
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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. |
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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.
( categories: EAU )
EAU Committee Accomplishments
The EAU Committee has achieved significant accomplishments in grass roots organizing, leadership development, documentation and public policy work over the two past years and has elevated the voices and leadership of homeless women within our internal organizational decision making processes. Some of the activities and accomplishments of our Homeless Women and Families Committee during the past year are listed below:
♥ Won a second intake center for homeless couples without children to relieve overcrowding in the EAU – the first change in how families access shelter in 10 years;
♥ Major policy recommendations of our Homeless Women and Families committee were included in the report of the Special Master Panel released in June, 2004, and we were the only grass roots organization invited to attend a 2 day session to brainstorm ways to improve conditions in the EAU in July 2004. As a result of our participation, homeless women attended and provided input, and utilized this opportunity to enhance relationships with senior members of Commissioner Gibbs staff: receiving a subsequent commitment to have members included in task force meetings to review the process of eligibility determination in the EAU;
♥ Achieved concrete victories regarding physical conditions in the EAU and Shelters, including repair of the air conditioning units, water fountains and pest control in the EAU, and installation of new beds, furniture, painting and repairs at a notorious welfare hotel in East Harlem, the Washington Hotel;
♥ Trained homeless women and families in media work, public speaking, campaign development, outreach and organizing, documentation, participatory research, and meeting with elected and public officials;
♥ Published a major report which documented conditions inside the EAU that DHS has denied existed: families risked their eligibility for shelter by clandestinely taking photographs that were later publicized and helped begin to improve conditions inside the building, as well as gathered surveys to expose patterns of abusive conditions;
♥ Won a second intake center for homeless couples without children to relieve overcrowding in the EAU – the first change in how families access shelter in 10 years;
♥ Major policy recommendations of our Homeless Women and Families committee were included in the report of the Special Master Panel released in June, 2004, and we were the only grass roots organization invited to attend a 2 day session to brainstorm ways to improve conditions in the EAU in July 2004. As a result of our participation, homeless women attended and provided input, and utilized this opportunity to enhance relationships with senior members of Commissioner Gibbs staff: receiving a subsequent commitment to have members included in task force meetings to review the process of eligibility determination in the EAU;
♥ Achieved concrete victories regarding physical conditions in the EAU and Shelters, including repair of the air conditioning units, water fountains and pest control in the EAU, and installation of new beds, furniture, painting and repairs at a notorious welfare hotel in East Harlem, the Washington Hotel;
♥ Trained homeless women and families in media work, public speaking, campaign development, outreach and organizing, documentation, participatory research, and meeting with elected and public officials;
♥ Published a major report which documented conditions inside the EAU that DHS has denied existed: families risked their eligibility for shelter by clandestinely taking photographs that were later publicized and helped begin to improve conditions inside the building, as well as gathered surveys to expose patterns of abusive conditions;
( categories: EAU )
EAU Campaign
Picture the Homeless first learned of the abusive conditions in Emergency Assistance Unit through desperate phone messages left on our office answering machine when we were still at Judson Memorial Church in the winter of 2002. Women crying and yelling: “We’ve been sleeping on the floor in here for days and my kids are sick” or “They keep denying me (shelter) saying that I have somewhere else to go – if I had somewhere else to go I wouldn’t be here!”
So we decided to go up to the S. Bronx to the EAU and find out what the hell was going on. It felt like a volcano about to erupt. Hundreds of families, over a period of a few months all reported the same horrible conditions. We conducted surveys to document what we were hearing and held a town meeting at Hostos Community College, up the street from the EAU, on Mothers Day 2002 to gather enough families together to try and develop a plan of action.
Our work around the EAU has always been driven by the concerns expressed by families who have risked their eligibility for shelter by smuggling cameras inside to document filthy conditions, who have spoken out publicly and even organized from within a massive walkout of over 200 families in August of 2003, demanding an improvement in services saying that they would rather sleep in the street with their children that continue to put up with their kids made sick by spoiled food, abusive staff, vermin and dangerously overcrowded conditions.
Picture the Homeless is the only grassroots organization working to move the city of New York to improve the conditions in the Emergency Assistance Unit (EAU) in the South Bronx. Families with children, the majority of who are headed by single African American and Latino mothers, who become homeless in any of the five boroughs of NYC, must go to the EAU in the South Bronx to apply for emergency shelter. We also launched a Shelter Campaign to address the separate issues of shelter conditions and the process by which homeless families move out of shelter and into housing.
So we decided to go up to the S. Bronx to the EAU and find out what the hell was going on. It felt like a volcano about to erupt. Hundreds of families, over a period of a few months all reported the same horrible conditions. We conducted surveys to document what we were hearing and held a town meeting at Hostos Community College, up the street from the EAU, on Mothers Day 2002 to gather enough families together to try and develop a plan of action.
Our work around the EAU has always been driven by the concerns expressed by families who have risked their eligibility for shelter by smuggling cameras inside to document filthy conditions, who have spoken out publicly and even organized from within a massive walkout of over 200 families in August of 2003, demanding an improvement in services saying that they would rather sleep in the street with their children that continue to put up with their kids made sick by spoiled food, abusive staff, vermin and dangerously overcrowded conditions.
Picture the Homeless is the only grassroots organization working to move the city of New York to improve the conditions in the Emergency Assistance Unit (EAU) in the South Bronx. Families with children, the majority of who are headed by single African American and Latino mothers, who become homeless in any of the five boroughs of NYC, must go to the EAU in the South Bronx to apply for emergency shelter. We also launched a Shelter Campaign to address the separate issues of shelter conditions and the process by which homeless families move out of shelter and into housing.
( categories: EAU )
