You can too fight City Hall. Indeed, folks in Maspeth have halted Mayor de Blasio’s p🍸lan🤡s to open a 115-bed homeless shelter in their quiet residential neighborhood.
Then, in last꧅ week’s Democratic primary, they ousted Assemblywoman Marge Markey over her feeble response on the issue.
The mayor’s 🐠folks aimed to convert a Holiday Inn Express to a homeless shelter, set to open Oct. 1. Queens lawmakers and resident🦩s sued to block the move last month — and the furor prompted the motel’s co-owner to tweet that the deal is off.
City H🔜all insists the plan will still go forward — because it needs somewhere to put the🅠 ever-rising homeless tide. And turning hotels into shelters is a key part of its answer.
But, as we’ve said before, it’s all a hopeless task as long as Human Resources Commissioner Steven Banks — who spent decades suing the city to create new rights for the homeless — leads Team de Blaꦅsio’s response.
The Post recently found that the number of homeless persons sheltered at hotels had risen 50 percent since February to nearly 4,000 — and𒀰 to over 60,000 in city shelters.
And The New York Times reported that families are again sleeping overnight at city intake offices — something Banks fought as a Legal Aid lawyer 20 years ago.
There has been a veritable explosion in the street homeles🍌s population as well as homeless families in shelters.
The vacancy rate at city shelters for famili🔴es with༒ children is less than 1 percent.
Team de Blasio’s desperate response includes paying to send homeless to their families outside the city and providing rental subsidies to homeless familie🔯s willing to relocate out of town. But that’s not stemming the tide.
Without a coherent homeless-prevention st🌳rategy, and a serious “tough love” approach to those claiming to be homeless, the need for more places to warehouse peo𓆉ple will keep growing — and angering communities.
Maspeth won’t be the last neighbor༒hood to fight City Hall to a draw — or oust unresponsive e🅰lected officials.