Several elected officials, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, were on hand last week for the opening of a new homeless center in the Bronx.
The new Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing (PATH) facility, a state-of-the-art intake center for homeless families seeking shelter, is more than 75,000 square feet, 213 percent larger than its predecessor. It houses more than 200 specialists from the Department of Homeless Services, Administration for Children’s Services and Human Resources Administration.
The new facility replaces the dilapidated and inefficient Emergency Assistance Unit (EAU). The PATH center is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to single pregnant women and families with children in need of emergency shelter.
“The new Prevention Assistance and Temporary Housing facility was designed to provide compassionate and efficient services that had not previously been offered by the city,” said Bloomberg. “When I first saw the Emergency Assistance Unit in 2003, I was appalled, and I said we would make changes.”
DHS Commissioner Seth Diamond said the new facility will improve the transition process for families from being homeless to securing permanent housing.
“The new intake facility will instill efficiency and collaboration as families move through the application process, ensuring families are assisted courteously and professionally when they seek shelter,” said Diamond. “We will continue the transformation of the family system through this new building.”
Construction of the PATH facility began in October 2007 and cost a total of $65.5 million to complete. The facility will have the capacity to process about 120 families per day.
The opening of the new homeless center comes on the heels of the annual State of the Homeless report released by the Coalition for the Homeless. According to the report, homelessness is at an all-time high under the Bloomberg administration–113,553 people slept in city shelters during the 2010 fiscal year, almost 43,000 of whom were children.
