NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio Called out by HUD for Shipping Homeless Residents off to Other States
De Blasio is one of many liberal mayors from Democrat-controlled cities who believes he can quietly offload his homeless problems to unsuspecting cities across America.
When it comes to the public housing and homeless problems plaguing New York City, HUD regional administrator Lynne Patton is not messing around.
Patton, whose office oversees the New Jersey and New York region, spent a month in NYC public housing earlier this year to observe, document, and report on the deplorable conditions.
When it was over, she ripped Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Patton accused them of “blatant deception and fraud” and called the public housing situation there “nothing short of a humanitarian crisis.”
That same month, Patton put de Blasio on blast in a tweet. She chastised him for what she characterized in so many words as putting his presidential ambitions ahead of the needs of the city’s residents:
Since everyone keeps making this about politics instead of people, maybe the @NYCMayor should stay in his ACTUAL STATE & identify a new @NYCHA chair who will spend our $30M per week on ACTUAL REPAIRS than wasteful UNION OT the mayor won’t abrogate due to his own political goals! pic.twitter.com/N2HMaWKwGu
— Archive: Lynne Patton (HUD) (@LynnePattonHUD) March 18, 2019
The two don’t get along and considering what she said during an interview on Fox News Thursday about him, it’s safe to say their working relationship just got a whole lot chillier.
Patton made an appearance on the cable news network to discuss reports that Mayor de Blasio was trying to “solve” the city’s homeless problem by shipping them off to other states:
Newark, New Jersey’s largest city, filed a federal lawsuit against New York City and de Blasio on Monday claiming recipients of the subsidized rentals are ending up living in poor conditions, according to the New York Post.
“I know both of these mayors, just last week I worked with the mayor of Newark to help house 55 families during Thanksgiving,” Patton continued. “I’m quite frankly surprised more mayors aren’t suing de Blasio. Because this program’s ridiculous. It literally helps people one time,” she explained.
Patton argued that providing people with a free apartment for a year will not encourage them to find work and will only perpetuate a cycle of false hope, that will end up crushing their spirits.
“It invites slum lords to let the apartments grow into distress. They’ve got the money upfront. Why maintain the upkeep of the apartment? Plus it doesn’t give the homeless recipient the incentive to better themselves, to be self-sufficient,” she said. “‘I’m set for a year, what do I have to work for?’ And then when the year expires and the homeless person can’t pay for the rent going forward — or at least 50 percent of it, they’re back out on the street and what have you really accomplished?”
Watch the full interview with Patton below:
Patton’s exactly right. According to an October report from the New York Post, NYC has “exported” their homeless residents to 373 cities around the country via de Blasio’s Special One-Time Assistance Program (SOTA), usually without informing the cities that they’re coming. After living in their “free” apartment for a year, many of them either end up back out on the streets or back in NYC living in rundown public housing:
City taxpayers have spent $89 million on rent alone since the program’s August 2017 inception to export 5,074 homeless families — 12,482 individuals — to places as close as Newark and as far as the South Pacific, according to Department of Homeless Services data obtained by The Post. Families who once lived in city shelters decamped to 32 states and Puerto Rico.
The city also paid travel expenses, through a separate taxpayer-funded program called Project Reconnect, but would not divulge how much it spent. A Friday flight to Honolulu for four people would cost about $1,400. A bus ticket to Salt Lake City, Utah, for the same family would cost $800.
[…]
Not only are officials in towns where the city’s homeless land up in arms, but hundreds of the homeless families are returning to the five boroughs — and some are even suing NYC over being abandoned in barely livable conditions. Multiple outside agencies and organizations have opened investigations into SOTA.
“We were initially seeing a lot of complaints about conditions. Now that the program has been in operation long enough that the SOTA subsidy is expiring, one of our main concerns is it might not be realistic for people to be entirely self-sufficient after that first year,” said Jacquelyn Simone, policy analyst at Coalition for the Homeless.
