According to an article in The Atlantic Cities in January 2013, for the first time in New York's recorded history, the city's homeless shelter system housed an average nightly population of more than 50,000 people. That number was up 19% from 2012, and up 61% since Bloomberg took office.
This figures eclipsed all historical levels and the numbers did not even include victims of Hurricane Sandy, who were housed separately ((http://www.theatlanticcities.com/housing/2013/03/bloombergs-other-legacy-homelessness-crisis/4910/).
It seems the rise in NYC homelessness paralleled Bloomberg's augmentation in wealth.
In 2013, more than one percent of NYC children (21,034 of 1,780,000) slept in a homeless shelter; this, while foreclosures continued to skyrocket, the rich got richer and affordable housing literally disappeared.
In January 2014, a new record was set as the average number of homeless single adults sleeping each night in the New York City shelter system rose five percent to 11,342 women and men (http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/state-of-the-homeless-2014/).
Homelessness is increasing all over America but the numbers from New York are shockingly high compared to most of the US Empire's failing cities.
The Atlantic Cities noted that in January 2013 alone, on average, over 21,000 children slept in city shelters each night, a 22% increase over the same period in 2011. The average length of stay in a shelter for homeless families with children, according to the report, is now over a year, an increase of 10%from the previous year (ibid).
The Coalition for the Homeless also found that under the Bloomberg administration there was a dramatic expansion of for-profit shelter operators. The majority of homeless families (51 percent) in New York City reside in for-profit shelters (i.e., commercial hotels and motels and so-called "cluster-site" shelter units) (ibid).
This is the Dickensian nightmare that litters America, the stark reality of American capitalism and it only promises to get worse under the tutelage of banksters, media sophists, philanthro-pirates and their supplicant coin-operated politicians.
In October of 2014, under the canopy of the same mendacious free-market con-job which concluded public support for the homeless and poor actually provided inducements for growing homelessness, the city of Fort Lauderdale, Florida became the latest to pass a measure restricting food distribution to the homeless.
This too is part of a growing trend in America over the past several years.
The measure, whose passage provoked protests from irate residents, criminalizes and prohibits feeding stations from operating within 500 feet of each other or 500 feet from any residential area.
The decree reflects the argument that homeless people are better served in facilities that also provide mental health and drug rehabilitation services (http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/10/criminalizing-the-hands-that-feed-the-homeless/381804/).
Robert Marbut of Marbut Consulting, a 'privatized homeless outreach' adviser who instructs cities on homelessness, told NPR recently:
"Street feeding is one of the worst things you can do, because it keeps people in homeless status."
Not surprisingly, Marbut was a White House Fellow to President George H.W. Bush (http://www.marbutconsulting.com/Dr.html).
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