Shelter stunner
City report finds 21,000 code violations
CITY HOMELESS shelters had a whopping 21,402 open code violations at the end of last year, according to a new scorecard issued by Mayor de Blasio’s office Monday.
The Shelter Repair Scorecard documents conditions at each of hundreds of shelters around the city — showing buildings plagued by problems like vermin, leaks and peeling paint.
Most of the open code violations — 14,418, or about 70% of the total — were found at 265 cluster shelters, where homeless people are housed in apartment building units rented out by the city.
An additional 6,984 violations were found at noncluster shelters.
De Blasio had promised to issue the scorecards last May, but their release was delayed
by months.
While the numbers document
dismal conditions facing homeless families and adults, de Blasio says tracking them in the scorecard is crucial to getting them cleaned up.
Hizzoner has announced a plan to stop using cluster shelters within three years, and launched a squad to do repairs on shelters.
“We are determined to give every family and individual in a homeless shelter decent living conditions. We have been increasing inspections to identify problems, and we now have a scorecard to track our progress in addressing them,” he said.
The mayor’s office says 26,000 violations have been corrected over the past two years, but stepped-up inspections keep finding more problems.
De Blasio said at noncluster shelters for families with children and adult families there is an average of half a violation per apartment — the same as the average overall for all buildings in the city.
But the cluster shelters, often run by landlords who bring in big bucks from taxpayers to house homeless families in squalid conditions, are much worse.
At least 42 buildings had 100 or more open violations each, the scorecards show.