Beds for 15,000 Empty In NYC Supportive Housing

Breaking news! Rather than fill the thousands of units that sit empty, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is attempting to break New York State Social Services Law to shift his jurisdiction’s Sanctuary City duty to the smallest County in the State of New York, despite our very well-documented housing crisis so extreme that Rockland has been unprecedently deputized by the State of New York to take over Building and Fire Code enforcement in the Village of Spring Valley.

A recent report indicates 3,932 units in the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) were empty across at the end of last month and more than 2,600 units vacant in the city’s supportive housing network meant for homeless New Yorkers. Combined those units could house 15,000 people according to Brooklyn Councilman Lincoln Restler.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams is being criticized by Councilman Restler for not utilizing the city’s public and supportive housing units as the migrant crisis continues to unfold.

Instead, he would rather send busloads of people to counties, like Rockland, that do not have housing and will likely result in a one-way bus ticket to homelessness.

The article goes on to say it now takes NYCHA an average of 258 days to fill a vacant public housing apartment – nearly double the 131 days it used to take at the outset of the Adams’ administration in January 2022. This has resulted in an outstanding 700% increase in vacant NYCHA apartments from 486 at the beginning of Adams’ term to the current 3,932.

By any account, this is not a crisis, but poor management. Let’s not forget, New York City’s current population is down roughly half a million since April 2020 and over 20,000 hotel rooms are unoccupied, and why my administration dispute’s the City’s notions that they do not have room to help these individuals.

These are the inhumane consequences being caused by the City of New York’s failure to plan for a crisis they knew was coming, which is drawing continued criticism from Adams’ own New York City Council.

He needs to take responsibility for the municipality he swore to serve and learn a thing or two about what it takes to be a leader.