The New York City Association of
Homeless and Street-Involved Youth Organizations’

State of the City’s
Homeless Youth Report 2003

 STREET OUTREACH

The outreach team covered the neighborhood once, maybe twice, a week.  A group of youth familiar to the outreach program would regularly approach the staff to say ‘hi’, update them on their life or get condoms.  Lately, everytime the group approached there would be a quiet, hard looking youth waiting for them halfway down the block.  An outreach worker walked over to the lone individual and made an introduction.  The young person didn’t give their name but listened to the outreach worker explain the services that their program provided.  This happened for the next three or four meetings. 

Eventually, through pieces of information gained from each contact, the outreach worker discovered that for the past year  ‘Skeeter’ had been staying with friends or trading  sex for a place to sleep.  When he was unable to stay with someone, he would sleep down by the tracks just inside the subway tunnel to keep warm in  the cold. 

Each time the outreach workers saw him, they continued to make an effort to interact with Skeeter, reminding him of the services available and the accessibility of the drop-in center.  Skeeter began to relax and talk more with the outreach worker about wanting to get off the street.  The outreach worker supported Skeeter’s choices and began to offer steps they needed to take in order to get closer to getting off the street.

Eventually. after about 3 months, Skeeter agreed to come into the drop-in center and make some phonecalls and talk about a plan for getting off the street.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

            During 1992, it only took three New York City based street outreach projects to make contacts with 13,000 young people.  And while the collection of comprehensive demographics on the population is extremely difficult, a study done by the National Development and Research Institutes, Inc. (NDRI), has provided some detailed information.  In the early 1990’s, NDRI, Inc. conducted the Youth at Risk (YAR) study, a recent study of street youth in New York City.  National Development Research Institute enrolled over 900 youth between the ages of 12 and 23 who were homeless and/or dependent on the steet economy for survivial.   Street youth were primarily male (74%).  Most identifed as heterosexual (63%), with 24% identifying as bisexual and 11% as lesbian or gay…about a third were White, 29% were Black/African American, 29% were Latino/Hispanic, and 2% were from other backgrounds.   

            Street-based outreach to homeless youth throughout New York City is conducted in various ways, from on-foot outreach to community tabling.  The purpose of Street Outreach is to go onto the disenfranchised young person’s “turf”, meet them where they’re at and connect them to support and provide services.  Without the subtle, non-judgemental provision of outreach as a means of connecting with youth, it becomes difficult for homeless youth to be aware of available, accessible and youth-sensitive services. The role of street outreach is to identify street youth and provide those youth with consistency and individualized attention over a period of time.  It is not only a reason to distribute  materials such as outreach cards, pamphlets or condoms.  Street outreach is an opportunity to establish a supportive, emotional contact with  a young person in hopes of creating a linkage to further services and resources.

             Through consistent outreach, the consistently, repetitive presence of the Outreach worker breeds familiarty.  This creates a safe environment for the young person to eventually feel comfortable and begin to build trust with the outreach worker.  In the NDRI study cited above, only about 40% of street youth in the study had ever been contacted by an outreach worker (usually once to four times a month).  If the study of the sampling of the 900 is indicative of the population, we can extrapolate that, the 13,000 youth contacted by the three programs, represent a comparable 40% of the population of NYC street youth, thereby, we estimate there may be as many as 32,000 youth on the street in any given year.

             In the past few years outreach has become more challenging as areas where youth traditionally congregate (bus stations, Times Square, west side piers, etc.) have been gentrified and the city has made a concerted effort to rid those areas of street people.  There is a palpable police presence on the streets in these areas which frightens youth.  While the majority of New Yorkers may appreciate extra police presence, the police can intimidate a homeless young person resulting in their retreat further “underground” including ‘squats’, train yards, ‘tricks’, drug houses and/or being housed by gangs.  Young people becoming homeless are recently  more inclined to remain in their own neighborhoods, spreading the problem of homelessness to the far reaches of all five boroughs rather than flocking to areas known to outreach workers and youth alike.   This trend has made it far more difficult for the street outreach workers to be consistently available to  young people  in  crisis.

CURRENT STATE

            Street outreach is used by professionals as a portal to either connect a young person to a program’s existing services or to address their immediate or urgent needs on the street.  It is a fact, reported by homeless youth programs in New York City that youth report discussing a range of health –related topics with outreach workers, and frequently received condoms and other supplies from.  Unlike the majority of services for youth that require on-site attendance or in-school involvement, street outreach makes an effort to remove all barriers to services including transportation.  The mobility of street outreach allows services to reach youth wherever they are.  Results from the YAR study, indicated that outreach is an effective means of linking street youth to accessible services in their area.  Those youth contacted by outreach were more likely to follow-up with treatment for sexually transmitted infections, HIV counseling and testing, health care, drop-in centers and meal services.

             Throughout the past 20 years, outreach workers have gone out into the communities where homeless youth commonly gather as well as their communities of origin.  Lately, general services for homeless youth are becoming more centralized through city funded drop-in services for multi-borough outreach programs.  The proven success of outreach is based upon taking the services to the youth and developing them in their community.  Providing only one drop-in center per two or three boroughs doesn’t sufficiently serve the young person, primarily because it’s not easily accessible to all youth in need.

             The city seems to be modeling their service design on an adult model of centralized services.  While this may work well for adults, centralization is antithetical to how youth operate.  Young people from Brooklyn are not going to feel comfortable going to a drop in center in the Bronx.  And as young people don’t have access to non-public transportation, reaching services outside of their immediate neighborhood or near public transportation hubs becomes extremely problematic.

             Street outreach is an interpersonal service that allows the service provider and the young person to build a rapport and strengthen communication,  creating trust and familiarity.  It is the role of street outreach programsto consistantly  find youth where  they gather, whether they are homeless or at risk of homelessness.  Outreach workers, as a result, become very aware of any changes in youth trends.  For example, adolescent prostitution continues to be among homeless youth, however, outreach programs are seeing an increase in youth working with private escort services and via advertisements as opposed to street prostitution seemingly as a result of the increase in police activity and ‘sweeps’.  Street outreach workers are also the first to identify changes in drug activity, violence, sex work and gang activity.

EXISTING SERVICES

            In New York City, street outreach mainly consists of two models of outreach; by foot and by van.  These two outreach tactics can often be complementary when using  each to heighten the effectiveness of the other.  Outreach on foot allows the service provider to reach those youth that, untrusting, are not always drawn to a larger van.  Having access to a van, in turn, allows the service provider to cover a more extensive area throughout the city to areas where subway or bus service is limited. 

            New York City currently funds a limited number of programs to centralize their funded drop-in services and cover multiple boroughs. As research has shown, adolescents are more likely to follow through on a referral when it is immediately accesible and in a familiar setting.  The city’s development of a single drop-in center is unlikely to meet the needs of most young people.

SERVICE GAPS

            As services become more centralized, they become less personalized.  Smaller programs in a wider array of communities have, in the past, been defunded and replaced with city-wide services that the majority of chronically homeless youth will not utilize.  Effective street outreach doesn’t operate in a vacuum:it is an essential component in a continuum of services and, therefore, must be securely linked with a youth-centric drop-in/service/housing component

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR STREET OUTREACH SERVICES

·  Localize and geographically diversify street outreach services, as opposed to borough-wide only. 

·  Sensitize public officials to the complex and comprehensive needs of street outreach services. 

·  Emphasize the personalized counseling component  of Street Outreach, when possible. 

·  Fund community-based multi-service centers as linkages to outreach services.

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