Its really difficult especially to just find ways to get through day to day from you know finding clothing to finding shelter to finding you know where youre going to eat. Tonight its pretty hectic because of the snow outside and theres not a lot of places for us to sleep now, so everybodys kind of coming in. In just a decade, the number of People Living in new yorks homeless shelters has nearly doubled reaching 60 thousand a night last year. Its a homelessness crisis unprecedented in any american city. What we see today the homeless that we see the exodus from this city, families doubling, tripling up, the rent skyrocketing. This has been a crisis thats been cooking for 20 years. Why are so many in new york homeless . This week, fault lines looks at the forces that are displacing thousands from their homes. Were on our way to the south bronx to new yorks only Intake Center for homeless families. More than seventy percent of people in the citys shelters are families with children. Homelessness is so complicated. Its not just this guy on the street with that shopping cart. It isnt just this one person who made the wrong choice or had bad luck. To apply for shelter, a family must first come to this building known as path. Journalists are not allowed inside. Weve been here just a few hours, and theres been dozens of families coming in. Its been really shocking. Its a lot of Young Children and a lot of working parents trying to make it. Whats it like in there . Its not what people think. People in there are you know everyday people. I dont judge people because you never know the situation youll be in. I have four kids. My salary . I get paid 9 dollars an hour. So you do the math. How did you know about the path center . I googled it. I googled family shelters. [yes baby] i googled it. Was this your first time in the shelter system . Yeah. Whats this little guys name . This is josiah grub. Say hi josiah. How old are you josiah . Three. So where are you sleeping . Man wherever they place us. You come in theyll put you on a tenday placement. And then theyll be like okay youre either denied or approved. And if youre denied . If youre denied, you have to come back and do the process all over again. And thats what youre doing now . For the third time. New york city has an obligation to provide shelter to all individuals who are homeless. Because of that tradition, new york city has the largest public shelter system in the united states. Patrick markee is one of new yorks leading advocates for the homeless. The cost of shelter is exorbitant. The city now spends more than a billion dollars a year just in shelter and Emergency Services for homeless people. Today new york operates over 250 homeless shelters. But still, about half of the families who apply for shelter are rejected. The city has put in place these kind of bureaucratic barriers that wrongfully and unlawfully deny shelter to many needy families. We met Melissa Rivera at path. Shes twentyfive, and has three kids. I go through this every single day when i come home. [come here. Come sit with mommy. Stop crying] shes my little minime. She looks just like me. These kids mean everything to you, huh . Yes theyre my life. I love them dearly. Theyre my babies. Melissa has been homeless for three years. She and her kids now sleep in the living room of her grandmothers Public Housing unit. This is it right here. I put this couch i bring it over, put it together with that one, put the blankets on there. So you all sleep right here in the living room . Just my two daughters and then my son right in here in this playpen. New yorks Child Services agency has told melissa that shes endangering her kids by keeping them here. How does your grandmother feel about you living right here in her living room . She hates it. Her grandmother is also at risk of losing her housing subsidy. But still, she says the city has denied her shelter application seven times. Melissa works as a doortodoor saleswoman. But she only makes about 400 a month. Have you ever had to sleep on the streets . Not with my kids, thank god. I have gone through it on my own, when i was 16, and i dont want that life for them. So um [crying] sorry. Just thinking about that they could be in the situation that i was in before. Knowing that im by myself. Theres a lot things that i would love to have but its too expensive. I dont make enough to get any of those things. It is new york theres a lot of rich people here. They want to make the city for people that can afford things, you know. Forget about the people that cant afford it. Theyre just going to have to leave the city. Thats how i see it. One in five new yorkers lives below the federal poverty line. Meanwhile, housing costs continue to soar. Median rents have risen by 8. 5 percent, but median incomes have dropped by 7 percent. Tawana little has lived in new york for her whole life. But for over a year, she and her kids have been forced to live in shelter. When it came down to the ending of my lease that was a prime opportunity for the landlord to say okay, we dont want this program in here anymore. tawana depended on a state program that helped her pay the rent. When her landord raised the price, she was evicted. He just wanted higher rents . He wanted higher rents. So your rent for that place is now gone up to 2200 . 