Banks Fails Again

Score another one for the city Department of Investigation, which just exposed more bungling by the Department of Homeless Services. What will it take for Mayor de Blasio to stop relying on Steven Banks to run the DHS show?

The latest DOI investigation caught the de Blasio administration warehousing homeless families with children in hotels where prostitution, illegal drug use and other criminal activity ran rampant.

In an eight-month review of the 57 hotels used by the city to shelter homeless families, DOI investigators found that 34 saw arrests for prostitution, assault and/or drug possession last year. The feds uncovered a sex-trafficking ring involving two Bronx motels used by the city as shelters.

DHS failed to consider criminal activity in the seedy inns where it placed needy families — a lapse that led to at least one homeless resident being propositioned to work as a hooker, the DOI reported.

Homeless czar Banks has no excuse for this lapse. He was around (as an activist, not an official) for the Koch-era scandal of the old Martinique Hotel — which city-“protected” homeless families shared with a host of unsavory characters straight out of Martin Scorsese’s “Taxi Driver.”

City officials back then pleaded ignorance of the goings-on at the Martinique. What’s Banks’ excuse?

Yes, DHS quickly relocated the families, or took over the fleabags entirely — but only DOI flagged the mistake.

This is just the latest de Blasio-Banks homeless horror. They’ve doubled city spending on the homeless, only to buy ever more trouble. Then again, the cash goes fast when you spend six grand or more a month to place one family in a hotel. Banks is being taken to the cleaners all across town by unscrupulous “shelter” providers.

The feds say the city’s homeless population rose 4 percent in 2017, one of the biggest increases in the nation. The de Blasio-Banks approach to implementing the “right to shelter” helps explain that sad increase.

The start of a new term is a fine time for change. For the sake of the city’s least fortunate, de Blasio should order Banks to “leave voluntarily” and put a savvy nonideologue in charge.