NEW YORK — Mayor Bill de Blasio on Wednesday unveiled a massive $2.6 billion housing investment to help New York City’s homeless, declaring that the city would not wait for the state’s help in combating a growing crisis that has dominated headlines and damaged the mayor’s poll numbers.
Over the next 15 years, the city will pay for the creation of 15,000 ‘‘supportive housing’’ units, apartments that will be paired with on-site social services to help domestic abuse victims, veterans, drug addicts, and those living on the street. Currently, there are nearly 58,000 people in city shelters and a few thousand more estimated to be living on the streets of the nation’s largest city.
The city and state had been negotiating on funding a new supporting housing program but de Blasio said Wednesday that City Hall would forge ahead on its own.
‘‘We are acting decisively. We are not waiting on Albany,’’ de Blasio said. ‘‘It was time for New York City to act. It was as simple as that.’’
Talks began in February to create the fourth installment of what has been called the New York/New York program, which would have split the responsibility between city and state for funding 12,000 units of housing. But they collapsed over a dispute about the cost breakdown, becoming the latest front in the ongoing cold war between de Blasio and Governor Andrew Cuomo, a pair of Democrats whose feud has dominated state politics.