Photo from 1010 WINS
I know these people want to really give you full thanks, hugs, and
everything else :
New York Homelessness Soars 34%
And here in New York, city officials have disclosed the number of homeless increased a staggering 34 percent last year. More than 3,100 people lived on the streets in 2009, in addition to the near-record 38,000 listed as living in shelters.
No wonder he stayed FAR, FAR away from talking about this, and it's something his opponent, Bill Thompson, should have talked
much more about .
Bloomberg has long struggled to address New York City's homeless problem.
He set a goal in his first term of reducing the homeless population by two-thirds by 2009. But the number of people in shelters surpassed 39,000 for the first time last fall, some 3,000 more than when he took office.
Until this year, the annual citywide street homeless count has declined each year since the survey began in 2005, when 4,395 were counted.
Homeless advocates regularly dismiss the city's count as an unreliable metric on its own, saying it is always too low. They point instead to the number of shelter homeless as a better indicator of the whole picture.
The Coalition for the Homeless, which has been sounding the alarm about the city's rising homeless population, said Friday that an increase in the city's number reflects what the organization has been seeing.
``To us, it's not surprising that this number has gone up,'' said Giselle Routhier, a policy analyst at the advocacy group.
I and those that are homeless (though I'm not) can't thank him enough.
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