NYC’s only emergency housing intake center is in the Bronx. That could change.

For decades, New York City families in need of emergency housing have had to go to the South Bronx in order to enter the city's shelter system.

The City Council is now considering a bill that would require a second intake office in Brooklyn or Queens -- to cut down the time families with children have to travel to seek shelter.

Having a second more centrally located facility is welcome news to Christina Acevedo, who traversed through three boroughs with her kids last week to go to the city’s only intake center for families with kids on East 151st St. in the Bronx, a three-hour journey from Staten Island.

“That was the most difficult part – actually getting here,” Acevedo, 37, said in an interview outside the intake office. “This is actually more alarming that there is one place out of all the boroughs – that was a little confusing and shocking at the same time.”

Acevedo and her four children were evicted from their home earlier this month and said they have nowhere to live.

The city requires everyone in the family – including babies – to show up in person at the intake center to apply for emergency housing while the city determines their eligibility.

A pandemic-era rule waived the in-person requirement for those who were denied shelter and had to reapply — which happened to three in four applications in 2021.

However, that changes next month. Families with children reapplying for shelter can only skip the in-person requirement once. After that, they must return to the intake office but they don’t have to bring their kids.

On a Friday morning earlier this month dozens of families came in and out of the brick building, carrying backpacks and bags with their belongings. Three people who spoke to Gothamist said they had traveled some distance to the Bronx intake center to apply for temporary housing. They came from Staten Island, Bushwick and Park Slope, trips that took over an hour on public transportation and required either transfers onto different subway lines or buses.

But a proposal by Councilmember Sandra Ung would require the New York City Department of Homeless Services, which oversees the city’s main shelters, to open a second intake center where applicants would be interviewed and their paperwork processed to assess whether they and their children are eligible for temporary housing in the city’s shelter systems.

Ung, whose district includes Flushing, said most of her constituents are immigrants and English is not their first language, which already makes it difficult for them to access public benefits.

“When you are facing eviction, you might be facing [homelessness]," Ung said, "and not [being] able to speak to someone or going to a place that you've never heard of, you've never been — it could be very traumatizing."

If her measure becomes law, the city’s social services agency would have three years to open the second intake center, although that time could be extended.

New York state’s “right to shelter” law requires the city to provide emergency shelter to every homeless person who qualifies and minimum shelter standards.

As of Thursday there were 75,093 homeless individuals living in shelters managed by DHS, according to the city’s daily census report. Of that, 46,721 individuals were from families with children, representing the largest share of people in shelters.

More than 3,000 families come to the intake center monthly on average, according to Sharma, except for 2020 when the number dipped to about 2,600 families.

The Bronx intake office, the Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing, known as PATH, opened in 2011, replacing an older facility nearby.

Neha Sharma, a spokesperson for the Department of Social Services, which oversees DHS, did not say why the city has only one intake office for families with children.

Instead, she touted the department’s work in an email and said “reforms have further streamlined intake processes to make applying for and entering shelter easier for families.”

"I didn't get there until about 1, 1:30 in the morning.”

Sherrod Richardson

Decades ago, each borough had offices where families with children seeking to enter the city’s shelter system could go to and apply, said Joshua Goldfein, a staff lawyer for the Legal Aid Society’s Homeless Rights Project.

Up until 1993, the shelter intake process was not centralized like it is today, according to Sharma. Families with children would apply at Emergency Assistant Units (EAU) in the city. She said in 1993, the city established the Department of Homeless Services and the Dinkins administration began consolidating and centralizing the intake process at one site in the Bronx.

Early in Mayor Bill de Blasio’s tenure, city officials considered opening multiple intake centers but abandoned the idea due to costs.

Unless the city opens a second intake office, families like Sherrod Richardson’s will continue to make the long trek to the Bronx to apply for shelter.

Richardson, 39, worked as a nursing assistant for NYU Langone - Long Island until she injured her back on the job at the end of 2021. Within a year, she said she lost her apartment.

“I knew of the shelter system, but it's so far in the Bronx that it was kind of hard to go there,” Richardson said.

With the money she had left, Richardson said she paid to stay at a hotel. Then her car was repossessed. Faced with no other choice, Richardson put her little girl in a stroller and headed to the Bronx.

“I took the L train from Canarsie all the way out to the Bronx, and I didn't get there until about 1, 1:30 in the morning,” she said.

Although the intake office is open 24/7, applications for shelter are only processed during business hours. Richardson said she slept in the intake office’s basement until she was seen the following day.

Richardson said she was placed in a temporary shelter for women in Kensington, where she and her daughter are living. She said the city found her ineligible several times and recently applied again and hopes the city doesn’t force her to go back to the Bronx and start the application process over.

“We’d have to sit on the train for almost two hours,” Richardson said, “and then on top of that you still have to do about a 15-minute walk from the train station to actually get to the PATH.”