Rats and Rot: NYC report rips family homeless shelters
One family of six was living in a homeless-shelter apartment where a dead rat festered on the floor for two days. Another family had no living-room furniture and had been without electricity for days.
At a different homeless family shelter, a puddle of urine soiled the floor of the only working elevator. And at yet another, one stairway was so treacherously rusted that inspectors ordered guards to block access to it until it was repaired.
All those buildings were part of a system that costs the city Department of Homeless Services about $360 million a year, with the agency sometimes paying well above neighborhood market rates for apartments, according to a city Department of Investigation report released Thursday. It found decrepit and dangerous conditions and lacking enforcement were rife in the city-paid, largely privately-run shelters that house nearly 12,000 homeless families with children.