More Money Isn't Fixing NYC's Homelessness Crisis, Report Shows

NEW YORK — New York City's homelessness crisis has not abated even as Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration has poured money into the problem, the city comptroller says in a new report.

The six city agencies that provide homeless services made a second appearance on City Comptroller Scott Stringer's agency watch list, which chides departments that get mediocre results from increased spending.

The city is spending a total of $3.2 billion to address homelessness this fiscal year, a figure that has more than doubled since the fiscal year 2014, says the comptroller's report released Wednesday. The bulk of that money goes to shelter operations, for which spending has also more than doubled to $1.9 billion, the report shows.

But the extra cash has not stopped the number of people in city shelters from growing 11.5 percent in that time — it hit an all-time high of 61,415 on Jan. 12, according to Stringer's office. The increase is driven in part by the number of single adults in shelters, which jumped 57.6 percent, the report says.

"The slow pace of progress to tackle our homelessness crisis is unacceptable – and fundamentally, it’s a moral crisis," Stringer, a Democrat, said in a statement. "Our agency watch list report shows we need to do more to meet the crisis of affordable housing – it’s time we finally connect our housing plan with our homelessness policies."

The growth in the shelter population has also come despite a big increase in spending on programs to prevent homelessness or get New Yorkers permanently out of shelter, the comproller's office says. The figure has more than doubled to $1 billion in the current fiscal year from $436 million in the 2014 year, according to the report.

Statistics also indicate many New Yorkers are financially struggling to stay in their homes. Some 77,605 requests for emergency rent assistance were filed in fiscal year 2018, a 34 percent jump from the 2014 year, the comptroller's report shows. About 75 percent of those requests were approved in the last fiscal year, according to the report.

But a spokeswoman for de Blasio noted that the city's shelter population has stayed flat for two straight years, the first time that's happened in a decade. The city's affordable housing initiatives have also preserved or created more than 123,000 homes, including more than 10,000 apartments for homeless people, the mayor's office said.

"After decades of underfunding, this Administration has made unprecedented investments to prevent and address homelessness," the spokeswoman, Jane Meyer, said in a statement. "More than 115,000 New Yorkers have remained in or secured permanent homes through our initiatives and the shelter census has remained flat two years in a row for the first time in a decade. While there is always more work to be done, our strategies are taking hold - and we’re focused on taking that progress further."

Stringer's watch list also scolded the Department of Buildings for a rise in construction-related injuries and deaths despite the agency's spending growing by millions of dollars.

The department's budget ballooned by 62 percent from fiscal year 2014 to $159.7 million in the fiscal year 2018, in which time it also added more than 500 full-time employees, the comptroller's office says.

But construction-related accidents and injuries more than tripled in that period, the report says. The department recorded 16 construcion-related fatalities in the 2018 fiscal year compared to just six in the 2014 year, according to Stringer's office.

The increase in reported accidents has resulted from the city's "unprecedented" construction boom, along with increased requirements for accident reporting and site safety supervision, Department of Buildings spokesman Andrew Rudansky said.

"We are determined to hold accountable bad actors in the construction industry," Rudansky said in a statement. "That is why we’ve increased penalties for serious safety lapses, required increased safety supervision on major projects, and are implementing a first-of-its-kind safety training program for the city’s construction workforce. What’s more, we are calling our bad-actor contractors and construction professionals publicly in monthly enforcement bulletins."

The department also says it has strengthened its plan examination and inspection units and driven down the average response time to 311 complaints.