Bloomberg Charges Rent On Homeless People

I'm not kidding:

Nothing's free in New York - not even a stint in a city shelter.

Homeless people with jobs are going to have to start paying the city rent to stay in shelters, officials said Tuesday.

"Open-ended handouts, we know, don't work," Deputy Mayor Linda Gibbs said. "This is not a moneymaker. We're not doing this to close budget gaps. It's really the principles ... involved."

A 1997 state law requires New York to charge rent to the homeless who can afford it. The city never did, but has been pressed to do it since a state audit last year.

Shelter residents would have to pay as much as 44% of their income in their first year in the program.

Critics say the plan penalizes people who are struggling.

"It makes far more sense to allow those families to save their meager funds in order to be able to get out of the shelter system sooner," said Steven Banks, chief attorney of the Legal Aid Society, which may sue to block the plan.

"This is an extreme policy that has no discernible benefit, that will end up hurting the families and costing the taxpayers money," Banks said. "If necessary, we'll certainly go to court."

What a novel idea - charging homeless people 44% of their income to stay in the shelter system.

That will certainly make saving money and getting out of the shelter system easier.

You know, Bloomberg ought to extrapolate the idea to other things.

Maybe we can charge the mentally ill rent to keep them in the hospital.

Maybe we can charge prisoners rent for the jail cells.

Maybe we can charge the dead rent for their graves - extra money for big tombstones.

Unless of course the family of the deceased is really, really rich.

Then they don't have to pay anything.

As Bloomberg likes to say, we can't charge rich people more money or ask them to pay higher taxes because they might move to another state.

But homeless people living in a shelter - those people we can charge.