Tonight the City of New York will send volunteers out to “count” homeless people on the streets and in subways – a flawed effort that, year after year, has resulted in a significant undercount of New York City’s homeless population.
On June 15th rent laws protecting 2.5 million tenants are set to expire. And if the New York State Legislature and Governor Cuomo fail to renew and strengthen the rent laws, we could see a homelessness and housing crisis unlike any since the Great Depression.
The Bloomberg administration has plans to crowd hundreds of homeless men on an armory drill floor in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn, a dangerous step backwards to the bad old days of unsafe, overcrowded shelters.
Recently released data give us a picture of the state of homelessness across the country and why the situation is getting worse.