De Blasio, who presided over an increase in homelessness in New York that mirrored those of other big cities throughout the United States, said the rise was the "greatest disappointment" of his eight-year tenure, which will end when the term-limited mayor leaves office at the end of this year.
“The thing I’ve struggled with and we finally are making some profound progress, but it’s homelessness,” de Blasio said Friday morning on MSNBC's Morning Joe. “I’m happy to say that after some absolute early misunderstandings and missteps on my part, that I’ve owned up to, we’ve found some strategies that are working much better to get people off the streets. Our shelter population has gone down greatly. It’s much lower than when I took office.”
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The total number of people in shelters, including adults and children, was 45,624 as of Thursday, according to the New York City Department of Homeless Services, a drop from the overall shelter high of 61,415 in January 2019, also under de Blasio. There were 53,615 people in homeless shelters in the city of New York in January 2014, the month de Blasio assumed office, according to the Coalition for the Homeless.
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The decrease in numbers is partly because of COVID-19, according to Councilman Stephen Levin, who heads the committee that oversees the homelessness agencies.
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“The de Blasio administration inherited a homelessness crisis that was out of control,” Levin told the New York Post . “The dramatic drop has been due to the eviction moratorium.”
After Congress approved an action preventing evictions throughout the country to expire at the end of July, several localities went to pass local measures preventing evictions. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul assembled a special session of the New York State Legislature to extend the eviction moratorium at the beginning of September, and the measure quickly passed into law.
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Homeless encampments have become common across the U.S. in cities such as Austin, Texas; Sacramento, California; and Washington.
De Blasio's greatest achievement as mayor, he said Friday, was the global pre-kindergarten program he issued his first year, as well as attempting to expand the availability of early education and child care for 3-year-olds. The mayor will leave office on Dec. 31.
By every credible measure, 2013 was the worst in modern history for New York City homelessness – and certainly among the worst since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
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