New York City’s homeless shelter system is rife with widespread mismanagement and nepotism, in line with a yearslong investigation.
The assessment of dozens of nonprofit organizations that contract with the town to supply shelter to unhoused people and households started in 2021, earlier than the arrival of tens of 1000’s of migrants positioned further strains on New York’s shelter system. It was launched on Thursday by the town’s Department of Investigation.
Among the issues uncovered had been that some shelters employed instant relations of senior executives and board members in obvious violation of their contracts with the town, the 100-page report states. In different situations, investigators discovered that some executives of city-funded shelters had been additionally employed by safety corporations employed to supply providers on the shelters.
Some shelter suppliers didn’t comply with aggressive bidding guidelines when procuring items and providers, the investigators stated. And some awarded multimillion-dollar upkeep contracts to corporations affiliated with the buildings’ landlords relatively than placing the contracts out to bid.
Executives at some nonprofits which are funded largely by metropolis taxpayers made $700,000 or extra a 12 months, the report stated, including that the town lacks guidelines governing how a lot they will earn.
“When it comes to protecting the vast taxpayer resources that City-funded nonprofits receive, prevention is key,” Department of Investigation Commissioner Jocelyn Strauber stated in a press release. “City-funded nonprofit service suppliers pose distinctive compliance and governance dangers, and complete City oversight is one of the best ways to cease corruption, fraud, and waste earlier than it begins.”
Neha Sharma, a spokesperson for the town Department of Social Services, which oversees homeless providers, stated the division takes “each occasion of non-compliance very severely, which is why DSS has fully stopped doing business with quite a lot of suppliers highlighted within the report, enhanced bill assessment insurance policies and practices, and bolstered our sturdy audit and accountability mechanisms.”
Sharma stated the report “does not reflect our current contracting and oversight processes,” noting that the assessment started earlier than the present mayor, Democrat Eric Adams, took workplace in 2022.
New York City has lengthy offered shelter to extra unhoused individuals than another U.S. metropolis, partly due to a 1981 courtroom ruling that requires the town to supply shelter to anybody who asks for it.
According to the Department of Investigation report, the nightly inhabitants in city-funded shelters ranged from 45,000 to 55,000 from 2020 till mid-2022 and has grown to greater than 87,000 since then, largely due to the massive numbers of migrants who’ve arrived over the previous two years.
The metropolis spent $4 billion on homeless shelters in fiscal 12 months 2024, up from $2.7 billion in 2022, in line with the report.
Source: www.dailysabah.com