Childhood on hold

Under restraints, children bristle over the many rules shelters impose

Lauren Terrazzano | Life, With Cancer

June 20, 2001

At 36, Lauren Terrazzano was diagnosed with lung cancer. In three years, she has undergone chemotherapy, surgery, radiation, a brief remission, more surgery, two more rounds of radiation and more chemotherapy. (Photo by Veronica Marino)

Thomas McCroy, 11, keeps the scooter he got for Christmas under his bed at the HELP Suffolk homeless shelter in Bellport where he's lived for the past four months.

"You can't do anything," said Thomas, who hopes to enlist in the service someday, just like his two grandfathers. "Why should I join the military when I'm already living in Fort Knox?"

In a place as large as this 76-apartment shelter, where about 180 children, the largest single chunk of Long Island's homeless kids live, the rules are necessary to make sure the place runs smoothly. But no one thought the children would have to follow them for so long, leaving kids struggling to be kids.

"Your childhood is totally different. It's taken away for a while," said Marie Estey-Fontanella, who has lived at the shelter for four months with her daughters Bianca and Julia.

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When HELP opened its doors in 1990, it was touted as a model for Long Island's growing shelter system. Homeless families would live in apartments with small kitchens and the facility would offer daily structure and access to services such as day care and job training and programs for children.

Its founder, Andrew Cuomo, who later became U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary and now is a candidate for governor, heralded it as a place where families would stay for a short time to learn to become self-sufficient and find permanent places to live.

But more than a decade since it opened, because of a dramatic lack of lower-cost housing on Long Island, shelter placements that originally averaged 60 to 90 days have ballooned into stays of nine months to a year or more for nearly a quarter of the families. A few families are on the cusp of the two-year mark, according to interviews and documents.

As a result, the lengthy stays are raising issues about how well such big shelters-with their large populations, their stringent rules, their crush of children-can meet the needs of its youngest residents and their families. Critics say large facilities tend to "institutionalize homelessness."

"You want to get families in a situation as close to normalcy as possible, as close to what a family not homeless would have, and that's not a shelter, that's an apartment or a house," said Nan Roman, president of the Washington-based National Alliance to End Homelessness. "The real public policy question is, how do we avoid making these shelters long-term housing for people? It is going to have a devastating effect for kids."

The cost to house each family is about $2,900 per family per month, or about $105 a day [CORRECTION: A June 20 story about homeless children incorrectly characterized the cost difference between two housing programs in Suffolk. The cost to house a person at HELP Suffolk in Bellport is $27 a day, compared with $46 a day at Project Redirect in Amityville. pg. A02 ALL 7/26/01]. In 2000, Suffolk County, which contracts with HELP, paid the shelter $2.7 million, according to Dennis Nowak, a social services spokesman.

Increasingly, government on all levels is moving toward the idea of avoiding shelters altogether. Ohio and California are using "direct housing," which allows families to bypass a homeless shelter with a program that arranges placements in apartments along with a host of different services to get them on their feet.

In areas of Long Island where that's not really an option because of such a profound housing shortage, counties are leaning more toward housing people in smaller shelters, with fewer families. Dan Hickey, Suffolk's social services commissioner, said the more intimate settings help mainstream the children and parents who live there. "They become part of the neighborhood. Maybe that will lead them to a connection on a job," or a lead on an apartment or house.

On a dead-end street on the outskirts of Bellport, HELP Suffolk is a well-maintained, grassy oasis of cedar-shingled apartment units that encircle a large playground.

One bright spring day, dozens of children swung and climbed on the playground equipment.

"They live for days like this," said Estey-Fontanella, eyeing her daughter, Bianca, as she played.

The family came to the shelter after being evicted from their apartment. Estey-Fontannella said she can't get an evening waitressing job, which she had done before, because of the shelter's curfew. Her children had to give up their pet lovebird because no pets are allowed. "It's heartbreaking," she said.

There are many rules for the families who live here. "The only way this place works is if we have structure. So we create our own structure," said Laurie Tucker, the shelter's former executive director, who left a month ago.

Children must give up their pets when they move in, sign in and out, and can only have visitors in a 12-by-14-foot reception area at the shelter's entrance. According to a list of regulations families receive when they begin living there, bicycles aren't allowed in the facility. Footballs and Frisbees also are prohibited, except on an adjacent recreation field.

Because of county regulations, children and their families rarely can leave for overnight visits to relatives other than in a case of an emergency or on legal holidays. The only time children leave the shelter is to attend school. There is little public transportation.

Living there for the past four months has been difficult for Thomas McCroy, who shares a bedroom with his two younger brothers. An American flag hangs on the wall; the kitchen wall is covered with awards he's received from his Boy Scout troop.