Mayor Zohran Mamdani plans to spend more money on homeless services next year than his predecessor Eric Adams did during the height of the city’s migrant crisis — proposing a $4.2 billion budget for the agency in 2027.
Mamdani’s plan was rolled out in his latest budget proposal last week, which sought to hike the Department of Homeless Services’ budget by $700 million, from $3.5 billion for 2026 to the towering $4.2 billion sum.
That would be $100 million more than the $4.1 billion budget DHS hit in 2024, at the height of the migrant crisis when the city’s shelter system was housing a peak of about 69,000 asylum seekers.
Then-Mayor Adams had budgeted $2.4 billion for DHS in 2023 — but that number ended up rising to $3.5 billion as the new arrivals ramped up , straining the city system.
More than 230,000 asylum seekers ended up cycling through the Big Apple during the crisis, which began in the spring of 2022. The homeless services department budget was $2.3 billion that year, the first of Adams’ tenure.
By 2025, Adams’ last year in office, the DHS budget stood at $4 billion.
Adams’ funds went to the enormous cost of sustaining the new population, including emergency housing in hotels and massive tent cities in some boroughs, long with services from food to healthcare to legal counseling being provided.
But the migrant crisis has significantly cooled from its 2024 heights, with President Trump’s strict crackdown on border security and asylum practices having trickled across the country to New York.
That left some scratching their heads about Mamdani’s budgeted $3.5 billion for DHS this year — especially since the city is already spending about $81,000 per street homeless person, according to a recent state comptroller report.
“Homeless services is truly a black hole for city finances,” Council Member Joann Ariola (R-Queens) told The Post, speculating Mamdani wanted to keep paying for migrants who now live in the homeless shelter system in what she called a “shadow migrant crisis.”
“But beyond that, we aren’t seeing much of an impact on the homeless situation despite all the money being thrown at it,” she said.
“People are not being placed into permanent housing and are still afraid to enter the system, and the dangerously mentally ill are still not getting the long term treatment they need.”
Mamdani has flip-flopped on homelessness policies since being sworn in on Jan. 1.
He campaigned on a promise to halt the city’s practice of conducting sweeps to dismantle homeless street encampments — but barely more than a month after taking office, he changed his tune and reinstated them.
Hizzoner also vowed not to force any homeless people to go into shelters if they didn’t want to.
He soon reneged on that promise, too, but only after more than a dozen people were found frozen to death on city streets during this winter’s brutal cold spells.
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