You know that after my eye caught the screaming headline of “City pays $200K to store homeless ex-model’s belongings,” which ran in the New York Post on Oct 20, I had to click on it
Sad to say, I should have just let my fingers keep on typing and passed it over.
Model Andrea Logan suffered a stroke, which left her partially disabled, whereby she lost her Upper East side apartment. She has been homeless since 2006. However, all her stuff is nice and dry and tidy in storage facilities for which the city is picking up the tab.
Now why would the city be picking up the tab? Because there is a little known state law that demands the city to pick up the storage expenses for the stuff belonging to homeless people. Who would have thunk it?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but if the city has to pick up storage fees for homeless people, then why can’t the city find apartments for all the homeless people to live in? The report sited that the city’s homeless storage bill “has soared from $6.8 million in fiscal year 2006 to 14.6 million in fiscal year 2014.” That’s a whole lot of storage.
Somehow by some miracle of fate the city discovered that it was shelling out a hefty sum of $3,500 a month to pay for her stuff and said, “Hell no, not paying it anymore.” Unfortunately, it was only after the bill racked up to $200,000, that the city discovered how much.
You would think the city should have looked at the books a lot sooner. Someone had to be paying the darn bill month after month. Apparently not. Logan, the homeless ex-model who doesn’t have the wherewithal to keep an apartment, but is in stead bunking on couches or in abandoned buildings, had the wherewithal to sue the city in Manhattan Supreme Court. After all the litigating, the Human Resources Administration and Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance reached a deal with her, and agreeing to pay the tab only if Logan consolidated her stuff down to three storage units from the presently owned 11, and a monthly sum of $1,297.
But there is the rub, Logan has so much stuff “I wouldn’t even know where to begin,” she lamented.
Now, this is what really got me. It seems that Ms. Logan is annoyed that the city wants to put her in a tiny apartment in a “supportive building” in Chelsea for people with severe disabilities so “they can justify not paying my storage.”
What? Can we all say it at once. “Poor baby.” It’s okay for the city to pick up the tab for your useless junk just as long as you can stay living on the streets and in abandoned buildings. Hells bells no tiny apartment for her.
Let the city just continue to pick up the tab for personal belongings to languish in more than 1,000 square feet of storage (which is about as big as my whole house) instead. Makes a lot of sense to me.
Not for Nuthin, but I think Ms. Logan can save the city a ton of money by just moving into one of the storage containers. She will be in a large space, better than squatting in abandoned buildings, and she doesn’t have to get rid of anything. Hey I smell a reality series in the making, “My Life in a Storage Bin.”
Follow me on Twitter @JDelBuono.
