From New York Daily News
It takes a profound disconnection from reality to commit to spend $1.1 billion on hotels to use as emergency shelters and in the same breath say, “We know our homeless neighbors deserve better.”
That was city Social Services Commissioner Steve Banks, urging the City Council this week to sign onto his plan to spend an astounding $1.8 billion on homeless services in the coming year — 11% more than the record the Council and Mayor de Blasio agreed to last year.
A big piece of that spending, $364 million this year and for each of the following two, will go to a handful of organizations supplying hotel rooms as makeshift shelter, while the Department of Homeless Services slogs toward its goal of building 90 new shelters at a slower pace than promised.
Hell no, not without breakthrough progress toward a permanent solution so that future New Yorkers will look back in sad amazement that as many people as live in Schenectady, including a great many children, once called hotels home.
Banks told the Council that his Department of Homeless Services is spending $130 million every month on shelters, with one dollar out of every four going to operators of hotels serving as makeshift shelters.
These are the exact sort of hotels that a year ago, announcing their Turning the Tide plan to address homelessness, de Blasio and Banks vowed to phase out, but have since then expanded in number from 84 to 91 as they close down even worse cluster apartments.
Just two groups, Childrens Community Services and Acacia Network, have signed on for $850 million in city contracts .
The Council must demand details on every dollar in and out and put to the test Banks’ promise that “the quality of client services at these sites will be enhanced.”
And then get down to the business of rendering the hotels obsolete.
Another shocking number the Council heard was 488 — the sum total of permanent supportive housing apartments for homeless people dealing with mental illness or substance abuse delivered so far under de Blasio’s 2015 plan to rent 7,500 and build 7,500 more.
Speaking with the Daily News Editorial Board this week, Council Speaker Corey Johnson called supportive housing “literally the number one thing in the long term that would solve this crisis.”
He’s right about that — and though de Blasio agrees, he remains close to square one on getting any built.
That’s not the tide you hear turning; it’s New Yorkers’ stomachs.
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