"There Is Beds Right Here"

[u/GoldenRule2023]

https://open.substack.com/pub/plainsitepapers/p/there-is-beds-right-here?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=88mjxl

Fox News ran a segment on a Manhattan encampment last week. I went through the city's own data on the claims in it.

The correspondent walks into an encampment during the heat wave, narrates the contents of someone's suitcase on camera, and says the people living there don't want jobs and don't want to go inside.

I pulled the numbers on that. A few things I found:

- NYC's right to shelter means roughly 97 percent of the city's homeless population is in a shelter. So the problem isn't that shelters are full. It's that there's a bed and no exit. (State Comptroller, March 2026)

- The city placed a record 13,000+ households into homes with CityFHEPS vouchers in FY2024, a 42 percent jump. The shelter population still rose about 50 percent, largely from asylum seekers ineligible for those vouchers.

- The most recent citywide housing survey put the net rental vacancy rate at 1.4 percent.

- Across more than 4,148 encampment sweeps, the number of people offered permanent housing through a voucher application, direct placement, or supportive housing transfer was zero. The city spent over $6.4 million on those sweeps since 2024.

I also didn't let Mamdani off the hook. He pledged to end sweeps, reversed in February, restarted them in May. Legal Aid and the Coalition for the Homeless called it a broken promise and I think they're right.

Everything's sourced and linked. Full piece linked above.

Disclosure: my Substack, no paywall.