2200. Yes. Could you afford that . Oh absolutely not. Tawana is looking for an apartment she can afford. Its a search thats taken her far outside the city an hour and a half bus ride to middletown new york. We met her in middletown. But the broker whod agreed to show her around cancelled. So im just really, in a really bad emotional place right now. Im not feeling the greatest. I feel like it was just a pure waste of time. To salvage the trip she decided to look anyway. Whats it like doing this search while youre in a shelter . Is it hard . When youre in the shelter, its doubly hard. Youre not really comfortable. But i tell you i would rather come out here and take a look and get my family out of that circumstance opposed to sitting there not doing anything. Do you see yourself living here . No. I dont know. I dont know yet. Do you know people here . No, not at all. Do you have a lot of friends and family in new york . In the city yeah. Absolutely. Thats where i grew up at. So i know my areas. Do you feel like youve been forced to leave the city . With the rents, with the rents as high as they are . Yes. Middle class people in the city are not being really catered to. Theyre busting their behinds working every day constantly to the point where theyre not even sleeping you know. And if they miss a paycheck, then theres a possibility they can be where i am. And thats the realism of it. For more faultlines check out on demand or visit aljazeera. Com faultlines. Whose city . Our city whose city . Our city what do we want . Affordable housing what do we want . Affordable housing when do we want it . Now were in the middle of a rally with hundreds of new yorkers from East New York a working class neighborhood in brooklyn. People here are demanding that at least half of the new houses built here are affordable for them. They want to push these people out because apartments are going to be so high. They not going to be able to afford it. Under its last mayor michael bloomberg, new york city lost more than a third of apartments considered affordable to poor families. What were seeing now is the effects of 20 years of housing policy. Twenty years of people little by little being pushed out. No attempt to house these human beings. Homelessness is the number is rising everyday. Theres a lot of homelessness right here . Right here. Right here. People are getting priced out, pushed to out of state. New york city under the Bloomberg Administration eliminated entirely the permanent housing programs which were designed to help homeless families and children leave the shelter system. Under bloomberg the number of people in homeless shelters each night went from 31 thousand to 54 thousand. Essentially what we had was a massive social experiment to test the proposition that if you take away permanent Housing Assistance from the neediest children and families in our city what will happen . How you gonna have high rents, and no good jobs . Every day in this city, people are losing their homes. If we do not act new york risks taking on the qualities of a gated community. Mayor bill de blasio was elected in 2013 on a promise to reverse new yorks growing economic inequality. The city has for decades let developers write their own rules when it came to building housing. This administration is taking a fundamentally different approach. De blasio has vowed to create and preserve 200 thousand affordable units. His plan relies on tax incentives to developers. If youre a developer if you set aside 20 percent of those units for lowincome folks, the city will give you tax breaks on that property. Robert robinson is a housing advocate whos formerly homeless. I would challenge mayor de blasio and say your plan is no different than bloombergs plan. Eighty percent market rate twenty percent low income. The more you create housing like that youre saturating the market with marketrate housing. Developers in this city, they want to profit as much as they can. So their heart is not into building houses for poor people. Thats not their goal. Their goal is to get market rate rents. New yorks largest existing stock of Affordable Housing is the one million aparments that are rentregulated under state law. But the trend is clear since the early eighties nearly twenty percent of these have been converted to market rate. Shanequa charles has lived in a rentstabilized apartment in the bronx since 1988. By law her landlord can only raise her rent a small percentage each year. But if she moves out he can raise the rent by twenty percent. This area is going through gentrification right. So thats no secret. I mean the writing is on the wall. If you can get these buildings from being rentstabilized then you can charge 2500 a month, 3000 a month eventually. Shanequa says shes never missed a rent payment. But six months ago she received an eviction order from her landlord. That was the most helpless feeling ive ever, ever experienced actually. Yeah it was pretty bad. What was your biggest fear at that moment . Being homeless. And you dont think rationally when um you dont think rationally when you think youre going to lose your home. The number one cause of family homelessness in new york is eviction. In 2012, more than one third of families who applied for shelter had recently been evicted. Weve got 33,000 people whove been evicted across new york city in the last two years. 