What horrors The Post discovered this week inside the town’s $2.1 billion, 400-facility shelter system. But it’s a case for fixing what’s flawed, not for accepting homeless residing on the streets or within the subways.
In truth, most shelters are higher than what was as soon as commonplace, however the few remaining city-run congregate shelters fall far brief.
The metropolis’s Department of Homeless Services reigns over bedlam palaces the place the outdated and disabled are routinely on the mercy of the wicked and violent.
While the system strives to maneuver folks into higher shelters, this helps clarify why solely 22 of the 1,000 or so homeless individuals within the subway encountered by the town’s new SOS groups accepted a shelter mattress. “Yes, it may be safer for them on the street in some cases,” mentioned a shelter employee exterior the infamous thirtieth Street Intake Center.
The homeless single women and men housed in these momentary shelters (which additionally embrace transformed accommodations) vary from down-on-their-luck low-skill staff and tradespeople to lately launched ex-cons and the mentally ailing. Few supply a lot in the way in which of psychological well being, housing, job referral or coaching companies.
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Another outrage is the hovering spending on too-often-sleazy nonprofits and slumlords to lease decrepit residence buildings for a whole bunch of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} a 12 months.
What to do? For starters, put all ex-mayor Bill de Blasio’s costly new-shelter plans on maintain — and deal with cost-effective, humane methods to maneuver ahead. Break up the massive DHS-run central consumption facilities, creating smaller, safer momentary shelters with entry to drug-treatment and mental-health companies.
But don’t take this as an excuse to simply shrug on the homeless who insist on staying within the streets and subways, nor to stay with a contracting system that accepts profiteering (together with by nonprofits).
Do higher for the homeless — and for most of the people, too.
