Reports of homeless people more than doubled last year
Reports of homeless people to the city’s 311 hot line more than doubled last year — but the city says it’s because more workers are looking for them.
Calls and phone messages about homeless people swelled 106 percent, from 24,625 in 2015 to 50,783 last year, records show. More than half of last year’s calls were the city’s homeless-outreach workers reporting the presence of a homeless person, records show.
Canvassers report the location of homeless people on the 311 mobile app, which sends a report to the Department of Homeless Services. The agency is supposed to then deploy an outreach worker to the location.
Mayor de Blasio created the Homeless Outreach & Mobile Engagement Street Action Teams (HOME-STAT) program a year ago, and 2,738 canvassers made 26,737 reports to 311 in 2016, city records show.