Mayor de Blasio plans to greatly expand a program that spares cash-strapped New Yorkers from eviction, as part of his latest effort to stem the rising tide of homeless people on the city’s streets and in shelters.
The administration will seek to spend $60 million in 2017 — up from $34 million this year — to employ lawyers to help tenants battle their landlords, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.
“It’s just David vs. Goliath when you have tenants without a lawyer,” Steve Banks, the city’s Human Resources Administration commissioner, told the Journal.
“It’s far more cost effective to invest in resources to prevent eviction than to open and pay for shelters once someone is evicted.”
The city’s shelter system is overburdened, and the mayor’s office says that 32 percent of families who are part of it had been evicted from their homes.