OPEN DOOR: Inside the Bowery shelter where The Post yesterday reported freeloaders stay. (
)
A frustrated Mayor Bloomberg yesterday blasted a policy that allows nonresidents and even foreigners to get costly beds in city homeless shelters with no questions asked.
“When I pointed it out, some said that was ludicrous,” said Bloomberg, referring to his recent statement that a person could fly a private jet into Kennedy, take a limo to the city and get a free bed.
“What is truly ludicrous is a system that allows people from across the country and the world to take advantage like this,” the mayor said in response to a report in The Post that even foreigners were living large in city shelters.
“Until we are able to ask basic, common-sense screening questions, taxpayer dollars will continue to be diverted from those who truly need it,” he said.
About 25 percent of the roughly 48,500 people living in city shelters are not city residents — including a Polish freeloader, Michal Jablonowski, who gushed about free food, phone and medical care he gets at a shelter on The Bowery.
Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond agreed the rules are too lax — but said his hands are tied by a 3-decade-old consent decree that forces the city to provide shelter space to anyone who asks.
The decree settled the lawsuit Callahan v. Carey, in which advocates sued on behalf of Lower East Side vagrant Robert Callahan and other homeless people.
“People were not thinking of all of the ramifications at the time [the decree was signed],” Diamond said. “This was written in an era before litigation of these types of issues became common. It was a new world.”
About 18 months ago, the city issued a new rule that would let it turn single people away from shelters if they could bunk with a friendl or relative.
But Legal Aid sued and a lower court blocked the new rule, which would have allowed the city to save some of the $3,000 a month it costs to house and feed each adult. The city is appealing the ruling.
“We believe there are reasonable things the city can do to provide a system of shelters for those whose who need it in a way that’s responsible to taxpayers without burdening them with people who have alternatives,” Diamond said.
Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota called the consent decree a menace to New York taxpayers.
“I do think the court case needs to be challenged. I think the court case should allow the city to have rules and regulations that prevent the types of fraud and abuse that were described in the New York Post,” Lhota said.
Even some shelter residents said the city should pull in the welcome mat for nonresidents.
“I don’t think it’s fair. People from the city should have the first crack at it,” said Sharif Smith, 35, who is staying in the same shelter as Jablonowski.
Additional reporting by Gillian Kleiman