A percentage of babies born in the city wind up homeless in Cuomo's and de Blasio's New York

NY Daily News

One out of a hundred New York City newborns last year went “home” from the hospital to a homeless shelter, a heartbreaking new analysis by the Coalition for the Homeless revealed.

The group’s annual report, to be released Wednesday, lays blame for that and scores of other sobering statistics squarely at the feet of the two most powerful men in New York — Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio.

“New York City’s homelessness crisis will not improve until Gov. Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio treat homelessness like the urgent humanitarian crisis it is and acknowledge that it is fueled by the massive lack of affordable housing," said Giselle Routhier, the coalition’s policy director.

Aside from infants, the hardest hit by the homelessness crisis in recent years are the elderly, blacks and Hispanics, according to the report.

De Blasio has made the problem worse through a policy that “exacerbates" a housing market divided between the rich and poor and that creates too many high-rent units and not enough that are affordable, the report says.

The coalition also blamed Cuomo for implementing “damaging cost-shifting practices" that lowered the amount of money the state put toward addressing homelessness, putting further financial stress on the city.

“Mayor de Blasio and Gov. Cuomo seem content with minimalist, symbolic and too-often harmful actions made under the pretense of attempting to manage the problem, rather than taking the substantive steps needed to solve it," the report states.

Assemblyman Hevesi demands accountability from city's homeless provider non-profit groups

NY Daily News

 A Queens lawmaker wants the state comptroller to take a look at the books of the city’s top homeless shelter providers.

Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi is asking Thomas DiNapoli to audit 12 nonprofits responsible for housing and helping homeless New Yorkers and probe whether taxpayer money is being spent efficiently as homelessness rates continue to climb.

Hevesi, the chair of his chamber’s social services committee, said he’s witnessed a multitude of problems plaguing shelters in recent years, including exorbitant salaries for top executives and facilities with major safety and maintenance concerns.

“While some providers use all of their resources appropriately and provide exemplary services, it is also clear that many providers are failing to achieve their mission. In fact, the overall average length of shelter stays has increased, as has the rate of clients subsequently returning after leaving,” the Democrat wrote to the comptroller in a letter obtained by the Daily News.

In January, Coalition for the Homeless found that a record number of people — nearly 64,000 — were living in city shelters. The total has fluctuated since, but as of September, there were 62,391 homeless, including 14,962 families with 22,083 children, according to the advocacy group.

More than 114,000 students in city public and charter schools — one out of every ten — was homeless during the 2018-2019 school year, according to a survey released last month by the education nonprofit Advocates for Children.

As the number of people relying on city shelters has grown, so too has the amount of issues at the facilities, Hevesi said.

“There are several providers whose services strip the dignity of their clients and put clients in dangerous situations and that shouldn’t be occurring with these huge sums of taxpayer money that we’re putting into this industry,” the lawmaker told The News.