Shakira Crawford and her children struggled to find full time housing despite the city’s offer of rental subsidies and promise to fine landlords refusing such vouchers – a program that so far has failed to deliver as advertised

In late December, three days after Christmas, Shakira Crawford left her three children with her neighbor at a homeless shelter in East New York and rushed into the night to look at an apartment.

“I’m excited,” she said, exuding her usual cheerfulness, despite the near-freezing temperature.

Crawford, 40, spent most of 2015 looking for a way out of a homeless shelter with a $1,500 subsidy from the city. She works full time as a lobby attendant at a Midtown hotel, and she makes $17,000 a year. She got in touch with 60 brokers, but never got a lease.

After WNYC and the Guardian published stories about her predicament, Bill de Blasio’s administration stepped in to help. They wanted to show Crawford a two-bedroom apartment in another Brooklyn neighborhood, Crown Heights.

The previous tenants left a week and a half ago. Some of their possessions were still there. The floors needed to be refinished, and the rooms needed to be repainted. Crawford realized the apartment wasn’t ready, and her enthusiasm dissipated.

“If they fix it up, I don’t mind,” she said. “They have a lot of work to do to rent it out.”

She decided to wait to submit an application, and she hoped something better would come along. At the beginning of 2016, she and her children – Joshua, 13, Jordan, 12, and Julia, eight – were still at the shelter. The family shared this 500 sq ft room for 16 months, longer than most families stay in the system. All this time, Joshua has kept their situation a secret from his classmates at school.

“They’ll spread rumors all over the place,” he said. “Saying that I’m a bum and how I have no money and I live in a shelter.”

Joshua makes sure no one gets on the train with him when he leaves school, but it makes him feel tense, “like I have to hold it in all the time”.

The rental subsidies are designed to move people out of shelters quickly, and De Blasio blamed landlords for the difficulty Crawford’s has finding an apartment. It’s illegal for landlords to refuse to rent an apartment to someone just because they have a voucher.

“We are going to make examples of people,” he said. “A landlord who thinks they can get away with it, then sees another landlord suddenly hit with a huge fine, will wake up real quick.”

That was in December. By April, no landlord has yet been hit with a huge fine for refusing to take the program. It’s supposed to be simple: people like Crawford pay a third of their income and the city covers the rest, in her case up to $1,500. But so far only 4,000 families have actually moved out of shelters – half what the city predicted, according to New York City’s independent budget office.

Earlier this month, the mayor announced a reorganization of homeless services with the goal of getting a handle on the homeless crisis. There are 58,000 living people in city shelters, 12% more than when he took office. That includes 23,000 children.

Listen to the WNYC radio segment about Shakira Crawford as she tries to find full time housing for her family.

In early January, Crawford got another opportunity, from a different source. The city’s largest landlord group, the Rent Stabilization Association, heard her story. They put her in touch with the owner of a building in Wakefield in the Bronx.

“This is beautiful,” Crawford said excitedly, when she saw the apartment. “The kids are going to love it.”

It’s a spacious two-bedroom, with wooden floors and large corner windows overlooking a quiet street. She applied the same day.

“I would love for this to be my home,” she said.

Crawford had been rejected before, so she lost sleep and she prayed. In early February, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, when the kids came back to the shelter from school, Crawford said what she had been longing to say for a very long time.

“Guess what? I’ve been approved for the apartment!” she said.

“What?! You got the apartment?” Joshua said, and he bursted into tears, a rare display of emotion from a child used to hiding his feelings.

There were paperwork and inspections, and a month later Crawford and her children arrived at 231st Street in the Bronx with two duffel bags, two suitcases and four backpacks.

Their new home is one of 15 apartments in a building that opened just five years ago. As soon as they arrived, Joshua kicked off his shoes and socks, and Jordan put a small basketball hoop on the door of their new room.

The city will pay $700 of their $1,200-a-month rent. Crawford will cover the rest, and now she can afford it. The union that represents the majority of hotel workers in Manhattan heard her story and they reached out too. Crawford got a housekeeping position at an upscale, boutique hotel in midtown, earning $43,000 a year. If her salary doesn’t exceed 200% of the federal poverty level, currently $48,600 for a family of four, she could be eligible for the program for up to five years.

Crawford said she hopes the year and a half her children spent in the homeless shelter won’t have any serious consequences.

“They probably need a break from all the stuff that we’ve been going through so they can focus and be kids,” she said.

Mirela Iverac is a reporter for New York Public Radio / WNYC. You can hear her entire series at wnyc.org/wayhome.