At the corner of 86^th Street and 25^th Avenue, dozens of community residents gathered, as I wrote this, for the 226^th straight day. They are there, as they have been every day since mid-July, to protest city plans to build a homeless shelter at the site.

This is not simply a question of NIMBY – Not in My Back Yard. What these committed activists want to see is a compassionate city policy that protects their neighborhood while at the same time supporting the city’s homeless population, who are among our most vulnerable residents.

Instead of shelters, they are demanding permanent affordable housing, along with essential supportive services to help people in need get back on their feet.

This is precisely the right approach. But, it’s one that city government has steadfastly refused to adopt, at tremendous cost. In fact, despite spending some $8 billion annually on homeless shelters, the number of homeless people in New York City is increasing. The fact is, the policy just isn’t working.

This cost, of course, is not only financial but societal. By continuing to build homeless shelters, which are wanted by neither the city’s homeless people nor the communities in which they are built, city officials are thumbing their noses at the people who elected them, to benefit a select coterie of developers and shelter organization executives, who continue to profit mightily from this failed policy.

Warehousing our homeless neighbors in transient shelters perpetuates their suffering, while building permanent affordable housing and providing meaningful services could improve their lives, even as it significantly reduces the homeless population.

The reality is, homeless people avoid shelter living if they can, because homeless shelters are often dangerous and provide very few amenities for those they house. They serve only to line the pockets of greedy developers and the executives running the agencies that administer the shelters, some of whom earn hundreds of thousands of dollars annually, according to a report released last year by the city’s Department of Investigation, which shed much needed light on the seedy underbelly of the city’s process of establishing, funding and overseeing shelters. Indeed, ironically, by continuing to build shelters, the city is actually creating an incentive to allow the number of homeless people to grow.

The fact is the shelter for 150 single men, many of whom struggle with addiction or mental health issues, planned for 2501 86^th Street would enrich the developer and the organization that would run it at the expense of taxpayers, without providing lasting benefit to the people it is supposed to serve. This doesn’t help homeless people, but it does hurt the neighborhood.

The money that’s being spent to develop this unwanted shelter could be spent on permanent housing, and some of it would be incredibly easy to access. For instance, the city could spend some of the money on repairing empty NYCHA apartments – and there are many of them -- providing affordable long-term housing for people who have become homeless. Add appropriate services that help these struggling individuals access the fresh start they need, and you truly have a solution to what has been, till now, an intractable problem.

It’s time for the city to give up finally on its ill-considered plan, made without consultation with the community, to build this shelter which no one actually wants. Instead of wasting millions of dollars on this shelter, and billions annually on shelters citywide, the city should take the responsible approach and immediately begin to develop what’s really needed by all New Yorkers -- truly affordable housing.