Mayor de Blasio Levels With New Yorkers on Homelessness Crisis: I Today Cannot See an End"
Mayor Bill de Blasio struck a somber tone as he unveiled his newest plan to mitigate the city’s homelessness crisis on Tuesday, lowering expectations for making a dent in the intractable issue he pledged to tackle when he campaigned for mayor more than three years ago.
“I’m going to say some things that are hard to hear,” the mayor announced at the beginning of his speech, telling reporters and homeless advocates that the city’s skyrocketing shelter population was the result of thirty years of ineffective policies, and that just keeping the population from exploding even further was an accomplishment his administration took pride in.
De Blasio’s plan, his third comprehensive initiative to address homelessness since he took office, aims to close all of the city’s “cluster sites” shelters and replace them with 90 new shelters based in communities closer to where the homeless originate from.
Yet even this new strategy would only reduce the city's record homelessness population by 2,500 over a five-year period. There are currently just under 60,000 people sleeping in NYC shelters every night.
Read more: http://www.villagevoice.com/news/mayor-de-blasio-levels-with-new-yorkers-on-homelessness-crisis-i-today-cannot-see-an-end-9723377