Judge orders NYC cannot move homeless from free housing into cheaper housing

This story touches on multiple issues, "Human Rights", "Law & Justice", "Politics in Big Cities", but it could also just as easily go under "Crazy policies of Progressives" because it is also about "social rights", entitlements, and lack of fiscal prudence when it comes to the spending of public money. After lots of thought I finally decided to post it under the "Budget & Taxes" section, because that's what this is really about.

This just seems like the type of thing that could only happen in a whacky place like New York City.

The city put many of their homeless into expensive hotels during the pandemic. Now they want to move the homeless into cheaper barracks-style housing. But a judge has ordered that the city can't do that, so for now the city will have to continue paying for those hotel rooms.


some excerpts from the article are copied in case the link to the article stops working:

New York City’s plan to move 8,000 homeless people out of hotels and into barracks-style shelters was disrupted when a federal judge ruled that officials were not adequately considering the health of those being moved.

The ruling blocks the city from transferring anyone with a disability to another site until evaluating whether it meets their needs. Because the city does not know who might qualify for such so-called reasonable accommodations, the entire program is on pause.

Mayor Bill de Blasio has said that moving homeless people out of the private hotel rooms where they have lived during the pandemic, and back to group shelters where 20 people often sleep in a single room, is a key to New York’s reopening efforts. The initiative is part of an all-out push to shift homeless people away from the core of Manhattan.
Other measures include the frequent removal of encampments where homeless people stay.

For weeks, converted school buses have been pulling up at hotels in Times Square and Chelsea, on the Upper West Side and elsewhere in New York City, and shuttling the homeless residents to group shelters far from the center of the city.

But the transfers have drawn angry protests from homeless people and their advocates: Hours before the judge’s ruling, six people were arrested in the lobby of a Lower Manhattan building where the Department of Homeless Services has offices after they demanded that homeless people be moved directly from hotels to permanent housing.

Advocates for homeless people see the city’s push as a public-relations campaign that seeks simply to make thousands of people disappear. They say it is reckless to move people back to group, or congregate, shelters even as contagious coronavirus variants are circulating and an unknown number of homeless people remain unvaccinated.

The Legal Aid Society, in its court filing, accused the city of violating the rights, and endangering the lives, of homeless New Yorkers with serious health problems and disabilities - the most vulnerable of the vulnerable - by refusing to grant reasonable accommodations, or refusing to let them apply, under a process required by a 2017 class-action settlement. The city says it has done so in hundreds of instances.

The judge who issued the ruling, Gregory Howard Woods of Federal District Court in Brooklyn, said the city could not transfer people who might qualify for reasonable accommodations without giving them at least seven days' notice and meeting with them to determine whether they do qualify, Mr. Goldfein said.

The ruling was a reprieve for people like Michelle Ward, who has been living in a boutique hotel near the Empire State Building that has served as a shelter for disabled women during the pandemic.

...the decision to shift thousands of homeless people from group shelters to furnished hotel rooms in the early days of lockdown to stem the spread of the virus gave many people a measure of privacy, comfort, stability and dignity. The hotel accommodations contrasted sharply with life in a congregate shelter, which many homeless people say is a lot like spending every night in jail.

Mayor de Blasio says that moving people to congregate shelters is essential to getting them the help they need, a position that is contested by some shelter operators who said they were able to deliver needed services at the hotels.

Mike Roberts, 36, described his new lodgings in the East Village. He sleeps in a room with seven or eight cubicles that each house three or four men. If he reaches over from his bed, he can touch the next one. Unlike his room at the Lucerne, the one at the shelter has no air conditioning. Mr. Roberts often awakens in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, and he cannot go for a walk because if he leaves the shelter between 10 p.m. and 5 a.m., he loses his bed. Needless to say, his room also does not have a private shower or a television.
"Here, when I wake up I’m in a cubicle," he said. "It'll be three people around me sleeping, one snoring, one probably getting high or a guy pacing the floor. Who wants that?"​

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/n...s-blocked-by-a-judge/ar-AAM5NOD?ocid=msedgntp


So it sounds like these people got a taste of free stuff and don't want to go back.

If anyone has taken a look at the rent prices and real estate prices in New York City, it may just not be viable for poor people to live there. Even many middle class people struggle to afford being able to live there.

The spread of the virus is not really the main issue. The people in NY with this type of mentality are just looking for any convenient excuse to have government pay for stuff or hand out free money. It's a right, don't you know.

For anyone with any sense of logic or fiscal responsibility, one has to ask themselves if this really makes any sense. Would it be practical for NYC to be able to afford to put ALL the homeless up in free hotels?
The cheapest slummiest hotels in the city still cost $52 a night, or $18,500 per year, to house one person. (And that is only because hotel prices are down right now because tourism is way below usual)

Right now the city is spending $364 million a year on these hotels.

 

New York City has a major homeless problem and no ideas on what to do. So, the answer is to ship them away out of sight, out of mind. But at other times, they try to do the compassionate thing and house the homeless. This is where they came up with the idea of sending the homeless to luxury hotel suites.

Then, later, they looked at the price tag and wanted to stop it (military barracks time!), but it was already too late. As the judge has ruled, and the homeless advocates have won. New York City doesn't want to put up cheap housing because they want to keep the rich neighborhood vibe going on. They want the best of both worlds: have prime real estate, which is unaffordable to most folks, and take care of the homelessness problem in a humane way (until they see the price tag).

The government of NYC is run by a bunch of morons! Practically anybody on the street could do a better job than the mayor. I'd do it myself, but I don't think I could handle the long hours and low pay.

 

Spoiler: The joke explained

Bill de Blasio spent only 7 hours on the job in May 2019. And, then, his pay is over $200,000 a year this year (2021).