New York City has increased spending on housing homeless people in shelters in recent years, but the population continues to hover at more than 60,000 despite efforts to move many into permanent housing, a new city report shows.
During the 2017 fiscal year, the city spent an average of $99 a day to house single adults in facilities in New York City, according to a management report released Monday by Mayor Bill de Blasio. In fiscal year 2018, that number grew to $117 a day.
The increased cost reflects a larger investment in service providers, repairs and security at shelters, according to New York City’s Department of Homeless Services.
The cost of housing homeless families was also more expensive in fiscal year 2018, when more than 22,340 children were living in shelters. During that time, the cost to house families with children averaged $192 a day, up from $171 in fiscal year 2017. In fiscal year 2014, it cost the city an average of $102 each day to house shelter families with children.
Meanwhile, the cost to house adult families rose in fiscal year 2018 to $147 each day, compared with $138 a day during the same period a year earlier, according to the report.
The total budget for the Department of Homeless Services is more than $2 billion, with $172 million added in fiscal year 2018 for shelter operations, according to New York City’s Office of Management and Budget.
A spokesman for Homeless Services said the increased costs reflect a greater investment in the department’s shelter system and more services provided at these shelters.
21 comments:
No one in City government cares about keeping the costs of housing the homeless down. If they did the DHS would not hand out these sweetheart contracts to the "non-profits" and landlords that run the homeless shelters. Everyone involved is dirty. Running a "non-profit" seems to be the career path for ex politicians and any landlord who has his property used to house the homeless just hit the lottery. How is it that no investigation into this chicanery has ever been started? O wait, I forgot, the people who start the investigations are the same people who profit off these contracts.
Who picks out the properties that get used for homeless shelters? It is no coincidence that the same landlords are used repeatedly.
1. End the archaic "right to shelter" law here, which encourages people from all over this country and the world to plop in the most expensive city without any means of support and have the city (well the tax payers) foot the bill.
2. STOP giving tax breaks to the rich, corporations and the elite (hear that Trump).
3. Since the financial crisis of 2008 caused by financial institution, not one head of any of these companies has been prosecuted or sent to jail and in 2018 the issues that caused that catastrophe is happening all over again, because little has changed and Trump has given free rein to these crooks.
4. Deblasio and his crew need to come clean with the statistics and breakdown of the homeless, so we can see how many actual New Yorkers are homeless due to unforeseen circumstances, not mentally ill or drug addicts who should have been provided proper services, not people from out of state/country, not people who have been chronically unemployed most of their lives and then the lazy. We tax payers would get a much clearer picture.
5. People, STOP living beyond your means, in fact live a little below your means.
6. Start holding greedy corporations and CEO's accountable and stop attacking unions, which actually help people have a decent livable wage, benefits and safe working conditions. Since when did unions become "bad" and corporations and CEO become good.
7. NY Democrats - start acting like real Democrats and do something and hold that corrupt mayor accountable. What happened to Democrats who were for the working class.
8. AND of course get BIG MONEY out of politics.
No shit !! You house them in places not meant for long term cohabitation expecting the rates not change?? Do the fucking math Dibozzo...
Who cares or has any need for these people? Especially 60,000! Get them out of here.
A week of sheltering in the hotel system would be the same cost as a month of housing, if only deblasio wasn't so bent on gentrifying all NYC that the city properties are getting rooted out for shiny towers.
We are now providing shelter to persons from all over the country and even abroad, who came to NYC exclusively to get free, indefinite shelter and welfare benefits. They have now become our problem, our cost to bare, both financially and socially.
Joe Moretti says: "People, STOP living beyond your means, in fact, live a little below your means."
If rents didn't constantly escalate. If groceries didn't constantly escalate. If transportation didn't constantly escalate. If taxes didn't constantly escalate. Etc., Etc. THEN maybe we all could live BELOW our means. As it is, most of us live beyond our means because we don't get more than 2.5% raises and no "necessary" living expenses remain the same. Even with two jobs most of us are still behind the eight ball. Seniors have it even harder if their savings dividends and social security only get 1.25% increase every three or four years.
Do you have a solution to living "a little below your means" if you don't have enough means to make it through the month?
If rents didn't constantly escalate. If groceries didn't constantly escalate. If transportation didn't constantly escalate. If taxes didn't constantly escalate. Etc., Etc. THEN maybe we all could live BELOW our means. As it is, most of us live beyond our means because we don't get more than 2.5% raises and no "necessary" living expenses remain the same. Even with two jobs most of us are still behind the eight ball. Seniors have it even harder if their savings dividends and social security only get 1.25% increase every three or four years.
