N.Y. Mayor Bloomberg: Rich can show up at homeless facilities, ‘and we’ve got to give you shelter’

New York Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg made a head-scratching comment last week suggesting the city’s homeless shelters are overflowing because even the rich can get a bed.

“You can arrive in your private jet at Kennedy Airport, take a private limousine and go straight to the shelter system, walk in the door, and we’ve got to give you shelter,” the mayor said on his WOR radio show.

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“That’s what the law is. I didn’t write the law.”

But city officials aren’t buying it.

“It’s pretty ludicrous to claim that there are people flying in private jets and taking private limos to the shelter system,” Patrick Markee of the Coalition for the Homeless told the New York Post.

“He didn’t seem to want to take responsibility for the fact that there are more than 50,000 people sleeping in city shelters, including 21,000 children.”

City Comptroller John Liu agreed.

“Only an out-of-touch mayor who travels by private jet and limo would make such a tone-deaf wisecrack about a homeless crisis that has only worsened under his careless watch,” said Mr. Liu, a likely mayoral candidate, The Post reports.

The comments came after a homeless advocacy group’s report that the city’s number of homeless is skyrocketing. New York is coughing up nearly 20 percent more in taxpayer money than it did two years ago to fund the homeless.

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