Said Katy Hansen, a spokeswoman for Animal Care Centers of NYC, quoted in "A $75 Million Animal Shelter Opened in Queens. It’s Already Overwhelmed. The brand-new building was designed to hold 72 dogs. After only a month, it already has more than twice that" (NYT).
It had spacious kennels for dogs. A skylight in the adoption room. Dedicated rooms for cats to roam free. High ceilings and state-of-the-art veterinary facilities, including a dental clinic.
But before it even opened in late July, the shelter was already in trouble.
The 50,000-square-foot building, designed to accommodate 72 dogs....
More than a million dollars per dog!
... was tapped to take in 77 dogs displaced from a city-run Brooklyn shelter that closed for renovations.... [P]hotos... showed dogs penned in small kennels with shredded blankets and bedding, smeared in excrement, their water and food dishes empty and overturned.... [There was] an earsplitting cacophony of barking and the unpleasant odor of dog excrement... The roof leaked, the ventilation was “horrendous”.... The gleaming promise of the new facility had crashed into the messy reality of shelter work....
Just one month after opening, the Queens shelter’s dog population is at more than 210 percent capacity, and there are almost twice as many cats as there should be....
In 2000, the City Council passed a bill requiring each borough to have an animal shelter....
What could go wrong?
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>More than a million dollars per dog!<
Pretty soon they'll be wasting the level of money that they do on illegal immigrants.
$75M!? That's like three Mar-a-Lagos!
Put.Them.Down.
And before anyone says dogs > people, your misanthropy is already noted.
These people need to go to Afghanistan for a week.
More than a million dollars per dog!
Beautiful dogs!
"twice as many cats as there should be" has always been my position.
As for Achilles travel suggestion, the Taliban clinched their position as assholes to me when they went all jihad on "short-legged dogs."
There are successive dogs so you have to rate the cost per dog over the life of the shelter.
Time for the lonnnng sleep. No shortage anywhere of dogs or cats. Note: I'm a dog lover since the mid 1950's.
More than a million dollars per dog!
I'm GOING TO GO OUT ON THE LINE HERE, and state:
i will gladly and willing adopt one of these pups (if it's cute, and nice) for A MILLION DOLLARS
It took almost 25 years to build a shelter for 70 dogs?
Trump should come out and promise to outlaw puppy mills.
or, about a sixth(?) of the fine, for NOT losing your creditors any money
"In 2000, the City Council passed a bill requiring each borough to have an animal shelter"
Presumably, the rule could be satisfied with a shelter for 1 dog and 1 cat. But no. Government knows no restraint. Its malfeasance is endless. No one will be held accountable.
IF you set up 72 one million dollar annuities (one for each dog)..
what would be the annual return on EACH annuity? $40,000/yr? $50?
I'm going to go out on the line.. AGAIN, and state that i will gladly and willing adopt one of these pups (if it's cute, and nice) for $40,000/yr
72 one million dollar annuities would have saved 72 animals right away, instead of 25 years later..
AND, would have saved FIVE million dollars
We just put our dog to sleep about a month ago. It's a very tough thing to do. Wild Chicken- I don't believe dogs are greater than people, I just like them better. And the older I get, the more reasons I see.
I volunteer at an animal (dog & cat) shelter in my area. But it's a special kind of place. They take in animals from county shelters that have run out of space (dogs who have been there too long) and from dog and cat 'kill shelters' in neighboring states (our local shelters are not kill shelters). In this place, the dogs are housed in small cottage-like structures with 6 kennels per cottage- cooled by solar power attic fans. There is a huge volunteer force (over 1000 ppl) plus employees. All dogs get walked multiple times/day in a great outdoor facility, fed, given medical care. And the entire purpose is to be an ongoing adoption center.
It's hugely successful, and is growing, adding on additional space, cottages, and a new cat house (a real one). Funded through private donations.
A week ago I came across a stray dog while walking in our neighborhood. He was a youngish lab mix. Starving. Literally looked like he came out of a concentration camp. I took him to the county shelter (which is where a dog in this condition would need to start). They told me they had 500 animals at this location and were maxed out. In the neighboring county they're at 800 and maxed out. The cost of living is part of it. People with a dog or cat needing a vet service, getting a quote for $3,000 or so for surgery and deciding to just dump the dog. Also apartments charging more and more for rent, and now also charging more and more to have a pet. And again- people just dump them.
Entire litters of puppies found on the side of the road. Who does that?