33,000 families shanequas building has 50 Code Violations. The apartment was full of lead um there were like holes in the walls, the bathroom ceiling almost collapsed. This will probably fall down at any minute. Last spring she asked for repairs. One day a crew arrived and demolished her bathroom. My daughter came in and i recorded her. She was like what is this how am i gonna take my bath . I dont know. It makes me angry. It makes you angry . Yeah why does it make you angry . Because its like ruined its ruined. Its really ruined. Hopefully the landlord will fix it right . We didnt have a bathroom for over a month. We were like packing our bags every night to find somewhere to bathe. Its frustrating because my rent is paid. Owners are not viewed favorably by anybody. I think we are probably somewhere in the bottom, next to Real Estate Agents or bankers. Joseph strasburg is the president of the rent stabilization association, a lobbying group for landlords. Every economist will tell you that any artificial controls do not work. Explain this to me. Youre called the rent stabilization association, but youre opposed to rent stabilization . Thats correct. Thats correct. Government requires so many rules and regulations that they impose on owners. Many of them are small Property Owners not very sophisticated. But you know, even with all these regulations, theres still this constant flow of people who are getting evicted. And im just wondering what you would say to a homeless family that was evicted out of a rentstabilized building oh, well if theyve been paying the rent, how did they get evicted . Just in the past month weve met so many families who. But if theyve been paying their rent, there is no way they could be evicted. If they were evicted it was done illegally. But owners theyre not in the business of providing social services. Thats governments responsibility. Every day we read stories about repairs not being done people being harassed. They dont get heat. They dont get hot water. Gentrification doesnt just happen. It is a system and it is done systematically. There are ways to legally push people out. Its only illegal when you get caught. For more faultlines check out on demand or visit aljazeera. Com faultlines. Criminal gangs risking lives its for this. 3 grams of gold killing our planet where its blood red. Thats where the mercury is most intense now, fighting back with science. We fire a Laser Imaging system out of the bottom of the plane revealing the deadly human threat because the mercury is dumped into the rivers and lakes, it then gets into the food chain. Thats hitting home it ends up on the dinner plate of people. Techknow only on Al Jazeera America part of Al Jazeera Americas special month long evironmental focus fragile planet crown heights, brooklyn. More families from this neighborhood have entered the shelter system than from any other in new york. Ive been here a long time. Im a senior. I listen to some of the rents that these people are paying. I cant afford that. Were at a tenants meeting called by keisha jacobs, who lives in this building. I could be homeless too. Any one of us could have something happens and we lose money, lose an apartment. Anyone of us could find ourselves without our home. The building is rent stabilized. But keisha was the last paying tenant to move in. People told us when they were leaving. They were like this building is about to change drastically. she started to notice bunk beds and mattresses being moved into the building so she asked the building supervisor what was happening. He was like oh those are for the people. i said what people . and so he was like oh for the shelter people. the city was turning keishas building into a type of homeless shelter known as a cluster site a privately owned building that shelters homeless families. Theyre housing families in need of Emergency Shelter in my building. The city created cluster sites over a decade ago. As homelessness grew mayor bloomberg increasingly favored paying private landlords for shelter. The folks who own this building are really making lots of money from these people. Keishas landlord is a prominent real estate family called the podolskys. They own about 40 cluster shelters. Since 2010 the city has paid them over 90 Million Dollars to house homeless families. Four of their shelters are in keishas neighborhood. So this is pretty typical. Door wide open. Brokeninto and broken mailboxes. My building is owned by the same people who own this building. And were trying to improve the conditions in the buildings that he owns. You know this guy thinks that because the families are homeless they have no power. And just because a family is in crisis doesnt mean that you should be making millions of dollars off of me. The cost of living has skyrocketed. You know what i mean . And then i got to pay utilities, then i have two kids. And i have to get to work and i have to buy food. Do you know how much does the city pays for these apartments . Our budget letter shows that. Which is basically what they pay for our rent pretty much like the breakdown. The money that public assistance is paying for us to stay here . That could be given to us in vouchers and to find better places to live. Im sure you know how much the city is paying to house families in crisis. This is shaquana ryan. Ten months ago she and her family applied for shelter. The city moved them into this apartment. So whats this . This is the budget letter. Every month shaquana receives a budget letter from the city. Is this how much money the city is paying your landlord . Yeah. For this apartment . Its 2,700 2737. 