Mayor Plans to Add 90 New Homeless Shelters and Ditch Hotels

Mayor de Blasio announced a plan to add 90 new homeless shelters to stem the tide of homelessness in New York City. 

In a speech Tuesday, de Blasio set a number of goals to respond to the city's homelessness problem, an issue he admits will take some time to handle. He said none of his administration's goals can be reached though until every homeless person across five boroughs has access to shelters. 

"We're going to respond to homelessness borough by borough, family by family, person by person," said the Mayor. 

De Blasio's plan sets the goal to reduce the city's current homeless number in shelters down by 2500 over five years, which is at around 60,000 today.

The Mayor said he wanted to reduce the city's dependency on commercial hotels and cluster apartments, but he acknowledged that hotel accomodations may still be neccessary as shelters continue to be built. He pledged the city would be done using hotels for homeless accomodation by 2023. 

Jose Rodriguez, who was formerly homeless and now works as an advocate for Picture the Homeless, said the Mayor is failing to address the issue altogether.

"It is just beyond me why the Mayor is doing this," said Rodriguez, "It's like almost he's trying to warehouse people and push them on the next mayor."

This is a reelection year for Mayor de Blasio who said Crown Heights will be the destination for the first new shelter in April. 

The Coalition for the Homeless praised the Mayor's move but said there's more to be done.

"More important than improving the quality of shelters is reducing the need for them," said the group in a statement, "What New Yorkers need from the Mayor is a bold and comprehensive plan to tackle our homelessness crisis by providing access to truly affordable housing and by better utilizing federal resources like public housing and Section 8."