Dr. Ben Carson recently made a statement on the topic of letting shelters and low income housing get too cushy for the homeless and low income Americans. He said that the situation shouldn’t become to comfortable because the homeless person wouldn’t feel motivated to move out:
NYT reports:
Compassion, Mr. Carson explained in an interview, means not giving people “a comfortable setting that would make somebody want to say: ‘I’ll just stay here. They will take care of me.’”
“We have some people who are mentally ill. We have some elderly and disabled people. We can’t expect in many cases those people to do a great deal to take care of themselves,” he said. But, he added, “There is another group of people who are able-bodied individuals, and I think we do those people a great disservice when we simply maintain them.”
Well, it looks like a recent study by the Manhattan Institute proves Dr. Carson was right:
Daily Caller reports:
Homeless persons in New York City on average stayed nearly 100 days longer in shelters in 2017 than four years ago, according to an upcoming report from the Manhattan Institute.
Under Mayor Bill de Blasio, the average adult homeless person stayed in the shelter for 383 days in 2017 compared to the 293-day average stay in 2013.
“The more comfortable an adult or a family feels in a temporary housing situation, the weaker the motivation could become to move back into the community,” Stephen Eide, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, told the New York Post, which first reported on Manhattan Institute’s study expected to be released this week.
The report will show that adults with children stayed in shelters for 39 days longer than in 2013, and the average stay for adults without children increased 81 days to more than a year and a half. “We need to focus more on moving people out,” Eide said.
Homelessness has increased during De Blasio’s tenure as mayor. He’s now talking about making shelters into permanent affordable housing. He plans on squeezing building owners by using eminent domain to commandeer buildings if landlords don’t cooperate, The New York Times reported in December.
