Adams: Put homeless in vacant apts.

The city is in a housing crisis and should place homeless New Yorkers in affordable apartments that are sitting empty, mayoral candidate and Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said.

Adams called on the city Housing Preservation and Development Department to disclose how many affordable units are vacant and available and to cut “the red tape holding back thousands of New Yorkers in need from occupying units for which they qualify.”

“We are in a homelessness crisis, and the driving factor is lack of affordable housing,” Adams said ahead of a planned Monday news conference.

“Why, then, are affordable units in [the Housing Preservation and Development Department’s] portfolio sitting empty right now that struggling individuals and families could be living in?”

Affordable housing in New York City includes more than 300 public housing developments, the Mitchell-Lama program that regulates below-market rate rents in privately owned buildings, and various new construction and development incentives and set-aside programs to keep prices down.

Adams proposed the city provide subsidies to help homeless people move into vacant affordable units, but he did not provide a likely price tag for such an effort.

He cited statistics from the nonprofit Coalition for the Homeless showing more than 55,000 people were sleeping in shelters as of January.

Subsidies would have the benefit of “saving our city money and expediting the process of getting the working homeless out of the shelter system and into permanent housing,” he said.

After years of withering reviews for Mayor de Blasio’s homeless policies, contenders to succeed him