Do you have a solution to living "a little below your means" if you don't have enough means to make it through the month?
"Living beyond your means" does not mean you spend what you make. It means you plot out your life decisions so that you:
1) Have 3 - 6 months emergency cash
2) Have health and whatever catastrophic / worker's comp. insurance / life you need in case of incapacitation or death. You can accomplish this through your job / spousal benefits / buy directly / being a dependent. If you fall through all of those, Medicaid could cover you. That would be a much smaller fraction of the people using it now.
3) Can save 10 - 20% a month for retirement.
That way, when you face an adversity or your household income stalls for some reason, you aren't suddenly a charity case.
Welcome to being an adult. It doesn't take massive brain power. Just a little common sense and personal responsibility. Two things in short order these days among whiny New Yorkers, it seems.
Blogger M. How said...
Joe Moretti says: "People, STOP living beyond your means, in fact, live a little below your means."
If rents didn't constantly escalate. If groceries didn't constantly escalate. If transportation didn't constantly escalate. If taxes didn't constantly escalate. Etc., Etc. THEN maybe we all could live BELOW our means. As it is, most of us live beyond our means because we don't get more than 2.5% raises and no "necessary" living expenses remain the same....................
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Your point is well taken and there is truth to it, but that still does deal with the situation that people even after the crash of 2008, still live beyond their means, renting or buying places that are too high for their salaries, having multiple kids (A BIG EXPENSE), when they cannot even afford one kid, buying shit they really don't need (like gigantic big screen TV's, buying big gas guzzling vehicles ( I mean must go to SE Queens and see the vehicles in front of crappy third world shit hole Fedders apartment buildings, buy drugs (I have no issue with that, but if your rent is a priority, then drugs should be at the bottom of the list), I could go on and on. PLUS, if you cannot afford to live in the most expensive city, there are thousands of other less expensive cities and less expensive states. I mean if your salary cannot allow you to live decently in NYC, then look for another job in another city that is less expensive.
While you are right on your points, people are responsible to make realistic choices which many do not.
Why does NYC have a "right to shelter" law? That is INSANE. And there is no minimum length of residency requirement, bringing the indigent and the goldbricks from far and wide--out of state, out of the country--to sponge off the already beleaguered NYC taxpayer. What are we getting for our tax money? A public transportation system that is getting more third world unreliable every day. You can't count on it to arrive at a given time any more. Roads full of potholes. Lazy-ass "construction workers" moving at the speed of molasses in winter, making a simple project, like enlarging the sidewalks on Jewel Avenue over Flushing Meadow Park, last well over a year and inconvenience countless drivers. Bikes lanes that no one uses and red painted bus lanes that constrict traffic. The idiot commie DeBlasio wants to open druggie shoot-em-up center to protect the health of the addicts (the HELL with them!). The taxpayers are the LAST to benefit from their hard-won money, and every illegal, bum, druggie and thug is well in front of them in line for handouts. NYC will become the exclusive home of gibsmedats with the smallest tax base ever, as sensible people move out, disgusted with the little return for their tax dollars.
Joe Moretti says: . . . "Since the financial crisis of 2008 caused by financial institution..."
Joe, what you left out was that the crisis was encouraged by the Clinton administration under the auspices of Clinton's then Housing Secretary, now NYS Governor Andrew Cuomo. Check all that out HERE.
Under Clinton's Housing and Urban Development (HUD) secretary, Andrew Cuomo, Community Reinvestment Act regulators gave banks higher ratings for home loans made in "credit-deprived" areas. Banks were effectively rewarded for throwing out sound underwriting standards and writing loans to those who were at high risk of defaulting. If banks didn't comply with these rules, regulators reined in their ability to expand lending and deposits.
Tragically, when prices fell, lower-income folks who really could not afford these mortgages under normal credit standards, suffered massive foreclosures and personal bankruptcies. So many will never get credit again. It's a perfect example of liberals using government allegedly to help the poor, but the ultimate consequences were disastrous for them.
georgetheatheist -More talk radio bullshit from you.
The facts behind that crisis are well known and Cuomo wasn't a factor.
it was the euphemistically named "Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999' rammed through by a totally republican Congress that led to the commodification of mortgages. From that point on the incentive was simply to write mortgages in quantity and sell them off to the world market.
That is why this became an international crisis -instead of just a national one.
If a Democrat is to blame it was Bill Clinton. He went along and signed that product of lobbying and likely, bribery.
Rob In Manhattan.