Fayetteville, NC, is one of the cities that have been the unknowing recipients of de Blasio’s homeless residents. Fayetteville Mayor Mitch Colvin is demanding answers:
“I really didn’t have a vast understanding but I understand the concept. That they were taking their problems related to the homeless that they’re struggling with and moving them to other communities and I think that’s completely unfair,” said Colvin.
For Fayetteville, the problem then becomes affordable housing, the availability of it and whether the resources available there are enough to take on a growing homeless population. Even with the Tiny Home project and Homeless Day Center, Mayor Colvin worries that the long term impact of busing people there could put a strain on resources.
“We’re struggling now to keep up with our own homeless population and putting the amenities and resources in place to deal with that and we certainly can’t take anyone else’s issues,” said Colvin.
New York City isn’t the only Democrat-run city that has programs in place to offload its homeless residents into other states. Portland, Oregon, and San Francisco are just two of the many towns who have paid those living on city streets to move out of state. San Francisco’s “Homeward Bound” program started under the leadership of then-Mayor Gavin Newsom, who is now California’s governor amid a statewide homeless crisis that he has tried to blame on, you guessed it, President Trump.
Newsom’s “not my fault” mentality is shared by de Blasio, who when faced with criticism from Patton or the New York media, defaults to blaming Trump for a supposed lack of federal funding. Patton herself has pushed back on that, pointing out that money alone will not solve the problems the city faces, especially when the people demanding the money are the very people who have squandered and misused it.
Mayor de Blasio dumping homeless people onto other states and trying to pin the city’s homeless crisis on Republicans is absurd and shows he’d rather conveniently pass the buck than take responsibility for his leadership failures. Shame on him.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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Comments
I can’t stand this groundhog killer.
Poverty can be expensive and profitable at the same time. Making homeless people self sufficient can put a lot of jobs at risk in the agencies that depend on homelessness.
Don’t trust someone to solve a problem, whose job security depends on said problem remaining unsolved.
Charges that Patton is a white supremacist and Russian asset in five … four … three …
Sacramento is a nice, welcoming place… ship them there. It’s a win-win situation.
Where have you people been? This dates back to the Clinton Regime.
Where have you been?! This dates back to F.D.R.
It’s a NYC policy, and Clinton never held office in NYC. Do you mean NYC started doing it during the Clinton administration? I don’t think Bloomberg was doing it though when he was mayor.
NYC is not actually a bad place for homeless. The subway tunnels are warm and people don’t mind them sleeping there.
He should be charged the housing/care cost of each of those he shipped out. This is outrageous!
Why? On what grounds? Why should they stay in NYC?
There probably aren’t legal grounds. But maybe every other place should do the same and ship their homeless to NYC.
Don’t you see it’s nasty to dump your homeless on another place that can’t afford to care for them? NYC at least can afford it, it’s the world’s leading city and could build more public housing blocks or something.
Other than the money wasted on the union why should I care. I currently live in an apartment that is in need of severe repair. And no, I cannot afford to move at this time. And every time I talk to the management promises are made. Yes Mr. Morningstar, we have you on the list for window replacement (two years ago and no new windows yet). Yes Mr. Morningstar, well take care of that filthy dog urine stain on your ceiling where the dog upstairs peed on the floor and it leaked through to my bedroom ceiling . Still there despite repeated attempts to get them to do something, anything over the last three years. They won’t even come in and put a damn coat of paint over the stain. And there it sits. Yes Mr. Morningstar, we’ll take care of the carpet that was trashed in the flood replaced or at least clean. And nothing. Still filthy. And of course, I’m not willing to pay my own money to fix these things as they have the wonderful rental agreement clause that states they will not reimburse a tenant for any work the tenant does on the apartment. And on and on. It’s disgusting. You spend the money you’re just stuck.
