Posted on 03/19/2026 3:17:21 AM PDT by Libloather
New York City has more than tripled spending on unsheltered homelessness since 2019, shelling out nearly $368 million even as the number of people living on the streets continued to rise, according to a state comptroller’s report.
The city’s own numbers show the unsheltered population grew from 3,588 in fiscal year 2019 to 4,504 in fiscal year 2025, a 26% increase from pre-pandemic levels. Over that same period, spending on services for the unsheltered jumped 262%, from $102 million to nearly $368 million.
That works out to roughly $81,700 per unsheltered person in FY 2025 — slightly more than the city’s median household income, though the comparison is only a broad benchmark since public spending and household earnings are not directly comparable.
The numbers show the city is pouring in more money while the street homeless population continues to grow — and taxpayers are footing the bill.
Still, the report notes that New York’s shelter system remains unusually large by national standards.
Los Angeles, the city with the next-largest homeless population, has about 71,000 homeless people, roughly half of New York City’s 2024 total, and about 70% of them are unsheltered. In New York City, by contrast, nearly 97% of the homeless population is in shelters.
The findings are likely to add fuel to the broader debate over housing affordability, as soaring rents and a shortage of low-cost housing remain central to New York City’s homelessness crisis — and a key issue for Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
While Mamdani has proposed freezing rents on roughly 2 million stabilized apartments, many economists argue that rent freezes may shield current tenants in the short term while worsening the city’s long-term housing shortage — doing little to solve the supply crisis at the root of New York’s homelessness problem.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
The whole country should send the homeless there.
They treat them great!
And the money disappears to fraudsters, and the family remains homeless.
“spending on services for the unsheltered jumped 262%, from $102 million to nearly $368 million. That works out to roughly $81,700 per unsheltered person in FY 2025”
Subsidize something and you will get more of it. But I don’t think Mamdani and cohorts can figure that out.
Must point out most of that money does not actually go to the homeless person.
We can assume that at least half of the “homeless” expense is gobbled up by numerous administrative expenses.
The consultant nonprofits recommending which tents should be provided to the homeless absorb 2/3 of the tent expenditures.
Taxpayers paying for those who won’t work.....IOW:
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”
_Karl Marx in his 1875
It’s a scam someone is filling their pockets and it’s not the homeless
The fallacy is that the city is spending the money ON the homeless person. Its spending the money ON generous bureaucrat salaries and homeless NGO contracts. Probably 5% or 10% of the payment actually makes it to the homeless person, if that.
The government pass through cost in all its glory.
Saying they, the Democrat politicians, are helping the homeless is a scam. They pass legislation to give money to so called homeless causes but homelessness just keeps getting worse across America because most of the homeless funding ends up in the pockets of the politicians and their cronies. Get a clue people. If there was no homelessness, there would be no need to formulate huge pools of the public’s money for the politicians to loot.
No doubt a large chunk of the money is going to NGOs in grants and contracts for “services” for the homeless and that section of the NGO industrial complex will be at the vanguard of any “protests” over any reductions in “spending for the homeless”, In reality it will be the threats to their taxpayers funded NGO careers that will set them out to “protest” any “cuts to spending for the homeless”.
NY City is a welfare city. Its government exists of property taxes, taxes on Wall Street firms and employees, state hand-outs, and Federal transfers
And all of that occurs because of printed money and massive debt
NY City needs to be reduced and radically reformed.
Give a man a fish, and he eats one day. Give him a fishing pole, and he can eat more days as he fends for himself. Give them the money on a one time basis and let them make something of themselves. Don’t trap them in squander, offer a path out of it. They make the decision to get out of it.
But why should they? Roof, food, medical assistance, clothing, and other amenities like no taxes, no need to get up to go to work, sleep as long as you want, cut rate transportation on buses availability... how tough is that?
wy69
Apparently there is a great deal of “overhead” involved in giving away other people’s money.
I ddo not know the answer, do you? My belief is that money earmarked specifically for illegal aliens is being used for the illegals, not from the homeless funds.
But regardless, we know why that is being done, because Americans are leaving the Democrat Party, but illegals Will vote for the Democrats, even if it illegal for the to do so.
My observation also!
Austin, TX is part of the homeless fraud madness. The number of homeless climbs daily. So does the cost of “helping” them.
Bring back workhouses for the poor. Make them withdraw under supervision and then make them work at something useful, like prisoners do. Daily exercise and practical skills workshops. Let them do pet rehabilitation, gardening, make things and do arts and crafts and set up an outlet store. It would reduce drug relapses, and would save money on housing, and by having a medical team visit regularly instead of paying one at a time when homeless addicts in extremis are scooped up by an ambulance, treated at a hospital and released back onto the streets.
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