A former US Army officer hit back at Mayor de Blasio for dismissing as “nonsensical” her claim that he neglected the city’s homeless veterans while he ran for president.
The mayor made the comment Thursday at the Intrepid Museum, when a Post reporter asked him about former Army Officer Kristen Rouse attributing a decline in housing for homeless vets to the mayor’s absenteeism during his failed 2020 run.
“That is a nonsensical question,” de Blasio sniffed.
Rouse, who did three tours in Afghanistan and now runs NYC Veterans Alliance, was at the press conference.
“That is not a nonsensical question,” she told The Post after the event.
The mayor’s own annual Management Report released last month found that spending at his Veteran Services Department jumped from $3.6 million to $5.4 million in the last fiscal year, but it placed 7% fewer homeless veterans in housing and provided 6% fewer veterans supportive services.
“It certainly has not been helping anyone that Mayor de Blasio has been absentee these last many months,” Rouse said about the report in September.
On Thursday she also called de Blasio disingenuous for boasting about a “97% drop in street homelessness among veterans” under his mayoralty.
“There’s more than 600 vets in homeless shelters,” Rouse said.
“If you’re in a homeless shelter you are homeless. Homeless shelters are not nice places to be. A lot of those veterans are out on the streets during the day,” she said.
She added that many former military members in shelters are awaiting permanent housing, which they can’t afford because public vouchers aren’t enough to cover the steep cost of renting an apartment in the Big Apple.
“Our mayor has made big promises,” Rouse said, noting his pledge to build historic levels of affordable housing.
“But the mayor’s been off doing everything but delivering on his promises,” she said.
The declining services at the veterans’ agency are just the latest example of Hizzoner’s rhetoric falling short of his actions.
De Blasio also claimed he’s divested fossil fuels from the city’s pension fund, even though that process has only just begun, and rolled out a plan for national campaign finance reform while fending off ethics questions about his own political fundraising.
A de Blasio spokeswoman said, “The Mayor has done more to support our veterans than any mayor who has come before him. Any suggestion to the contrary is just petty.”