Blaz: Homeless to leave hotels

The city will eventually move homeless people out of hotels and back into shelters, Mayor de Blasio said Monday, though he declined to provide a time line.

The promise came amid concerns of aggressive panhandling, public urination and other quality-of-life infringements blamed on homeless people housed in hotels in Hell’s Kitchen and nearby nabes.

“As the … health situation continues to improve, we’re going to start the process of figuring out where we can get homeless individuals back into safe shelter facilities and reduce the reliance on hotels,” de Blasio said at a news conference.

In the spring, the Department of Homeless Services began moving about 10,000 homeless people into hotels from shelters, where fear of coronavirus spread remains high.

Since then, residents of Hell’s Kitchen, where homeless people are living in eight hotels, and other areas have complained of close encounters with enraged or apparently drug-addled individuals.

Hizzoner insisted the city has the situation under control.

“On the specific quality-oflife issues, it’s incumbent upon every city agency involved to get out there and solve them,” he said, mentioning the NYPD, Homeless Services and the Health and Sanitation departments. “I’ve instructed all of them to address these issues as they come up and make sure that neighborhood residents see that these concerns are being addressed,” he added.

He said for the city to get homeless people out of hotels, it has to “identify space that will work in our existing shelters. We’ll have more to say on that as the plans are more deeply developed and as we see what the health situation shows us.”