50. Thats a lot of money. Yep. Do you think this apartment is worth that much . Nope, no way. Shaquanas building has 115 open Code Violations. Thats an average of five violations per unit. She says she has asked for repairs, but shes still waiting. The windows aint fixed. The first hallway light dont come on. The socket in the kitchen is not even covered up. Right now about a quarter of all homeless families with children each night are sleeping in these cluster night shelters essentially sleeping in apartments and we the taxpayers are paying a ridiculous amount of money for that. What would you do with that money, if the city gave you that much money . Get a better apartment. If they paying 2,700 for me to stay here, they might as well pay 2,700 for me to get my own apartment. Do you think other people in the building are paying 2700 . No. How much do you think theyre paying . Less than that. I dont think 2,700. I want folks to understand that if it wasnt for this program, that because this apartment is rentstabilized, you could possibly just afford to be living here. Wait a minute. So paying tenants in the building the average rent is 900 dollars. Right. And the city is paying up to three thousand dollars . Yes. For the same apartments . Yes. It seems so ridiculous that you would remove Affordable Housing stock from working families to house people in crisis and then turn a profit. Why are people looking for a shelter elsewhere . When theyre already in a dwelling thats rent stabilized . It doesnt make any sense to me. When mayor de blasio was elected, he promised to phase out cluster sites. But in the last year his administration has actually added 225 cluster units. We are facing high numbers and we have to ensure that everyone is safely placed. Camille rivera is the Deputy Commissioner of new yorks department of homeless services. Its the agency that oversees the citys shelters. Tell me about the cluster site program. What about the cluster site program . The cluster site shelters. It seems like the city is paying private landlords quite a bit of money for these apartments. Actually i would disagree with that, were working, weve worked over the past year and half since the new Administration First came into office to reduce our reliance on clusters. But last year the city actually increased the number of cluster units by 8 percent. We still reduced our reliance on it. What do you mean by that . Meaning that we are focusing more on purposeful built shelters shelters that provide more robust social services for our families with children. A lot of the families weve spoken to, weve seen their letters and theyre saying the landlord is getting paid 2,700 and theres people in the building paying rents of 500 to 1,000 dollars. The letters that people get include what is called social services and aftercare component. So its not something that were paying the landlord that amount of rent. And i think that that is something thats out there thats not true. How much of that 3,000 or whatever the amount is ends up going to landlords . Is there a formula . There is a formula. Were not going to discuss that formula. Let me tell you about one woman we met. She has two little kids. In her building there are nearly five violations per unit. What is dhs doing about buildings that have these open Code Violations . We work with our sister agencies we work with our providers to make sure they get fixed. I mean, the families were concerned that. Okay, were moving on. Just last question. Families were concerned. Were moving on. Theyve created a situation where they cant sort of back out of this program. They need it um because they need to have housing for homeless people. But theyve privatized it. And so once you do that, you know youve made a deal with the devil now. We dont need any more buildings turning into shelters. We need housing. Its been two months since we met tawana little. Shes still living in shelter, and looking for an apartment she can afford. You have to come up with your own scenarios as far as how youre gonna get yourself out of this situation. Because you really dont have much support. I really dont think that theyve put much effort into understanding what this crisis is. I think that theyre throwing money at it, hence where all of these shelters are coming up from, cause theyre constantly throwing money at things. But theyre really not getting into what the problem is and dealing with the issue. You can keep finding places to warehouse bodies. Doesnt end the problem. It doesnt work toward a solution that might end the problem. In 2014 the overall number of families in shelter rose by thirteen percent. Money is being made. It is just like the Homeless Population might as well be traded on the stock market. How much are the homeless worth . What we know about in this city and in this country. If something is really costing you money you do something about it. For more faultlines check out on demand or visit aljazeera. Com faultlines. Monday. A lot of these mining sites are restricted. A silent killer. Got a lot of arsenic in it. You know your waters bad and you know youre sick. Unheard victims. 90 percent of the people will get some type of illness from the water. Where could it happen next . I mean, they took away my life. Faultlines. Al jazeera americas hardhitting. Today they will be arrested. Groundbreaking. Theyre firing canisters of gas at us. Emmy awardwinning investigative series. Water for coal. Monday, 10 00 eastern. Only on Al Jazeera America. Part of Al Jazeera Americas special month long evironmental focus fragile planet maman bashir alex niev camila karamova di dai jin peng pan sunatillo i am sorry if i pronounced your name wrong