NYC’s homeless ‘three times’ what DeB claims

The de Blasio administration is grossly underestimating the number of people living on the street, a top advocate for the city’s homeless said Sunday.

“We do know that the city came up with a number between 3,000 and 4,000. Their methodology is so flawed, we believe the number to be easily two to three times that,” said Mary Brosnahan, president of the Coalition for the Homeless, the nation’s oldest advocacy group for people in need of shelter.

By Brosnahan’s calculations, there are anywhere between 6,000 and 12,000 homeless people living outside of shelters now. With the winter approaching, those numbers could mean more deaths or grave injuries for many who either refuse shelter or can’t access it.

“When it gets around 40 degrees and if its raining, that moisture in the air, that’s a deadly combination,” she said to John Catsimatidis on his radio show Sunday. “They can lose fingers, toes or lips.”

Brosnahan said that numbers in cityregulated shelters are “hover ing at 58,000 lately.” — “24,000 of those are kids,” she added.

City Hall defended it’s estimates. “Not everybody on the street is homeless,” said spokeswoman Ishanee Parikh. “The HOPE [Homeless Outreach Population Estimate] count is specifically aimed at counting those . . . who are chronically homeless.”