After three years of blaming his predecessors, Mayor de Blasio has finally deigned to take ownership of the homeless crisis. How nice.
The shelter population — 60,686 as of Monday — continues to hit record highs, with no end in sight.
The mayor’s promising otherwise, of course: He told WNYC’s Brian Lehrer that his new initiatives are “taking hold” and would soon start bringing the shelter numbers coming down.
But why are they still heading up? A spokesperson for the Coalition for the Homeless attributed the rise to more victims of domestic violence opting to flee those situations, more people moving off the streets and an increase in folks losing their tenancy in illegal housing.
Here’s a different possible explanation: In the de Blasio era, about 50 percent of those who apply to enter shelters — that is, to be declared officially “homeless,” with a legal right to shelter — are granted it.
Back when Michael Bloomberg was mayor, it was routinely around 20 percent.
Which suggests that the policies of Steven Banks, the lifelong “homeless advocate” whom de Blasio put in charge of handling the crisis, are at the heart of the problem.
And that Banks’ initiatives — pushing hard to place more homeless in NYCHA apartments and other city-funded housing, as well as into “affordable” units not previously dedicated to the homeless — won’t turn the tide.
As for de Blasio’s affordable-housing plans: No less than Lilliam Barrios-Paoli, the former deputy mayor for health and human services, told WNYC radio that the mayor won’t be able to build his way out of the crisis.
Barrios-Paoli resigned last year — reportedly after being ignored by de Blasio, who even then was informally taking Banks’ guidance on homeless policy. “When you find yourself riding a dead horse, you dismount,” she said in a recent interview.
Until the mayor wakes up and sees Banks as a dead horse, he’s going to keep on coming up short on homelessness.