But every Section 8 apartment in the complex has gotten new windows. You can tell they are new as all have a white frame around the window. I routinely see carpet cleaning services cleaning the carpet of welfare apartments at the expense of the apartment owner. They get brand new appliances and furnaces and the like. The “Housing Authority” comes over and inspects each and every apartment. And if it doesn’t meet their standards the landlord is told to fix it. And of course, they kowtow and do what they’re told.
And while the welfare people get discounted rent and beautifully kept up apartments those of us who pay the full rent on an apartment get nothing. Nothing at all. Except an eviction notice if you’re one fucking day late on the rent. (<–illegal by the way)
So tell me why I should care what happens in New York. Let them waste the money. I don't care.
I’m going to stand up here and say their intentions (or at least part of their intentions) are good. Squint a little and imagine the following case: (hypothetical and idealistic, but still)
Mary the homeless lady is currently begging to get into Section 8 housing in the city. She has a cousin who could help, but said cousin works in another town, and Mary can’t afford lunch, let alone picking up and moving across country. So the welfare agency works with the destination town to get her into Section 8 housing there, a bus ticket, some possessions moved, and closer to her helpful cousin. They even pay the rent for a few months so Mary can get back on her feet and maybe get a job, which in toto winds up costing the city *less* and provide better results than if Mary stayed under a bridge for a year.
(If only it would work that way)
You’re partially correct there. Section 8 is portable and awarded locally, so a lot of NYCers travel to other locations where the waiting list is shorter, then return to NYC once they’ve been awarded it. We see a lot of that in upstate NY.
A good portion remain in their new cities too, which has wrecked havoc on stable small cities.
I wasn’t aware that there have been any new Section 8 vouchers available anywhere, for at least 10 years. Am I wrong?
The funny thing is that DiBlasio used to be the regional supervisor for HUD in NY/NJ when Cuomo was Secretary of HUD under Clinton, the same post that Patton holds now.
Both Cuomo and DiBlasio used their positions to establish their reputations in NY. In his defense, DeBlasio actually seems to believe all the stuff he says though.
So he believes it’s OK to inflict NYC’s least functional residents on everywhere else?
Why not? They’re Americans. Why should they remain NYC’s problem just because they happen to be here at this moment?
But shipping them and resettling them elsewhere? I mean that’s what we do with refugees too, but traditionally our cities have been the home of immigrants. NYC is wealthy. It’s a form of warfare to keep your best people and actually pay to move out your worst. And moving them out of state is worse and should cause frictions at the state level.
Why is HUD a Federal department or responsibility? Shouldn’t states be responsible for policing the quality and availability of housing? Or even just counties?
Were I of a mind to do so, how about this scheme: a homeless person goes to NYC and gets set up for relocation. They relocate and sponge, and at the end of the year drift to another location that relocates, rinse and repeat.
It originated under another name to promote urban development and inexpensive housing with FDR’s administration. It expanded over the following decades and was established as a full cabinet department as part of Johnson’s Great Society programs.
Essentially, it’s there to use federal money to subsidize cities.
We need to look closely at Section 8. People who got in can stay forever, everyone else is frozen out forever. That’s pretty unfair. We should refresh it totally, put in all new people and evict the old ones. Maybe the new ones will use it as a leg up rather than a lifetime cushion.
I don’t think we ever got a good answer to the hundreds of millions of dollars that aren’t accounted for in a program run by DeBlasio’s wife.
When Bill Buckley ran for mayor in 1965, he proposed telling welfare recipients that NYC would continue paying their welfare but only if they moved somewhere else. No welfare would be paid if they stayed in the city. Just pick somewhere, go there, and send us your address; so long as you still need aid, we’ll send you your checks. Hopefully out there you’ll find a job, which you’re unlikely to find here; living is probably cheaper wherever you ended up, so our checks can go farther; and if you’re a problem person you’re now someone else’s problem.
Bill Buckley was seen as right-wing and rather heartless. DeBlasio is today’s enlightened Democrat, and he’s enacting the policies Buckley proposed??
That’s hilarious.