City will stop encouraging flophouses

From the NY Times:

The Bloomberg administration promised on Wednesday to end its longstanding practice of encouraging homeless people to move to crowded, illegal boarding houses once they leave the shelter system.

The boarding houses, which number around 50 and are typically in poor neighborhoods in Brooklyn and the Bronx, have been a touchy subject for the administration for years. They are little more than flophouses, run by private landlords who charge homeless people, mostly men, as little as $215 a month in rent.

But they are often dangerously overcrowded, with as many as 60 people living in a two-family house filled with bunk beds and little else. Many homeless men have said they were pressured to move there by the staff at city shelters, who help the homeless find housing and move out of the shelter system.

Robert V. Hess, the commissioner of homeless services, said that more than 200 staff members in shelters would be told to stop referring homeless people to the boarding houses.