Judge Helen Freedman of the New York Supreme Court has ordered that New York City can continue to shelter homeless families in the building that formerly housed the Bronx House of Detention for Men. The city will be able to do so until at least next Wednesday, according to the city’s Department of Homeless Services and the Legal Aid Society, which are on opposite sides of the case. The judge is requiring the city to submit a plan by that time involving something other than the Bronx building’s “barracks-style” accommodations.

The city is presently mandated to house the homeless as a result of the 1981 consent decree in Callahan v. Carey, which guarantees a right to shelter for all homeless men in New York City and establishes minimum health and safety standards for homeless shelters. The decree was based in part on Article XVII, Section I of the state constitution, which states that “The aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by … its subdivisions … ” The Callahan decree was later expanded to accommodate women and children. A 1989 decision by the New York Supreme Court in Mixon v. Grinker required the city to provide all HIV-positive or AIDS-infected members of the homeless population with medically appropriate housing.

The problem with these court decisions is that they require the city to fulfill — and pay for — various vaguely phrased mandates, which have been stretched over the years to require ever more expansive services. At an average cost of about $3,000 a family a month and an average stay that has gone up to about a year from less than half a year in the mid-1990s, the system is extremely expensive.

There are two housing scandals in New York. The New York Post has illuminated the scandal involving the city being unable to place families in shelters and paying top dollar to house the families in other lodgings for a night in order to avoid running afoul of the court mandate. The New York Times has highlighted the scandal of the city putting homeless families in inappropriate facilities, such as children sleeping on government a office floor or in a former jail. These are important stories.

But a third, more fundamental scandal is over-regulation of the construction of new housing at a time when immigration has swollen the population. Strict zoning, rent control and stabilization, outdated building regulation, and a vast bureaucracy combine with high construction costs to keep housing prices artificially high regardless of the state of the city’s economy. Meantime, the number of persons living in the city’s shelter system as a result of poverty combined with bad life decisions or bad luck has been increasing radically.

As reported by Fernanda Santos and Robert Ingrassia in yesterday’s Daily News, the number of families — most often single mothers and their children — living in shelters is now more than 8,400, up from 4,400 in January 1998. In the same period, the number of people living in city shelters has increased by more than 50%, to 25,164 from 21,172. The Daily News also noted that the number of apartments with rents below $600 fell more than 20% between 1993 and 1999.

The first two scandals beg to be addressed. But so does the need for a system in which the free market plays a real role in the housing market. New York’s housing shortage has proven immune to good economic times and bad economic times, government construction of housing, and government vouchers for housing. Perhaps we could see what might happen if the government were to exit the housing business and get rid of the onerous regulations that discourage new building.