Weeks of pissy letters between city and state homeless officials reached maximum pique yesterday morning when Steven Banks, commissioner of the city's Human Resources Administration and interim co-director of the Department of Homeless Services, penned a blistering missive to his state counterpart Samuel Roberts. The latest letter accuses Roberts's office of a "political media hit" for publicizing a gang rape at a homeless shelter that the NYPD says never happened.
Banks wrote that "notwithstanding the lack of evidence" of a gang rape in which a Bellevue Men's Shelter resident was hogtied, the NYPD investigated. Police, he wrote, found not only that the rape didn't happen, but the security guard who allegedly told state inspectors about it "did not make such a statement." Banks explained that in 2014, there was a robbery at the shelter in which the victim was tied up, and that early this month three men threatened a fourth with rape, but Banks said the man targeted was transferred to a Queens shelter immediately upon reporting the threat. Moreover, the state was "reckless" in its response, because instead of calling city homeless officials or police, Roberts wrote a letter and copied the New York Post, Banks wrote.
The "hit," Banks said, was "harmful to our efforts to bring people in off the streets," and the state Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance [OTDA], which Roberts heads, may have broken the law by making a false report to police and circulating that report.
"If you want to have a serious conversation about the drivers of the homeless situation that are under your control," Banks writes, citing the state's meager $215 rental allowance, lack of psychiatric beds, and dumping former prisoners in city shelters, "we are ready to have that conversation."
He concludes:
If you want to keep writing letters with false allegations so they can be released to the media, we will continue to respond. But this is not helping homeless children and adults in New York City. We hope you will reconsider your course of conduct. We remain willing to work together in partnership.
(Bryan Thomas/Getty)
At the heart of this bizarre conflict is Governor Cuomo's newfound interest in New York City homelessness, a condition that spiked dramatically after he and former mayor Michael Bloomberg ended the Advantage rental assistance program in 2011. The campaign is one of many fronts of Cuomo's feud with de Blasio, and has played out in Cuomo's unenforced January edict calling for police to forcibly remove homeless people from the streets in cold weather, his announcement a week later of a sweeping review of conditions at homeless shelters, in the middle of the city's own three-month review, and now the series of letters in the wake of violent incidents, alleged and actual, at city shelters.
Those incidents include a quadruple stabbing that left a mother and two of her daughters dead and a two-year-old girl injured on February 10th at a Ramada Inn hotel being used to house homeless families on Staten Island. The day of that bloody crime, OTDA Executive Deputy Commissioner Sharon Devine wrote to Banks demanding the removal of homeless people from the hotel, the certification of security at other hotels, and a review of the Ramada security measures and incident. Devine also suggested that the adult victim, Rebecca Cutler, should have been housed in a domestic violence shelter.
Banks's response to that letter, made available to Gothamist, indicates that the letter went out after Banks had called state officials and after Mayor de Blasio had announced the relocation of Ramada shelter residents, leaving Banks's office "surprised" by the stern note. Banks also wrote that Cutler's domestic violence shelter eligibility was "contrary to the information that we have" and asked to review whatever the state was looking at. That letter of Banks's ended more politely, but his patience for Cuomo's political games is evidently wearing thin.
In an appearance on WNYC this morning, Banks emphasized his 30+ years advocating for homeless people at the Legal Aid Society before taking a job with the de Blasio administration, and said the problems with rising homelessness and the shelter system long predate this mayoralty:
This isn't something that's happened overnight in terms of problems in shelters. I know this through litigation over many years. There are issues that have built up, and the mayor is owning them, and we want to work in partnership with the state.
Exchanging letters isn't moving us forward. What is going to move us forward is working in partnership, addressing the conditions, and putting in the resources that are needed.
Along with helping fix up and providing additional security at shelters, Banks said the state should authorize rent assistance payments at the federally advised level—$1,515 a month for a family of three, as opposed to the $1,050 currently available under the Family Eviction Prevention Supplement program—and to fund repairs, and do inspections in tandem with the city, rather than communicating through letters and headlines.
An OTDA spokeswoman wouldn't answer questions regarding why people should view her office's actions as anything other than politically motivated meddling, or whether administrators would consider Banks's pleas. She did provide a statement saying that recent audits "showed the shelters to be wholly unsafe and mismanaged. This is compounded by a series of recent unprecedented violent incidents, that have resulted in a loss of life. The obvious issue is the city’s failure to provide adequate security at its own facilities."
The statement further questions the credibility of the Bellevue security guard and calls it "ironic that the city protests that OTDA informed the press, when in fact, today a New York Times reporter was provided the city’s letter before OTDA had even received it."
The dysfunction of the city's homeless services systems is not in question, but the Cuomo administration's will to do anything about it seems to be.
Several of the letters between Banks and his frienemies in state government are below.
New York State Demands Security At NYC Homeless Shelters In Response To Ramada Inn Stabbing
NYC Homeless Commissioner Accuses State Of Lying About Ramada Inn Murder Response
New York State Alleges Gang Rape At NYC Homeless Shelter
NYC Homeless Commissioner Denies Occurrence Of Gang Rape At Shelter
NYC Homeless Commissioner Decries "Political Media Hit" By Cuomo Administration
