Outta here
Blaz cutting squalid shelter sites
EIGHT MONTHS ago, the city signed a $16.8 million contract with a nonprofit that had been repeatedly cited for housing the homeless in decrepit apartments and hotels.
On Thursday, Mayor de Blasio pulled the plug, announcing that over the coming months, the city will phase out its use of Bushwick Economic Development Corp.
In Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, BEDCO houses hundreds of homeless families and single adults in 11 hotels and 33 so-called “cluster sites,” apartments in private buildings notorious for scandalous conditions.
De Blasio criticized both programs before he was elected mayor, but he was forced to expand the use of both as the shelter census rose from 53,000 in January 2014 to 60,000 this week.
The city will move the all the homeless individuals now living in these hotels and apartments into permanent housing or other hotels and cluster sites that aren’t run by BEDCO.
BEDCO Director Frank Boswell did not return calls.
The nonprofit receives tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year from city and state, one of several groups paid by the Department of Homeless Services to house the homeless.
In March 2015, the city Department of Investigation cited several of those groups — including BEDCO — for routinely placing families in squalid apartments with dozens of housing, building and healthcode violations.
At one BEDCO building on E. 174th St. in the Bronx, DOI found a dead rat that had been lying in the lobby for days.
At the time, DOI criticized the city’s habit of repeatedly retaining the groups on an “emergency” basis without actual contracts. That gave the city little leverage to demand the groups remedy horrendous living conditions.
BEDCO also placed families in the Bronx building where two infants were scalded to death in December due to a faulty radiator. A tenant at the building told The News she’d reported a busted radiator in her apartment to BEDCO, but no one came to fix it.
The BEDCO announcement came three days after the mayor said nothing about the homeless crisis during his 65-minute State of the City address Monday night.
The decision to cut off BEDCO is part of a promise de Blasio made last year to eliminate all “cluster sites” by 2018. He’s also vowed to end the use of hotels, but without a specific deadline.
The cutoff also represents an abrupt about-face. Just eight months ago, the Department of Homeless Services renewed two BEDCO contracts, including a $2.2 million contract that was to continue through June and a $16.8 million contract that was to continue into 2020.
The nonprofit currently has 12 contracts with the department, most of which expire this year. It also manages eight traditional shelters, and the city says it will review those contracts, as well, within the next 90 days.
Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks said Thursday that the city is taking multiple steps to make sure homeless families get safe and healthy lodging.
Last year, Banks said, the city eliminated 10,000 code violations in shelters and “cluster sites,” and will stop using these apartments and hotels as soon as possible.