Helter-$helter

What do you get when you offer free city housing to anyone who asks and require little in return? Total chaos — and Tom DiNapoli’s new audit of homeless-shelter contracts is just more proof of that.

The state comptroller checked the city’s shelter-contracting process for proper financial safeguards and to see if facilities’ rates were “reasonable.” Instead, he found a complete mess.

Mayor de Blasio’s Department of Homeless Services, which provides housing and oversees spending for shelters, lacks “written policies and standard operating procedures for key aspects of the shelter contract procurement and rate-setting process,” the audit charged. Indeed, DHS doesn’t even keep certain required documents for the contracts it awards.

DiNapoli’s reviewers found that shelter rates are “generally inconsistent among sim- ilar shelters” and often exceeded “prescribed ranges.” And in many cases, there was scant evidence the city even sought better rates: Contracts had the same fees as the providers asked for, and a few had even

higher rates. It’s obvious what’s going on: As the number of homeless soared under de Blasio, his underlings scrambled to comply with housing-on-demand laws, no matter the cost. Why care about rates when you have no choice but to come up with housing?

In all, DHS spent more than $1.3 billion to house an average of 58,000 people in 2016.

Hizzoner’s first mistake: tapping radical homeless advocate Steve Banks to run the system, assuring the city would need more and more housing and homeless services.

Banks & Co. opened the gates and the “homeless” rushed in. And the taxpayers get stuck with the bill for the chaos.