Gimme shelter cash
Qns. pol: Andy got 750G from street woe
ALBANY — A Queens assemblyman is accusing Gov. Cuomo of turning a blind eye to the state’s growing homeless problem while deep-pocketed donors linked to shelters with state and city contracts fill his campaign coffers with cash.
Cuomo has raked in more than $750,000 in donations over the past decade from contributors with ties to the shelter system, according to Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Queens).
Board members associated with various homeless shelters have given the governor $322,972, while donors associated with Help USA, a shelter service provider founded by the governor and chaired by his sister, Maria Cuomo Cole, have ponied up $451,285 in donations.
“Andrew Cuomo is profiting from the growth in homelessness,” Hevesi told the Daily News. “He has taken three-quarters of a million dollars from people who have a financial interest in having more people become homeless.”
Cuomo adviser Rich Azzopardi, pointing out that the sum is less than 1% of the $118 million raised by his boss in recent years, said Hevesi’s criticisms are nothing more than the smoldering remnants of a grudge against the governor for locking up his father, former state Comptroller Alan Hevesi, over a pension fund scandal more than a decade ago.
“As the governor always says, anyone who can be influenced by a single dollar has no place in government, and that is as true now as it was the day when Attorney General Cuomo busted Hevesi’s father for selling the pension fund to the highest bidder,” Azzopardi said. “The assemblyman’s conspiracy theories are sad, his family vendetta is pathetic and he should be doing better by his constituents.”
Hevesi countered that his only concern is the steady increase in the number of people, especially children, struggling with homelessness under Cuomo’s watch.
Each year, about 250,000 New Yorkers find themselves faced with the prospect of spending a night in a shelter at some point. The majority, three out of five, are schoolaged children, according to the Assembly Committee on Social Services, which Hevesi helms. Since 2011, the number of school-age kids experiencing homelessness in the Empire State has increased 69% to 152,839 students.
The nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless noted in its annual report in April that 133,284 different people, including more than 45,600 children, spent at least one night in a city shelter last fiscal year.
In their report, the advocacy group gave the governor a failing grade for his handling of the homeless crisis, citing his administration’s ho-hum record on housing vouchers, reentry efforts for those getting out of jail and budgeting the financial burden of operating shelters onto the city’s shoulders.
Hevesi, using Housing and Urban Development data, noted that New York has added 24,279 shelter beds under Cuomo, bringing the state total to more than 90,750.
Despite the increase, Azzopardi said New York is leading the fight against poverty through a “holistic approach,” including raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour and a $20 billion plan to combat homelessness and create or preserve more than 100,000 affordable homes and 6,000 providing supportive services.
Shelly Nortz, deputy executive director at the New York Coalition for the Homeless, said those numbers are misleading because a large part of the $20 billion is annual baseline spending — including money for shelters — and noted that Cuomo pledged to provide 20,000 units of supportive housing.
“He makes a promise but then doesn’t follow through on it,” Nortz said, adding that the city is partly to blame. “Neither the governor nor the mayor have delivered rapidly on the one thing that really stabilizes homeless people with psychiatric and other disabilities: permanent supportive housing.”
Hevesi, meanwhile, slammed the governor for repeatedly opposing a measure that proponents say could easily prevent thousands of people from losing their homes in the first place.
The assemblyman has for years pushed for the Home Stability Support program, intended to reduce reliance on shelters by creating a new rent subsidy to keep people in their homes, and blames Cuomo for knocking it out of budget negotiations this year.
“It’s very simple to stop the growth of the crisis, help people with their rent,” Hevesi said. “That’s what we did to end the Great Depression, that was the public policy. That’s how we got out of the worst homeless crisis ever.”
The program, which is projected to cost roughly $450 million a year, would increase rent supplements to families at risk of eviction, homelessness, or loss of housing due to domestic violence or hazardous living conditions. City Comptroller Scott Stringer estimated that the program could reduce the shelter population in the five boroughs by 80% among families with children, 60% among adult families, and 40% among single adults.
“Why, after eight years of Gov. Cuomo watching the homeless crisis continue to rise, is he actively fighting against the one thing we know will stop the crisis?” Hevesi added.
An administration official put the full cost of the program at $843 million per year when implemented and called it a voucher program that doesn’t do anything to help build more affordable housing that would in effect displace other low income New Yorkers who don’t qualify.
Advocates believe the measure would save the state money in the long run. Providing rent subsidies would cost a fraction of what is currently paid to shelter providers to house homeless families and individuals, Nortz said.
“He is standing in the way of a fundamental solution to the economic causes of homelessness,” she added of the governor. “Everybody knows that families on public assistance don’t have a housing allowance that allows them to secure housing in the private market.”