NYC Spends More to Store Homeless Woman's Stuff Than It Would Have Cost to Just Rent Her a Two-Bedroom Apartment

If you find yourself without a place to live in the Big Apple, the city will apparently give your stuff a free home — but it might be cheaper to just give you a free home.

The New York Post reported Monday on the story of Andrea Logan, 54, who lost her Upper East Side apartment after suffering a stroke in 2006.

New York City's tab to store her belongings since then: more than $200,000.

A Storage Post facility in the Bronx. (Image via Google Maps)

Logan's belongings apparently fill 11 storage units, covering more than 1,000 square feet of space and costing the city $3,585 per month, the Post reported.

For $3,585 per month, the city could have just set Logan up in some fancy digs, the newspaper noted: the sum could have bought a one-bedroom duplex in Greenwich Village or a two-bedroom Upper East side apartment.

The Post noted that state law requires the city to pay to store homeless individuals' property, but city officials refused to fund Logan's 11-unit hoard sometime last year — prompting her to sue the city.

Logan and the city have reportedly reached an agreement in which she will get rid of items until her belongings can fit in three units at a Storage Post facility in the Bronx, which will cost the city $1,297 per month.

But reducing the hoard will be tough, as she told the Post that she has little idea of how much her belongings are worth.

“There’s so much stuff that I wouldn’t even know where to begin," Logan said. “The most critical and valuable things are the irreplaceable items — documents from medical-malpractice and personal-injury cases, personal family documents, photographs and mementos.”

Logan's storage case may be particularly substantial, but she's far from being the only person NYC spending storage money on: taxpayers' cost for housing the belongings of the homeless has skyrocketed from $6.8 million in fiscal year 2006 to $14.6 million in fiscal year 2014, the Post reported, and the average cost per case crept upwards, too — from $1,333 a month to $1,549.

(H/T: Daily Mail)

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