City Council Speaker Christine Quinn is suing Mayor Bloomberg over his new policy toward homeless adults — the first time in their cozy joint tenures that she has slapped his administration with a lawsuit.
The council will vote today to file the lawsuit over a policy Quinn called “cruel and punitive.”
Her suit focuses on a lack of public notification over the new rule, which requires the city do more to ensure adults have no alternative housing options before allowing them into municipal homeless shelters.
“I think the process of making people — when they are at the end of their rope, when they are a coming to a place that’s hard to go to to ask for help — to basically do everything in our effort to send them away is a bad policy,” Quinn said.
“I think it will be worse as it relates to the singles population, a population which has a much higher rate of mental illness and a much higher rate of substance abuse.”
Homeless Services Commissioner Seth Diamond said, “We think this is the right policy. We think shelters should be preserved for people who have no other options. People who have friends and family who they can stay with, they should stay with them.”