De Blasio's 'Hail Mary' Plan for the Homeless Crisis

Mayor de Blasio, two months into his reelection year, on Tuesday proposed a solution to New York City’s homelessness crisis: A 30 percent hike in the municipal shelter inventory.

In football, this would be a Hail Mary pass — toss the ball way down field and pray that someone on your side catches it. In de Blasioland, it’s presumptive nonsense. Or, in the mayor’s own words, “a reimagined shelter strategy.”

Imagine that.

But don’t expect a miracle catch. As de Blasio also said: “I’m going to be blunt with people about how long it’s going to take, and that we’re going to need community partners to help us do it.”

And then: “I, today, cannot see an end” to city homelessness.

Rough translation: Hey, I don’t believe it either.

No surprise. For not even the mayor, New York’s patron saint of rhetorical foolishness, can seriously propose cramming 90 new homeless shelters into city neighborhoods, beginning in a year when he is running for another term — and the entire City Council is on the ballot as well.

Because, really, didn’t City Hall learn anything from its Keystone Kops effort to shoehorn a permanent shelter into a Holiday Inn in Maspeth last year? That middle-class neighborhood exploded, and won.

So Tuesday’s announcement had to be less new policy in action than de Blasio cynicism on steroids. Which isn’t to deny that the city welfare-housing program is in crisis....

Read the entire piece here at the New York Post

______________________

Bob McManus is a contributing editor of City Journal. He retired as editorial page editor of the New York Post in 2013 and has since worked as a freelance editor, columnist, and writer.

This piece originally appeared in New York Post