So yeah- my disgust with humans runs from both the big things (i.e. Oct. 7) and the small things (dumping a litter of puppies), and the insane things (Kamala Harris as President?). In times like these, a dog is my sanity.
We'll be getting another one in the coming months.
Gad Saad calls it "Suicidal Empathy." Seems like a useful term to remember.
I think that this must be the other end of the psychopathy spectrum, the inability to withhold empathy, even when the result is calamitous and the recipient of the empathy is not human.
More than a million dollars per dog!
Huh? Breathy ASPCA commercial narrator lady assured me that...
"Just 63 cents a day will provide shelter, water and loving care to an animal who may not survive much longer."
https://www.ispot.tv/ad/6eRp/aspca-summers-burning-heat
More than a million dollars per dog!
I bought a million-dollar house, then sat down the first night and ate a million-dollar meal.
It's very poor planning that an animal shelter that expensive doesn't have its own bistro.
Sitting here petting one of our three dogs, which I love like members of the family, and wondering why un-adoptable stray dogs are not put down immediately. The humane death of an unwanted dog is not a tragedy. The humane death of a cherished family pet is a tragedy, but only to us, not to the dog. I don't hesitate to take our elderly and incurably sick pets to the vet for the walk over the Rainbow Bridge when it is clear that their suffering outweighs the benefit of their continued existence.
There is no moral superiority in a "no-kill" shelter. I'll go farther and say it would be morally preferable to perform a little prophylactic eugenics on these animals, and do away with aggressive dogs and those who are obviously part pit-bull just as soon as it is apparent that no one is coming to claim them. Adopting them out is a fool's errand that gets people killed.
Do gooding progressives have no concept of scaling things up
$75 million? For that much they might be able to build an RV charging station!
I think that this must be the other end of the psychopathy spectrum, the inability to withhold empathy, even when the result is calamitous and the recipient of the empathy is not human.
Or human, but a calamitous plague on their fellow humans. Those who are kind to the cruel are cruel to the kind.
What's the pit bull mix percentage? Most people are wising up about them.
They ought to ride the needle as soon as they come in un-chipped.
It may have been a better use of money to offer free spade and neutering for dogs and cats. I wonder if they’ve done any studies on where all the dogs and cats are coming from…
Dogs and cats will "fly off the shelves." Is that the big city euphemism for taking the puppies to a farm?
700 sq ft per dog
In addition to being lawless NYCers are brainless.
Nice website. I clicked on several of the dogs to read their bios. They are all either pittys or have medical or behavioral issues. (I don't mean this as a pitty hate comment. It's just that the market is saturated. It's hard to find different types of dogs. Some people love them.)
The theory — justifying the expense with such a small number of dogs to be accommodated — is that the beautiful setting would affect the minds of the humans and move the dogs through the place and into adoption very quickly. But it didn't work, not fast enough anyway. It was just an IDEA.
Thank you for this, Temujin. My new puppy came from a similar shelter network in Pennsylvania. The litter she came from was from Alabama. The woman from whom I adopted the dog told me that adoptions have really slowed down in the current economy. Best of luck on your upcoming adoption.
NYC has too many dogs and too many aliens needing to be fed.
Some assembly required.
"pets or meat", no warehousing.
John Henry
Depends on the height of the shelf.
"as God is my witness I thought dogs could fly"
John Henry
Given the choice between groceries and pet food, people are opting out that f the pet adoption experience...except for the cat ladies.
There’s an Obama business idea here. Barry’s Barky Bistro! Dems will line up for fine Indonesian cuisine. Sales tax alone would balance the NYC budget.
Coukd share the building with RFK’s Roadkill Roadhouse.
JSM
Untested ideas need to be tested. They should have done a 5000 sq.ft. facility as proof of concept. Even if the concept worked there would smaller lessons learned. I’ve seen lots of test market results in my career. No matter how successful, some changes were needed before full launch.
I think our old pooch is the last one my wife and I will have. We could get a shelter refugee or a brand new one, but the most probable outcome either way is that we leave a dog behind for someone else to care for after we depart.
Inflation hurts the dog owning populace. People find they can't afford the dog they have--or they are moving and can't find a rental that will take the dog. Vet bills and dog food bills will also discourage pet owners. And of course one can talk about "puppy mills". But there's a lot of coupling in alley ways with stray dogs.
