Hundreds of Students Enrolled in Lower Manhattan Schools Live in Temporary Housing
More than 300 students attending various Lower Manhattan public schools are either homeless or nearly homeless, according to statistics compiled by the City’s Department of Education. Under federal law, the DOE tracks the number of students in “temporary housing,” a broad range of categories that includes residing in a homeless shelter or transitional shelter; a hotel or motel; a park or public place; a car, bus or train; or an abandoned building. This catchment also includes students who are “doubled up,” meaning they are staying with friends or relatives because they cannot find or afford housing. While several of these categories conform to what most laypersons would define as “homelessness,” others are often described by social workers as “housing insecure,” and are known to be strong statistical predictors of homelessness.
Recently released DOE statistics for the 2022-23 academic year (the most recent for which data are available) indicate that 301 students at ten elementary, middle, and high schools in Lower Manhattan are in temporary housing. Among these, 184 are doubled up, 87 are living in homeless shelters, and the remaining 30 are scattered across other categories.
Among local elementary and middle schools, Tribeca’s P.S. 234 had six students in temporary housing, while the Spruce Street School had 18. The DOE had no data for P.S. 150, P.S./I.S. 276, or the Peck Slip School. The Lower Manhattan Community Middle School (at 26 Broadway) had 19 students in temporary housing, 12 of whom were in shelters, with the remaining seven doubled up.
For local high schools, Stuyvesant High School had 65 students in temporary housing (ten in shelters and 49 doubled up), Millennium High School had 33, the Richard R. Green High School of Teaching had 26, and the Urban Assembly Harbor School had 17.
High schools with higher percentages of students in temporary housing (even when absolute numbers were similar, lower overall enrollment led to higher percentages) included the Leadership and Public Service High School (32 students), the High School of Economics and Finance (71), and Murry Bergtraum High School (14).
A DOE spokesman cautions that these metrics may be incomplete, and likely do not fully reflect tallies of students housed in immigrant refugee facilities, which are shifting continually.