(DNAINFO) Jeff Mays | February 2, 2016 — The data was contained on a long-awaited shelter repair scorecard from Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The city’s homeless shelters have more than 21,000 open violations, according to a scorecard issued by Mayor Bill de Blasio.
The city’s cluster sites, rental apartments in privately owned buildings that are used as shelters, had 14,418 open violations, 67 percent of the total. The city announced a plan last month to eliminate the use of the decrepit cluster sites to house people.
The cluster shelter units housed 11,000 people in 260 buildings across the city and cost taxpayers $125 million per year in rent and social services costs. The costs of the apartments are well above market rent value even though many of the buildings are on the Public Advocate’s worst landlord list.
And making repairs has not been an easy task. Even though the city reported closing 1,593 violations at the cluster sites, there were 1,181 new violations in December alone.
The city’s non-cluster sites had 6,983 violations, an average of half a violation per apartment at the 357 sites.
The Shelter Repair Scorecard was supposed to be issued months ago but was delayed. The scorecard is to be used to define the scope of the problem facing the city’s troubled shelter system and the progress made in fixing it, said de Blasio.
“We are determined to give every family and individual in a homeless shelter decent living conditions,” he said in a statement.