NYC burning $81K per homeless person — with nothing to show for it
State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli just revealed that New York City is now spending $81,000 per street homeless person — in a town where average take-home pay is no higher than $40,600.
And Mayor Zohran Mamdani want to spend more: City Hall projects it to hit nearly $97,000 in the coming year.
Overall, this spending has skyrocketed from $102 million in 2018 to $368 million last year, up 320% even as the street-homeless population grew just 26%.
These figures don’t include about $500 million a year for supportive housing, mental health co-response teams, the NYPD’s homeless-clearing work or other outlays for this population.
It’s certain that almost none of the $81,000 actually benefits these street people: Outreach workers get paid to count the “unsheltered” and to try coaxing them into shelter or arranging some kind of housing they’ll accept.
This is just one particularly damning example of how New York’s nonprofit-industrial complex has morphed the city’s multibillion-dollar outlays in the name of fighting homelessness into a jobs program that simply pretends to manage it.
As city Comptroller Scott Stringer puts it, “It’s a clarion call to make sure every dollar counts.”
This is the kind of madness that Team Mamdani refuses to rein in, insisting that the only solution is more revenue — higher taxes — to feed the beast.
The city doesn’t need a dime more; it needs to finally start cutting programs that don’t work.
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