No surprise: The Department of Investigation has documented that the city pays megabucks to house homeless families in miserable privately operated shelters.
Commissioner Mark Peters’ probers visited 25 facilities along with housing, health and fire inspectors. As has seemingly been scripted since Ed Koch’s mayoralty, they found safety and sanitary violations galore, along with a dead rat in one apartment and urine in an elevator.
Rents were astronomical and services provided to residents were awful, again an oft-told tale.
To his credit, Mayor de Blasio asked Peters to conduct the survey, and the report will serve as a benchmark of de Blasio’s vow to produce better living at more acceptable prices.
On that score, Peters suggests binding shelter operators to contracts that would empower the city for the first time to withhold rent money when violations aren’t swiftly cured. Well, duh.
Otherwise, Peters pulled punches by failing to name operators deemed abysmal or to show proof that his probers interviewed them. Similarly, he did not explain why Department of Homeless Services inspectors have rated such premises as fit for habitation.
The rationale for Peters’ large blanks is that, as with all modern mayors, de Blasio’s good intentions are crashing against the tough reality of finding places for a surging homeless population.
DHS inspectors accept almost any place because the choice can be a slum or the street. And the agency dares not pull out of a dirty-yet-functioning shelter because it has no alternative accommodations.
Over to you, Mr. Mayor.
