For three years, as a rising tide of homelessness flooded city shelters, topping 60,000 people last fall, Mayor de Blasio pled powerlessness.
The latest numbers from his Department of Homeless Services show otherwise, and point the way to ensure that shelters are reserved for those truly in need so that this generous and caring city can best target finite aid.
In February, just 38% of the 2,200 families who asked for shelter space secured a spot — the fewest since Mayor de Blasio took charge, and down a steady slope from 51% in October. Population in family shelters dropped by 2,000-plus since then.
Why? Not because bureaucrats are heartlessly tossing kids into the street, but because late last year, the city with the state’s cooperation imposed tougher but fair rules limiting slots to those who plainly have no place else to live.
Such rules are necessary because homeless shelters are a well-trod path to scarce permanent affordable housing, luring some to seek shelter as a toehold.
Alas, de Blasio and social services commissioner Steve Banks have not yet brought the same good sense to the single individuals who ask for a shelter bed, despite a state regulation requiring the scarce resource be denied people who have other housing available .
Under New York’s longstanding right-to-shelter consent decree for singles, DHS ushers in all comers, no questions asked — keeping troubled locals off the street but also rolling out the welcome mat to drifters .
In 2011, Mayor Mike Bloomberg put in place fair and firm rules screening singles just like families: calling past relatives and roommates before declaring a person literally homeless, and projecting shelters would shrink at least 10%.
Advocates, including Banks, then head of Legal Aid, howled, and sued — winning in New York’s top court on procedural grounds. But Bloomberg’s was precisely the right approach.
To the contrary, de Blasio takes as inexorable fact that the ranks of single people living in shelters will grow and grow, reflected in plans to build some 90 new facilities across the city.
Families are being wisely vetted. Singles should be too. Who better than Banks to work with Legal Aid on a smart system to optimally help all in need — or, barring that, see them back in court.