George the Atheist is too much a gentleman to say it so I will:
I, Andrew Cuomo, am an asshole.
Bona fide. Certified. Approvingly stamped by the USDA with red grape juice ink. An asshole beyond comparison.
@Rob in Manhattan
The link I gave you above - a front page article in the Village Voice by their late columnist Wayne Barrett - you consider "talk radio bullshit"? Nice try but that dog won't hunt.
The facts behind the crisis are indeed known and Cuomo WAS a factor - if not THE factor.
According to the NY Times columnist Andrew Ross Sorkin - no talk radio bullshitter he - the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999 had nothing to do with the meltdown:
"If history is any guide, it hasn’t often been the result of speculative bets. It has been the result of banks making loans to individuals and businesses who can’t pay them back.
Yes, standards became so lax that buyers didn’t have to put money down or prove their income, and financial firms developed dangerous instruments that packaged and sliced up loans, then magnified their bets with more borrowed money.
"But it often starts with banks making basic loans. Making loans 'is one of the riskiest businesses banks engage in and has been a major contributing factor to most financial crises in the world over the last 50 years,' Richard Spillenkothen, former director of the division of banking supervision and regulation at the Federal Reserve, wrote in a letter to Politico’s Morning Money on Monday. He said that if Glass-Steagall still existed, it 'alone would not have prevented the financial crisis.'
"Still, Mr. Spillenkothen said: 'If banks had been limited to "plain vanilla" lending, notwithstanding its admitted riskiness, the financial crisis may well have been less severe or more easily managed and contained.' ” (Source: "Reinstating an Old Rule is Not a Cure for Crisis")
See ya on Talk Radio.
BTW, I graduated from the university with a PhD. degree in Assholology, Summa Cum Rectum. I certainly know whereof I speak.
Me: Asshole Extraordinaire.
""If history is any guide, it hasn’t often been the result of speculative bets. It has been the result of banks making loans to individuals and businesses who can’t pay them back.
Yes, standards became so lax that buyers didn’t have to put money down or prove their income, and financial firms developed dangerous instruments that packaged and sliced up loans, then magnified their bets with more borrowed money."
-And they did that as a direct result of Glass-Steagall repeal.
"Bringing back something akin to Glass-Steagall would clearly help limit risk in the system. And that’s a very good and worthy goal. Letting banks sell securities and insurance products and services allowed them to grow too big too fast, and fueled a culture that put profit and pay over prudence."
-Right there you have the seed that nearly destroyed out nation's economy.
Ross Sorkin points out the major investment houses that failed and makes a case that, on the surface, appears entirely credible..until you understand that a major component in their distress was; those derivatives.
I have to give the gop credit for being hucksters extraordinaire. They allow unbridled avarice and corruption to run under the guise of laissez faire and when it collapses, they appeal to fear-prejudice and resentment to get yet another whack at it. Even their "saint" Reagan left a shambles with soaring deficit, disastrous banking scandals and an economy that went into what was then the steepest recession since the thirties, only to be outdone by yet another republican in 2008.
You right-wingers will always try to use a sort of intellectual judo to evade responsibility when your chicanery blows up in our faces.
BTW: The two commercial talk radio gop outlets (WABC & WOR) have their lowest ratings in their respective histories.
Not everyone is fooled.
Rob in Manhattan
Marc Malinaro and Howie Hawkins (the green party candidate) should take a copy of Wayne Barrett's classic expose and use that in their mailers.
I cannot stress any more that Cuomo has to be stopped. This hack is exploiting Trump to advance in political office. This bastard is gunning for the top and the DNC elites
have all united to push him to be the 2020 candidate because they think that another silver spoon fed incompetent mook from Queens can take on Trump.
"The two commercial talk radio gop outlets (WABC & WOR) have their lowest ratings in their respective histories."
Who cares? I haven't called commercial talk radio since the late Bob Grant left. Now THAT was talk radio!
>Why does NYC have a "right to shelter" law?
An activist judge and judicial fiat.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Callahan_v._Carey
But you can also blame the politician and us, the people, for never amending the state constitution after that decision.
>like enlarging the sidewalks on Jewel Avenue over Flushing Meadow Park
The project was the repair the entire bridge/overpass. Enlarging the sidewalks was added while the project was already ongoing by the Mayor, as an extra special FUCK YOU to driver and the to people of KGH and Forest Hills who rely on that overpass and need more traffic lanes, not less.
@JQ LLC: Cuomo in 2020? Do the Dems want to lose?
Massachusetts will take a little while longer.
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