Posted on March 23, 2015 by The Editorial Board in The New York Times The New York Times, By The Editorial Board It isn’t just the dead-rat smell in the hallway, the holes in the walls, the locked exits and other rampant health and safety violations that make a new report on New York City’s homeless shelters so damning. What is appalling about the report, released earlier this month by the city’s Department of Investigation, is the systemic collapse it reveals. It takes years to build a mess like this. New York has about 57,000 people in its shelters. The system is so strained for space that millions of dollars are spent to put people up in places known to be dangerous and squalid, because a dangerous, squalid place with a roof is considered better than the street.
