Bloomberg
July 29 2009- I found out today that the Bloomberg (Mayor) administration in NYC has paid for more than 550 families to leave the city since 2007, as a way of keeping them out of the expensive shelter system, which costs $36,000 a year per family.
The city, which spends $500,000 a year on the program, employs a local travel agency, to book one-way tickets for domestic trips. Department of Homeless Services employees do all the planning for international travel.
They are flown to Paris ($6,332), Orlando ($858.40), Johannesburg ($2,550.70), or most frequently, San Juan ($484.20).
They are not executives on business trips or couples on honeymoons. Rather, all are families who have ended up homeless, and all the plane tickets are courtesy of the city of New York (one-way).
There were no limits on where a family can be sent, and families can reject the offer and stay in city shelters. So far, families have been sent to 24 states and 5 continents, most often to Puerto Rico, Florida, Georgia and the Carolinas.
City officials said that none of the families that have been relocated have returned to city shelters.
My Opinion:
NYC and Bloomberg are simply into cosmetics and quick fixes for their city homeless stats. Passing the problem of
Will work 4 Ticket (By: R.Clarke)
homelessness to another city. We’re taking people from a shelter bed in NY to another shelter bed else where possibly. It reminds me of when my mom told me to clean my room and all I did was put every thing in the closet… nothing got cleaned. Sounds to me like Bloomberg should book him self a one way ticket to another city (not mine) and see if he can use his billions to buy a politcal office seat elsewhere… maybe alaska I heard they had an idiot stepdown.
Speaking of Alaska… If I were homeless in NYC I would ask Mr. Bloomberg to fly me to Alaska. They pay people to live there unlike the rude treatment that New Yorkers who dont happen to have a roof get. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20081018163149AAizvoU
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