NY flats stay empty even as homelessness rate rises

New York

IN ANY given week, the housing crisis in New York City reveals itself through new but familiar anecdotes of deprivation, in fresh sets of grim statistics, in staggering contradictions. Among the poor, those with housing are the fortunate. During the past year, the homelessness rate has been stagnant - more than 62,000 people sleep in shelters each night. Earlier this month, a study from the Citizens' Committee for Children indicated that the number of families with children who had entered the shelter system between 2012 and 2016 increased by 22 per cent, and the average length of a shelter stay went up during the same period.

Throughout his campaign for re-election, Mayor Bill de Blasio directed attention again and again to his housing initiative - one that is committed to preserving and building 200,000 affordable residences by 2022 with an additional 100,000 units targeted for completion by 2026. Three hundred thousand units would, as his administration has pointed out, supply enough housing for the entire population of Boston or Seattle. But housing advocates have been concerned all along that the plan provides insufficien…