NYC has more than tripled what it spends on street homelessness. Advocates say the outreach system has no one in charge

New York City is spending far more than it used to on helping people who sleep outside, and more people are sleeping outside anyway. Spending by the Department of Homeless Services' Street Homeless Solutions division more than tripled, from $102 million in fiscal year 2019 to nearly $368 million in 2025, and is projected to reach $456 million this year, according to a report by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. Over the same stretch, the city's count of unsheltered people rose 26%, from 3,588 to 4,504.

Nearly 5,000 people slept on the streets or in the subway this year, Gothamist reported Thursday in an examination of the city's outreach system. More than a dozen advocates, outreach workers, business groups and elected officials told Gothamist the approach isn't working, mostly because no one is in charge of it.

Too many teams, not enough coordination

DHS contracts four outreach providers across the five boroughs and one for the subway system. The mayor's Office of Community Mental Health and the public hospital system run their own teams, and so do business improvement districts, nonprofits, the Manhattan district attorney's office and state-funded programs, Gothamist reported. Tom Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, said at least nine groups do outreach in Midtown alone.

DHS-contracted providers log their contacts in shared software, but other groups can't, so one team may not know another stopped by hours earlier. A man who spent more than three years on the street in Midtown told Gothamist he spoke with 30 to 40 different outreach workers and repeated his story to each one.

Erica Strang, who runs the city-contracted Manhattan Outreach Consortium, said a similar tangle in the early 2000s led the Bloomberg administration to hire one outreach provider per borough, and street homelessness fell 40%. Since then the system has drifted back toward many separate programs. "There's no quarterback," said Brian Stettin, who advised the Adams administration on severe mental illness.

Not enough beds people will take

Outreach only works if there is somewhere to go. The city has about 4,400 Safe Haven beds, which have looser rules and more privacy than traditional shelters, but openings can be hard to find, Gothamist reported. BronxWorks, a city- and state-contracted provider, said outreach caseloads have grown 57% in five years. DHS told Gothamist the Mamdani administration opened more than 500 beds this year and plans 120 more by December.

DHS also said it is strengthening its approach and making better use of data. Under Mayor Zohran Mamdani, DHS rather than the NYPD now decides which encampments are cleared, with seven days of outreach before a sweep, and last month the city began sending homelessness-related 311 calls to DHS instead of the police. DHS plans to spend nearly $450 million on outreach and related services this year, according to budget figures cited by Gothamist, not counting other agencies and private groups. The mayor's office did not respond to Gothamist's requests for comment.

What the comptroller wants measured

New York shelters about 97% of a homeless population of roughly 140,000, a share DiNapoli called a notable achievement, and its unsheltered rate is the second lowest of the 48 places HUD tracks, according to his office. But the report says the public data can't show what works. It urges the city to report how many people approached by outreach refuse help, how long people stay in the housing they're placed in, how outreach vendors perform under their contracts, and the cost of each type of bed.

DHS told Gothamist its contracts include performance measures such as housing placements, but missing those goals does not affect a provider's funding.