City’s homeless housing deals largely off the record, audit finds

The city’s efforts to house the homeless have resulted in millions of dollars in “handshake deals” with landlords who inflate prices while letting families live in squalor, according to a new audit from City Comptroller John Liu. City officials spent $153 million in fiscal year 2008 on such deals, the audit found. That’s the largest price tag since fiscal year 2004, when they allegedly spent $168 million on shady, emergency housing deals with landlords, according to the audit. “There’s no way to monitor [city agencies’] compliance with what they’ve agreed to and . . . payments are made based on cooked-up invoices,” Liu said. [NYDN]