Well, it’s been a tough few weeks for the Bloomberg Administration, which has come under significant fire for its homelessness policies and treatment of the city’s most vulnerable.

First, on February 14th, a NY Appeals Court ruled that the Bloomberg Administration’s policy that required individuals seeking emergency shelter to prove “they had nowhere else to go” before being admitted into shelter was illegal. While homeless advocates applauded the Court’s decision, Seth Diamond, the Department of Homeless Services commissioner stated that they would continue to defend the law.

Secondly, on Monday it came to light that the Bloomberg Administration had clandestinely changed the city’s Code Blue policies, which mandates that shelters (and hospitals) give shelter to all persons during severe winter weather conditions. Now, instead of accepting all people, the Administration changed the “shelter admission” requirements so that only new people to the shelter would be admitted under Code Blue, and that returning families and individuals would be admitted if they met certain “city criteria.”

This secret changed coupled with the city’s increasingly cold weather brought the Administration under fire, which prompted Bloomberg to hold a press conference to assure the city that his Administration is doing all that it can to help the city’s astronomical homeless population.

And that’s where the latest fodder comes in.

Bloomberg took to the podium yesterday and after answering questions about the city’s growing homeless population, he said, “No one is sleeping on the streets.”

The words had barely left his mouth before local news created a PR nightmare for the mayor. Outlets starting calling Bloomberg delusional, and Patrick Markee, Senior Policy Analyst for the Coalition for the Homeless noted that Bloomberg is just out of touch with the reality of the city’s homelessness problem. “It’s a remark that just seems so out of touch with the everyday reality that New Yorkers see.” What’s more, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio called him “either blind or willfully ignorant.”

Blind or willfully ignorant indeed. According to the city’s own data there are at least 3,200 people on sleeping on the streets on any given night in New York City. In response to this backlash, Bloomberg’s PR team went into panic mode, emailing news reporters a encyclopedia of past instances where the mayor has admitted that there are, in fact, many homeless people sleeping and living on New York City’s streets.

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