For the past several decades, homelessness in New York City has filled the pages of newspapers, preoccupied mayoral administrations, and profoundly affected the lives of vulnerable New Yorkers. The numbers seem to back up the concern, particularly when it comes to families. There are currently over 40,000 people in families living in the city’s shelters. That represents 20 percent of the entire population of homeless families in the United States.

Moral outrage has come from all corners. Advocacy groups persistently shame the city. Media outlets and politicians continually shine a spotlight on record-breaking homeless shelter populations. I have sounded the alarm as well.

The only problem? We have it all wrong. Far from being neglectful of vulnerable families, New York City has the most generous housing safety net in the country. No family in the city is truly “homeless.” How is that possible?

First of all, families do not live on the streets of New York City. During the 2015 citywide count, exactly zero families were found in unsheltered locations.

In New York, every homeless family that we know about lives in a shelter. Only a better word is probably housing. Family shelters provide private units, and often, multiple bedroom apartments with their own bathrooms and kitchens. On-site services are generally offered as well. To be clear, these are far from luxury apartments, and there are certainly examples of neglect by the city. But these are the exceptions.

In fact, a report earlier this year found that, for the most part, shelters had no more violations than the average building in the city. The report did find that former apartment buildings functioning as shelters were significantly worse. But it is worth noting that these were apartments previously being rented out in the private market, housing people we don’t call “homeless.”

Further repudiating typical notions of shelter, families stay for an average of 14 months. Shelter stays now outlast the length of a standard apartment lease.

Perhaps the best evidence that families in New York City shelters are not truly “homeless” is that for many poor families, a shelter is preferable to sharing housing with others. Of all the families that apply for shelter in the city, only about one third are actually accepted. This comes after an extensive multi-day investigation by city officials into the family’s background, including interviews with relatives with whom they have lived. Families with a safe place to go are denied shelter. But the fact that they applied for shelter anyway suggests that they prefer so-called “homelessness” to a safe housing option.

In fact, there is no other major city in the country that provides as generous of a safety net for families with no place else to go. Only a handful of cities even offer a legally mandated right to shelter like New York City does. One of those, Washington DC, sends its families to a former hospital building that houses 248 families at a time and suffers from a host of documented problems. And in the vast majority of cities, vulnerable families cannot count on a shelter system to take them in when other supports fail. As a result, recent data show that New York City’s family shelter rolls are larger than that of the next 44 most populous U.S. cities, all put together.

Simply put, New York City has solved family homelessness. The fact that New York City’s shelter population is massive is a reflection of the city’s unrivaled generosity, not a dereliction of duty to the most needy. So why do we often say otherwise? For some of us it could be a way to get attention for our ideas, while for others it may be a political strategy.

It’s less obvious why some advocacy groups would suggest that homelessness is as bad as ever. One potential explanation is that placing the “homeless” label on as many families as possible creates political pressure to increase subsidies for housing assistance for private market renters. A policy objective which costs a lot, and drives up rents in poor communities.

Regardless of prior motivations or convictions, it’s time for the truth. New York City is uniquely generous in housing families with no place else to go. That doesn’t mean that the family shelter system is perfect or that it’s always the most cost-effective way to serve vulnerable families. And it surely doesn’t mean that the city has solved homelessness among single adults.

But using the family shelter rolls as a means of shaming the city must stop. Instead, let’s celebrate that essentially no family in the city is truly homeless.