Key pol hits shelter plan
ALBANY — A top state legislative leader says Mayor de Blasio’s plan to build 90 homeless shelters across the city over five years is “a terrible idea.”
“It’s controversial to place five homeless shelters around the city, let alone 90,” said Sen. Jeffrey Klein of the Bronx, who heads a breakaway group of eight Senate Democrats. “You see how people react when you place homeless people in a hotel in their community. It’s going to be outrageous.”
Rather than new shelters, the Bronx Dem is pushing a plan with Assemblyman Andrew Hevesi (D-Queens) to create a rent subsidy program to reduce reliance on homeless shelters by making it easier for people to stay in their homes.
Klein’s Senate Independent Democratic Conference and the Assembly Democrats last week included the Home Stability Support program in separate resolutions outlining their budget priorities. A new state budget is due by the end of the month.
“This is a far superior plan than building homeless shelters around the city,” Klein said.
Klein and the independent Democrats also proposed a requirement for community notification and input to the New York City Planning Commission on the siting of homeless facilities. He said a community should be notified 45 days before a homeless shelter is sited and there should be at least one public hearing.
He also said he talked to the city about a one-week community notification requirement before homeless people are placed in a hotel or motel, but the de Blasio administration rejected the idea.
The mayor recently said the city wants to stop using costly hotels and private apartments to house the homeless and instead will build 90 shelters over five years. He hasn’t said where they would be.
De Blasio spokeswoman Jaclyn Rothenberg said Sunday the city backs enacting the Home Stability Support program as an “additional long-term prevention tool.”
Rothenberg said the city not only has already sited five shelters this year — with another 13 projected — but also is “deeply committed to an open community notification process” of at least 30 days to both elected officials and the wider community. She said a one-week notification requirement for placing homeless people in hotels would not work.
“In compliance with the rightto-shelter court order, the city places people in hotels under emergency situations when there is not enough shelter capacity on a given night, and providing a one-week notice before going into a new hotel would thereby result in renting rooms that may go unused, costing taxpayers more money,” Rothenberg said.