Mayor Adams wants fewer NYC babies born in shelters. Advocates are skeptical of his plan.

The Adams administration says it’s working to reduce the number of babies born in New York City shelters — a number that reached an estimated 2,000 births between July 2023 and June 2024.

The plan is to conduct a research study over the course of a year fast-tracking pregnant people facing homelessness into two housing programs, with the goal of finding out the most effective way to cut down shelter stays and make sure babies have permanent homes.

The study will place 500 pregnant people asking for shelter randomly into one of three groups: those who will receive a housing voucher, those who can stay with a family member or friend in exchange for a stipend, and those who will be placed in shelters as a control group. The proposal will be discussed at a public hearing Friday at 1 p.m.

“ We want to understand the best way to serve this very vulnerable population,” Department of Social Services Commissioner Molly Wasow Park said.

The study comes as more than 39,000 children sleep in city shelters every night and as the city’s rental vacancy rate has reached staggering lows — less than 1% of units priced below $2,400 a month are vacant. Mayor Eric Adams vowed during his state of the city speech in January that he would work to ensure “no child should ever be born in our shelter system.”

But while homeless advocates lauded the city’s ultimate goal, they say the study's design makes little sense. They say the city should just expedite all pregnant people into housing programs — not leave a third of them in shelters as a so-called “control group.” They said that would ensure fewer babies are born in shelters.

“ A better way to go about this is to offer people anything that they're eligible for and then you can track, did that successfully get them out of shelter?” said Alison Wilkey, director of government affairs for Coalition for the Homeless.

“To put some pregnant people into a control group that's not going to get any of these benefits, does kind of violate some basic ethical principles of human subject research,” she said of the women who will remain in shelter.

DSS spokesperson Neha Sharma said randomized control trials are the gold standard for evaluating any intervention.

“The purpose of this study is to assess the potential impact of each tool to inform broader policy changes which would affect an entire group of people and make important funding decisions based on evidence-based outcomes. This is a first, significant step in the right direction,” she said.

Housing voucher

As part of the research study, the first alternative to shelter will be a municipal housing voucher, known as CityFHEPS, which allows a recipient to pay 30% of their income toward rent, while the city pays the rest of the money to the landlord.

The program is the country’s largest city-funded voucher program and has helped 52,000 people across the five boroughs. It remains the most viable choice for low-income New Yorkers who can’t otherwise afford their rent as state and federal programs are limited or have long wait lists.

CityFHEPS is expected to cost $1.2 billion this fiscal year, up from $253 million four years ago. City officials said they want the voucher program to remain sustainable in the long term and are seeking to increase the tenant share of the rent to 40% after the first five years.

Living with family or friends

The second option will test a much less-used program.

Pathway Home will allow a pregnant person to go live with a family member or a friend who, in exchange, will receive a monthly stipend for a year. The stipend ranges from $1,200 for a household of two to $1,500 for a household of four.

“There tends to be a gut reaction that the solution to all things housing is CityFHEPS and in a city with a 1.4% vacancy rate, actually CityFHEPS can be really challenging to use,” Park said.

“There are advantages to being with friends or family in a moment where you now all of a sudden have a new human being to take care of, which is stressful and hard,” she added.

Most families who enter the shelter system lose their housing over domestic violence or conflict, not eviction, city officials said. Pregnant people who are victims of domestic violence won’t be eligible for the research program to ensure their safety.

Park said the Pathway Home program could prove an effective tool, potentially mirroring what happened during the pandemic when shelter census numbers for families with children declined partly because extra pandemic-era government aid relieved the financial burden for families and helped them stay together.

The city will invest $8.5 million for five years in the study.

But research experts said CityFHEPS already works and the city should just give all pregnant people quick access to the housing options they’re eligible for.

Rachel Swaner, vice president of policy, research, and advocacy for the Community Service Society of New York, said pregnant people who are randomly assigned to Pathway Home might not have anyone to stay with, which could skew the research results.

“ Some people will be placed into a group that they can never benefit from, which is going to compromise the study's internal validity and its usefulness,” she said.

The city says allowing people to be randomly placed in each group will ensure each housing option is objectively evaluated. Officials said no one will be denied services. Pregnant people assigned to the control group could also get access to a voucher or other housing help as part of services all families are normally offered in a shelter that take longer to attain and have additional requirements.

This story has been updated with additional information from the city Department of Social Services.

Correction: A previous version of the story incorrectly stated how long the study will last. It will last one year.