NEW YORK — With shelter scarce on dry land, New York is looking at cruise ships as possible lodging for the homeless.
But top-of-the-line luxury liners with fancy restaurants, ballrooms and pools aren’t in the picture for down-and-outers.
A handful of city officials, led by Homeless Services Commissioner Linda Gibbs, examined “a couple of retired cruise ships” Wednesday in the Bahamas, her spokesman said.
The group flew to the island on a private jet owned by New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg and was to return late Wednesday. Bloomberg did not make the trip.
“It is just a fact-finding mission, extremely preliminary. The trip is to determine if the ships would be safe and applicable to shelter homeless clients,” the spokesman said.
“We can’t reject any idea that’s offered,” Gibbs told NBC-TV. “I think we have to be unafraid to think creatively and to explore options that maybe haven’t been looked at in the past.”
The spokesman declined to say how many officials would accompany Gibbs and which agencies they represented.
About 36,000 people stay in shelters in the city each night, according to the Coalition for the Homeless. The city is bound by law to provide free temporary shelter to those who say they have no place to live.
The city has used ships in novel ways before, putting prisoners on a converted barge in the East River in the early 1990s. The prison ship was reopened in 1998 for a time to house juvenile offenders.