Strange to say, homelessness declined in the year before Mayor Eric Adams was sworn into office Jan. 1, 2022.
New York’s main shelter-system census has grown by almost two-thirds since then, thanks to the migrant surge that started last spring.
Of all the services being provided to the migrants — schools, health care, etc. — shelter is by far the most expensive.
The average annual cost to shelter one single adult in New York is $50,000; one family unit, $69,000.
But budget strain is not the only problem.
New York has a large and diverse native homeless population whose needs will not be adequately met so long as the migrant influx keeps city shelters in triage mode.
No city has a homeless shelter system like New York’s. This city guarantees immediate temporary housing to everyone, in every season, even if they just arrived that day.
Thanks to the “right to shelter,” New York homelessness stands at around 90,000, a historic peak. Were the homeless of New York to form their own city, it would rank as the state’s seventh-largest.
Continue reading the entire piece here at the New York Post
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Stephen Eide is a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute.