Banks’ Homeless Horrors

City homeless czar Steven Banks has a lot to answer for over city Comptroller Scott Stringer’s latest report on shelter conditions.

Banks’ system has families with babies living in shelters with vermin infestations, exposed electrical outlets, mold and mildew. Photos released with the report show rat droppings, live cockroaches, a crib set right by an electrical outlet and so on.

Stringer’s audit found these horrors in a random review of 13 shelters, which all had at least one health or safety violation. Nearly all 91 individual units examined, 92 percent, had at least one violation; over a third, 32 units, had four or more — including missing or broken window guards and shoddy or poorly placed cribs.

Deplorable shelter conditions aren’t new — yet the city keeps going back to operators who fall horribly short, time and again. E.g.: Last year, the Department of Homeless Services added hundreds of millions in new contracts for Childrens Community Services Inc., after repeatedly citing it for such issues as broken cribs, babies sleeping in “unsafe” areas and no kid-proof covers for electrical outlets.

DHS spokesman Isaac McGinn insists, “There is no higher priority than the health, well-being and safety of the New Yorkers we serve — particularly the youngest New Yorkers.” So DHS does even worse by all the non-infant homeless?

Before joining Team de Blasio, Banks spent his adult life advocating in the name of the homeless, repeatedly suing the city to create new “rights.” It seems that what works in the courtroom fails completely when it comes to actually providing for these most unfortunate New Yorkers.