The city this week disclosed numbers that should deliver a gut check to anyone who sees homelessness as an affordable-housing problem: As Politico reported, the city’s main supportive-housing program, NYC 15/15, is falling far short of its production targets.
When launched close to a decade ago, this initiative promised 15,000 units.
Less than 4,000 have come online.
New York clearly won’t be able to house its way out homelessness — so progressives should reevaluate their opposition to other solutions, such as psychiatric hospitalization and law enforcement.
Supportive housing pairs low rents with behavioral-health services and is developed to serve the hardcore chronically homeless.
It was invented in New York in the 1980s.
Over the decades, it has enjoyed substantial political support and generous funding.
Federal data shows that New York is America’s supportive-housing capital; it has about 60% more units than its closest competitor, Los Angeles City and County.
Collectively, the Dinkins, Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations, working with state government, built 14,115 units.
Therefore, at 15,000 projected units, NYC 15/15 — which the de Blasio administration started in 2015 and the Adams administration has continued — is larger than all previous mayors’ efforts combined.
(Another state effort, the 20,000-unit Empire State Supportive Housing Initiative, began in 2016.)
It’s hard to overstate progressive enthusiasm for supportive housing: To hear the advocacy community tell it, there is no other legitimate way to help the homeless.
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.
Photo by CHARLY TRIBALLEAU/AFP via Getty Images
