The city’s dithering on the homeless crisis is costing taxpayers a fortune — in hotel bills!

The number of homeless people crammed into pricey private suites has boomed over the past year to a record 11,000 — which means almost one in six of the 61,000 people being housed by the city is now in an inn.

And it isn’t just budget flophouses in the far-flung reaches of the outer boroughs — 120 homeless people are now living in the historic Wellington Hotel near Billionaires’ Row in Midtown, The Post reported this week, while vagrants have also taken rooms at the New Yorker and Excelsior hotels.

Hotel lodgings cost way more than shelters — an average of $222 a night, when social services are included, versus $150 — and advocates and lawmakers say it’s a bigger rip-off than mini-bar M&M’s.

“They’re spending $7,716 a month when we could have a fabulous apartment for $3,000!” said Charmel Lucas, 50, a member of activist group Picture the Homeless who has been living in a Holiday Inn on West 26th Street since March.

“The city has been sitting on property for 50 years. The money they’re spending on shelters [and hotels] can go to rehab these buildings and make extremely low-income housing. That’s what the market really needs right now.”

The city stuffed another 4,000 extra homeless people into hotels in 2017 on top of the 7,000 who checked in just a year ago — with 2,000 of those moving in since September, according to figures given by the Department of Homeless Services.

DHS claims the surge is temporary while it scrambles to create new permanent shelters and remove homeless families from so-called “cluster site” apartments, which officials say were in shoddy condition and riddled with violations.

“Hotels are not an ideal option, but they are better in an emergency and provide more security and supportive services than clusters, ” said DHS spokesman Isaac McGinn.

“We believe the best way to help our homeless neighbors is by aggressively closing clusters first, which is why we’ve expanded the use of hotels while we work to open shelters across the five boroughs.”

But the cluster apartments generally cost just $85 a day, and the city is behind schedule for erecting new shelters — it was supposed to open 20 last year but only managed 10.

And DHS is mooching on more taxpayer dollars alongside the extra expense — it has a $1.65 billion budget earmarked for 2018, up from $1.17 billion three years ago.

The city spent $102 million on hotel rooms alone in 2016, according to an analysis by Comptroller Scott Stringer’s office.

It’s terrible value for taxpayers, he said.

“Hotels are an extraordinarily expensive Band-Aid fix to a systemic problem that needs long-term solutions,” fumed Stringer after hearing the latest figures.

“This is exactly why we need to build the next generation of permanently affordable housing on city-owned land that is sitting empty — right now.”