Rescue dogs are a great idea. After graduating from college my wife and I bought our first dog from a Basset Hound breeder. Since then each of our subsequent dogs has been given to us--the first four were from friends, and the last one from a shelter. Well that last one wasn't free. We made and continue to make significant donations to that shelter. We are fortunate in that we can afford to keep and care for our dogs. But that's not true for everybody--and the dog shelter problem isn't going to go away. And sadly the only permanent solution for that is to let kill shelters kill. A partial solution is that shelters that release dogs to new owners require that the critters be spayed or neutered.
We all know that a facility that can only hold 72 dogs didn't actually cost $75 million. Who price gouged the taxpayers?
well, it CERTAINLY WASN'T the democrat party!
it MUST HAVE BEEN the grocers
"The litter she came from was from Alabama. "
I may have had a hand in that. I team drove a large van of pooches from Alabama to multiple runs to Illinois, Maine, Maryland and Penn. Far fewer strays in cold climate states (nature does NOT have empathy) so there was a need. Yes, the shelter I volunteered at was a "kill" shelter. As a county (partially) funded shelter they were required to accept ANY dog or cat, no matter the condition. The "no kill" shelters are pretty damn picky and will pass along ones they can not place into the county shelters.
You put the dogs and cats down. You can' t let your emotions prevent you from doing what needs to be done unless you are willing to double and triple (or more is likely) the resources dedicated to this purpose of housing and caring for the animals which have no place on the streets as strays.
Dollars to dog nuts, dat’s a lot of money!
It's a crisis born of the 80s "Dangerous Dog" hoax. Before then a stray dog was just a stray dog. He got along, played with neighborhood children (who were out playing in those days), and if he did really well in socialization he got adopted by somebody. Lots got hit by cars. You never see a dead dog nowadays. Raccoons, possums, deer, but no dogs. That signifies, says Vicki Hearne, that raccoons, possums and deer are better integrated into human society than dogs now. A stray dog is now an emergency.
They round them up and PUT THEM ALL IN ONE PLACE. Unsurprisingly there is crowding where there was never crowding before.
If you rounded up chipmunks there would be a chipmunk crowding crisis.
In the old days, animal control was called for problem dogs, not all dogs. That produced much less business.
More than a million dollars per dog! .... [P]hotos... showed dogs penned in small kennels with shredded blankets and bedding, smeared in excrement, their water and food dishes empty and overturned.
Remember the 250 million dollar floating pier that didn’t float?
This is what drives me nuts about government and the people who refuse to wake up to the problem. The government regularly spends vast amounts of money to accomplish virtually nothing. $75 million for a building that can hold 72 dogs is a problem. A facility that holds dogs in such inhumane conditions is a problem. That it manages to do both of those things at once is government as usual.
More than a million dollars per dog! .... [P]hotos... showed dogs penned in small kennels with shredded blankets and bedding, smeared in excrement, their water and food dishes empty and overturned.
Remember the 250 million dollar floating pier that didn’t float?
This is what drives me nuts about government and the people who refuse to wake up to the problem. The government regularly spends vast amounts of money to accomplish virtually nothing. $75 million for a building that can hold 72 dogs is a problem. A facility that holds dogs in such inhumane conditions is a problem. That it manages to do both of those things at once is government as usual.
Your comment makes no sense because that rule applies to all structures built for living things. You can say the exact same thing about human houses and apartments, but I doubt that a million dollar per dog facility would be as spacious and nice as a million dollar apartment per human would be.
how many migrant can fit in spacious cage?
T”There are successive dogs so you have to rate the cost per dog over the life of the shelter.”- Thank you. Whoever wrote the prequel to this- do better.
…and the new format Fucks…Dog!!
is there ice rink so Fido can skate?
"Untested ideas need to be tested."
*cough*Green New Deal*cough*
Rhhardin, good point about tolerating strays in the old days, Growing up in Chicago in the 70s, I remember one year there was a literal pack of dogs in my neighborhood. About 5 or 6, various breeds. They would walk down the street like an Old West or Reservoir Dogs (hehheh) montage, like they owned the place. Never heard of anyone getting bit, but someone must have asked the precinct captain to get animal control on them. Either that, or like you say, maybe they each got adopted by some family. Heck, some/all might have been domestic and just spent their day free-ranging like the human kids. I dont remember if any had collars.
JSM
The theory — justifying the expense with such a small number of dogs to be accommodated — is that the beautiful setting would affect the minds of the humans and move the dogs through the place and into adoption very quickly.
