The city has opened 23 new shelters to combat a 13% rise in homelessness since Mayor de Blasio took office — some of them in neighborhoods whose residents had no idea the facilities were coming to their communities.
Officials say the new shelters — in every borough except Staten Island — are essential to address the surge in homeless families that has swelled the population in the shelter system to record highs.
There are 57,390 people currently living in city homeless shelters, some 24,760 are children. Twenty of the 23 new facilities are for families with kids under 18.
When shelters opened in recent months in Astoria and Elmhurst, Queens, and Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, elected officials and residents were taken by surprise.
“Nobody wants to see more shelters in their community,” said Patrick Markee, deputy executive director for advocacy at the Coalition for the Homeless. “But the increase this year has been significant, unfortunately, and the city has an obligation to shelter kids and families who are homeless.”
Ok, let me remind you all of something....this "crisis" is of DeBlasio's own making:
Where Bloomberg offered shelter to roughly 40% of applicants, de Blasio’s team boosted the acceptance rate to 49% or more, hitting a high of nearly 57% in March.Since we didn't see mothers with children sleeping in the streets during the reign of Bloomberg, they obviously had someplace else to go. So why did DeBlasio decide to accept people who didn't actually require services? In order to manufacture a crisis so his deep-pocketed friends in the shelter industry could profit.
It is impossible to say whether more families will seek shelter and a shot at better housing because de Blasio has opened shelter doors wider. What’s clear is that the new attitude at the intake center has helped boost the shelter population.
It's all a scam, and the ringleader is the mayor. But of course, according to the media, this isn't the problem. It's the people opposed to shelters who are the problem, because "mean people suck".
17 comments:
DiBlasio and company have the solutions, they just have to manufacture the crisis. The media and its love of leftism is going to ruin us all
QC - not following your logic that deBlasio "made" this crisis inasmuch as people are just more prone to take advantage of an administration that is more sympathetic to their plight, and isn't as interested in checking their residency status.
Not saying he's doing a great job at responding to the problem, but it sounds like a stretch to say he "made the crisis".
The only thing manufactured in NYC are the homeless, but make no mistake, running homeless shelters is an industry. When Liz Crowley was still in her pre-election denial mode she loved to state that "7 out of 10 proposals brought to the DHS are turned down". This means only 30% are accepted. Who are the 30%? It seems to always be the same cast of characters,Samaritan Village Aguila,Housing Bridge,Help USA,etc. What do they have in common? All have ex-city officials or politically connected big shots running these multi-million dollar "not-for-profits". When you cram people into these homeless warehouses and the City is paying an average of $2,600 a month per apartment, this makes for a profit. I wonder where all that money goes?
If he's allowing people to take advantage and then claiming that he has to open more shelters to house them all, then yeah, he made the crisis. Not a hard thing to understand. And with no residency requirement for shelter, I wouldn't be surprised if there were 100,000 homeless in NYC by the end of his first term.
These mothers and children were living with friends and family in less-than-ideal conditions - in many cases outside of NYC. They were not "on the street" as so many of the untreated/rejecting-treatment mentally ill and recidivist criminals are.
You could open free housing to another million, and there would still be a "shortage" - infinite supply meets infinite demand.
These politically-connected non-profits transcend any community concerns and "surprise" to local pols is becoming routine.
DeBlaz is merely the tip of the iceberg. City Council, Albany, and Washington are to blame, and the business of Social Services that provide employment to thousands of Democrats.
My favorite on this is that many of the people against shelters are the same ones that donate to, and publicly support, the same officials creating this.
They get off the hook by punting these shelters to areas that cannot afford to, or stomach, the bastards in office making this happen.
The only innovation in politics in NYC in the last 20 years has been the creation of a money pump >> from taxpayers >> to the super-sized non-profits running these privately-owned/leased shelters for the city >> to the politicians for their campaigns and friends.
My office adopted a homeless family in a shelter. When I read the letter, the mother said she was homeless in PA and decided to move to NY to get into a shelter there...the first shelter made her contribute but she got out of that one and got into one where she didn't have to contribute...That letter was an eye opener!
According to shelter rules obtained from DHS, shelter "clients" with income (and not eligible for public assistance) are required to contribute 30% of their income to the cost of their "housing" in the shelter, with a check or money order payable to the shelter provider each month. What is not clear is if these rules are even enforced, and if this "income" to the shelter provider offsets the funds being paid to the shelter operator by the city, or if this is on top of the multi millions of dollars being paid to them by the city.
50 twenty story buildings in the old flushing airport would do wonders for the community and diversity of N E Queens.just kidding,they would never do that.
This is a Big CORRUPTION.
who knows how much he got kicked back.
I read that Paul Vallone got the city to drop its plan to put a shelter in Bayside but then I realized that can't be true, Vallone's terrible, useless, posters here tell me so.
So what's Bayside got that Glendale doesn't, if not a council member who won that fight at least?
It was Tony Avella that stopped the Bayside shelter by threatening DeBlasio's Albany funding. What leverage does Vallone have over DeBlasio? ROFLMAO at how dumb northeastern Queens voters are !!!
anon 1: correct. At least some of the local press objected to at least some of this.
http://www.qchron.com/opinion/editorial/the-homeless-shelter-surprise/article_0c32ba6e-e576-529d-9cad-77d33b58cef7.html
Anon #11 The problem is only the local papers picked this up, that is like preaching to the choir.
Now I know what it's like to live in an occupied country. Der Wilhelm Der Blasio would have loved being mayor of Berlin. Until he is gone double bolt your doors and windows.
Lots of hotel/motels going up on the Queens/Nassau border (Bellerose, Floral Park) where for decades there were none or one. Funny, as a kid growing up there I don't recall the need to stay in hotesl in eastern Queens...? The demand is now overflowing for some apparent reason...
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