By Nolan Hicks New York Post

A “bureaucratic nightmare” has left 2,500 city-funded apartments for homeless New Yorkers who need mental health care and other social services open — enough units to house every person living on the streets or in the subways, The Post has learned.

This quiet crisis has come to light amid Mayor Eric Adams’ high-profile initiative to tackle the Big Apple’s homelessness crisis, an effort which gained new urgency as a serial killer attacked men sleeping on the streets in the five boroughs and Washington, DC.

“There is a huge need and there are vacant apartments — and there’s bureaucracy getting in the way of connecting those dots,” said Jacquelyn Simone, policy director of the Coalition for the Homeless, whose organization runs a small number of supportive units.

“Getting an applicant into supportive housing is a bureaucratic nightmare,” added Kathleen Cash, an advocate at the Urban Justice Center’s Safety Net Project.

A recent survey by the Supportive Housing Network of New York, which represents social service providers, found that upwards of 10 percent of the city’s 25,000 apartments for homeless housing are sitting empty, a figure that was first quietly disclosed in testimony submitted to the City Council in December.

READ MORE