If it's a beautiful setting people won't feel bad about leaving the dogs there. If it looked like a miserable place to be, they'd be more likely to want to take a dog away from all that.
you have to rate the cost per dog over the life of the shelter
True, but 50,000 square feet with a 72 dog capacity is harder to reconcile with common sense and intelligent planning.
For comparison's sake, 50,000 square foot office space of average density could accommodate 300 workers.
They should have given the project to Trump.
If Obama, Biden, and Harris had not wrecked the economy, people would not now be making the heart-wrenching decision to give up their beloved pets. National level of economic uncertainty and chaos caused intentionally by OBH is so bad even Dollar General customers are down-scaling. But to where?
Ya gotta choice between feeding your kids or feeding your kids and a dog. So long Fido.
Obama ate a dog.
That’s some serious dog eat dog income inequality
Only a committee of rich men's wives who went to top colleges would conclude that people considering pet adoption would insist on being provided "a great adoption experience". Somebody uttered those 4 words at the first meeting and they were off to the races.
Then at the final plan approval somebody said, "Wait! Where are we going to put the dogs?" That's when they had to scrap the day spa.
Anyone else think a lot of that $72 million went to worthy causes, such as making sure Queens "officials" have plenty of "walking around money"? I've no doubt any auditor seeking to learn where all the money really went would soon be wearing cement Birkenstocks at the bottom of the East River.
Bidenomics bites.
you have to rate the cost per dog over the life of the shelter
No you don't. A million dollars to shelter one dog and one cat? You can shelter several humans for a million dollar capital expense, even in Queens. If one family moves out and another moves in, the million-dollar condo is still sheltering a few humans.
AKSHUALLY all their pet budgets went to pet politicians you list!
A million dollar capital investment per animal, and no room to offer shelter to the animals purportedly at risk. Planned Poochhood? And other ethical treatments.
My dog is curled up next to me on the couch. She is a rescue from down South.
Here's the difference between a million dollar per person house built for humans and a million dollar per animal shelter built for dogs and cats is: the latter is paid for by taxpayers.
For 75 mm you could start a business that provides a job for 100 families. This is about feelings, not reality. If it is the duty of the government to provide by law food and shelter for animals it will be done ad hoc and not to maximize the benefit to all dogs. It will provide good benefits to a few select dogs.
Its an impossible task but it has to be done in foolish ways that the public wont think too deeply about, so that everyone will think they are being a good moral society while accomplishing little.
75 mil in an annuity would generate about $400k per month income. Enough to pay 400 families $1k per month to look after an animal. Just bring it in once a month to verify good health and get paid.
I am involved in the rescue of cats and dogs. The situation is heart wrenching to those of us who love animals. I've never seen things so dire, and it's all over the country. Healthy non aggressive young dogs and puppies are being euthanized by large numbers daily. If you'd like to see how bad things are just look at San Antonio Animal Shelter. And yes, I understand the reason this is happening to this exponential degree: people have no money to keep up with the inflationary cost of pet food and vet care. People have lost jobs and homes.Compliments of this administration's destruction of our economy. Plus a lot of humans are really not. To those of you who can and love pups and cats, please consider opening up your heart and home to a shelter dog or cat.
That won't properly feed and care for public sector pensions.
DrBunkyPotatohead, stop using logic.
Our county got a 10k grant from the Bob Barker foundation and offered free spaying to female stray cats. Hundreds were spayed. You release them back into the wild, and the feral cat population drops.
You could do the same thing with pit bulls, but idiots are still going to breed litters of them. They make up the majority of hard-to-adopt dogs. Maybe we should spay the human idiots instead.
"According to the terms of its city contract, Animal Care Centers cannot turn away animals, even when they are at capacity."
This was bound to be a problem. The article doesn't mention what the organization's plan was for when they reached capacity. If they must accept all comers, it seems that their options were to ship animals elsewhere or put animals down.
A third option is to provide each dog with a studio apartment's worth of floor space if they need to operate over capacity. Supplies, utilities and personnel would need to scale up as well.
A capacity of 72 dogs isn't much. When animal control is called to a crazy person's house, a few dozen dogs isn't unusual. A city-run Brooklyn shelter closed and sent 77 dogs over.
Had the journalist asked a few questions, we probably would have learned that it took 20 years and $75 million to build this dog shelter because of city zoning ordinances and that the shelter could only have a capacity of 72 dogs because of city zoning ordinances. It was made so large to allow them to run over-capacity. Something about the operation didn't scale up.
Why do city people not understand that pit bulls aren't going to flourish in an apartment or tiny yard?
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