New York is ripping up the playbook on how it treats the destitute
NEW YORK - As Mayor Bill de Blasio headed toward re-election in 2017, he announced an ambitious plan to address one of New York City's most intractable problems.
Over the next five years, he said, the city would open 90 new homeless shelters. Gone would be the patchwork quilt of private apartments and commercial hotel rooms rented simply to put a roof over someone's head. In their place would be a consolidated system of shelters designed not only to house the homeless but also to connect them to social services in neighborhoods where they already had roots.
"We've been moving in the wrong direction for 3 1/2 decades," de Blasio said.
The sweep of the proposal and the stakes riding on it speak to the vast scale of New York's homeless population, which, like Los Angeles, has ballooned as housing costs soared, wages lagged and government aid dwindled. As in Los Angeles, the political future of the city's leader may rest, at least in part, on his ability to do something about it.
Unlike Los Angeles, where the plight of the
