Housing and Urban Development Secretary Scott Turner is calling out New York City for one of the most expensive failures in the country: a homelessness budget that has tripled while the number of people sleeping on the streets keeps climbing.
As PJ Media reports, Turner pointed to the Big Apple as the clearest proof yet that the “housing first” model favored by Democrat-run cities does not work. “Housing First failed. In NYC, spending surged while homelessness rises,” Turner wrote on X. “That’s why the Trump Admin is changing the play, demanding results, and checking the receipts. No longer will tax dollars fund fraud and failure.”
The numbers behind his post are brutal. According to the New York Post, the number of “unsheltered people” living in New York City is up 45% since 2022. Between 2025 and 2026 alone, the count of people sleeping on the streets jumped another 11%. Meanwhile, AMNY reported in March that the city had tripled its spending on homelessness over the same stretch.
Three times the money. Nearly half again as many people on the sidewalk. And now the whole operation is in the hands of socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who has already scrapped the city’s longstanding policy of clearing homeless encampments from public areas.
The results have been visible to anyone walking through Manhattan or Queens. “Homeless encampments, hovels and shantytowns have become an increasing problem in the Big Apple in recent months, with unsightly camps popping up near the tourist-magnet Intrepid Museum, Citi Field in Queens and under FDR Drive,” the Post reported. Under Mamdani’s rules, outreach workers now get seven days to coax people off the street before a camp can be taken down. The number of single adults in shelters, meanwhile, has hit a five-year high.
One Upper East Side resident named Jeanne summed up the mood to the Post. “He’s just letting them do whatever they want,” she said of Mamdani. “And they took away the police’s powers, so they can’t do anything about it. It’s a disaster.”
City Hall’s explanation for the latest spike? The weather. As PJ Media notes, that excuse collapses against a trend line that has been rising for years under a string of Democrat mayors.
Turner’s answer is to flip the model on its head. “75% of our homeless Americans are addicted to drugs. 78% suffer from mental illness,” he wrote. “Providing a bed doesn’t address the root cause of homelessness. We must put Treatment First.” The Post itself conceded the point, writing that the shelter figures “highlight how the Big Apple has struggled to transition vulnerable residents into permanent housing despite pumping billions of taxpayer dollars into various programs.”
Billions in, more people on the street. As PJ Media put it, the problem in New York was never a lack of funding. It is a lack of integrity. And with a mayor who wants to scale the same spending model across the city, taxpayers should expect the receipts Turner is checking to get a lot bigger.
Source: pjmedia.com
