Homeless people are seen to increase next year as projected by the de Blasio administration. The mayor's Management Report predicts that there will be about 3,350 individuals who will sleep "on the streets, in parks, under highways, on subways, and in the public transportation stations in New York City."
According to the annual street count taken each winter, there are about 3,182 recorded this fiscal year.
According to the report of the New York Post news, Ben Kallos, a city councilman, slammed Mayor de Blasio for setting the higher number of the homeless people. Kallos, who saw the Management Report, is demanding it to be overhauled. "We're disappointed by their failure to engage it [address the broader issue] over the past two years," Kallos said.
But a spokeswoman of the mayor fired back that Kallos doesn't understand the report.
"This represents a fundamental misinterpretation of how the mayor's Management Report defines targets - which are not goals, but expected performance levels based on multiple factors," said de Blasio's spokeswoman, Natalie Grybauskas. She added, "To suggest this administration is setting easy goals or low standards is, quite frankly, ludicrous."
According to a city official, the projection "represents the expected number, not an aspirational figure."
In a related report of the New York Post news, Mayor de Blasio has said about the city's escalating homeless crisis that "we need to catch up with the reality." The statement was made with the announcement of the sudden exit of the commissioner responsible for helping the city's needy people.
The departure of the Department of Homeless Services boss, Gilbert Taylor, was tied to a planned, 90-day review of the various outreach services and programs of the city.
In addition to the increase of homeless people sleeping on sidewalks, the two-year tenure of Taylor was stained by a record-high shelter population, and a scandal over $600,000 renovations of DHS offices.
Taylor can't figure out when asked how many homeless people were currently living on the streets during the City Council hearing last week. But the mayor estimated it at 3,000 to 4,000, for those that had entered city shelters since Taylor was appointed.