Today is the day that I get full value out of my New York Times subscription: “What Happened When Homeless Men Moved Into a Liberal Neighborhood”.
(Note the use of “homeless” rather than “unhoused”:
The label of “homeless” has derogatory connotations. It implies that one is “less than”, and it undermines self-esteem and progressive change.
The use of the term “Unhoused”, instead, has a profound personal impact upon those in insecure housing situations. It implies that there is a moral and social assumption that everyone should be housed in the first place.
Who can disagree with this?)
From the NYT piece:
When New York City moved shelter residents into tourist hotels on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the neighborhood’s values were tested.
The guests arrived at the Lucerne Hotel, two blocks from Central Park, carrying their belongings, stepping off buses and filling the hotel’s empty rooms, which typically cost more than $200 a night.
They were not tourists nor business travelers but residents of homeless shelters whom the city sent to the Lucerne to contain the spread of the coronavirus in the crowded shelter system. Over three days, 283 men moved into the hotel.
Their arrival has become a flash point and a test of values for the Upper West Side — a neighborhood with a reputation as one of the most liberal enclaves in New York and in the entire country.
One day after the men began moving into the Lucerne, on West 79th Street, a private Facebook group — Upper West Siders for Safer Streets — was created by residents who were up in arms. The group has more than 8,700 members.
Many commenters said the men menaced pedestrians, urinated and defecated on the street and used and sold drugs in the open.
In interviews, some longtime residents said the hotel’s conversion into a shelter had dimmed the quality of life and evoked memories of an era when the neighborhood was filled with single room occupancy hotels that helped fuel crime.
“People are generally concerned to go outside now,’’ he added. “The fear is palpable.’’
If only there could be an article like this every day in the NYT!
Related:
This is not just the Upper West Side, it is all over the City, that the vagrants have taken over the public spaces. A lot of this has to do with them being pushed out of the subways in order that the subways are kept cleaner. So in Lower Manhattan a number Holiday Inns and other hotels of that caliber have been commandeered by the City for the vagrants. The more with it vagrants have taken over the public parks, where they drink, perform their bodily functions in plain view, and play cards. The less with it stare off into space as if searching for the reappearance of Halley’s Comet.
Well, UWS voters think that the new homeless proximity is beneficial for the UWS dwellers:
“Truthfully, I think it’s really good for the neighborhood to see the struggle that people have,” Ms. Breier said, and to recognize “the humanity that everyone has.”
As a LGBTQ/BLM advocate I must say that the New York Times has been showing me signs of progress recently by purging hateful voices that hinder humanity’s ascent from the horrors enforced on us for millennia by the patriarchy. But the NYT has more hateful people to cull before they can become the true paper of record for the progressive future, and they MUST terminate the employment of that hateful “journalist.” I am sure there is already an online petition, I will sign it and Tweet to draw further attention to this horror!
That Altucher blog post really says it all, in the way only Altucher can say it. Right to the point, no nonsense, no frills: New York City is dying, it’s on its last legs. He doesn’t criticize the Mayor, he stays out of those politics, but I’m sure there’s a lot more he could say if you just went and had lunch with him. What he does say is quite enough.
These type of articles are usually written at the bottom.
I am in construction in NYC, not one tech project has been cancelled, Facebook is taking another 750K SF at the Farley Post Office, in addition to their 750K SF in Hudson Yards, the huge Disney consolidation job is back on too.
Top ten law firms in the city are booming and taking more space- see Northwell Health suing Chubb over virus claims.
NYC and NY need a drastic change in leadership, everybody knows that, after that, maybe they will listen to Steve Wynn and bring gambling to Times Square-Vegas style, the M&M store is played out and Hudson Yards is a shi shi destination that not many people want to visit and to me is a debacle.
There is too much institutional money in the buildings to walk away and comparisons to Detroit are way off the mark.
This morning Alan Chartock got in a pretty good zinger when the NPR Morning Gang had their roundtable. Asked why DeBlasio didn’t speak last night: “Because his popularity is lower than a hound’s belly.”
Maybe the New York Times can start using a French term for the hotel homeless, to make it sound empowering. Invités spéciaux, or something like that. The City is paying an average of $174 a night to put them up, most of which they expect to be reimbursed by FEMA. And believe me, Chuck Schumer will make sure FEMA does it. So really, it’s the American taxpayer that is going to be footing the bill, eventually. Live in Iowa? You’re going to be paying to put NYC homeless in hotels.
“Note the use of “homeless” rather than “unhoused””
Why not, “vagrants”?
“it’s the American taxpayer that is going to be footing the bill, eventually. Live in Iowa? You’re going to be paying to put NYC homeless in hotels.”
Hurricane Dorian, early Sep. 2019, never made landfall in FL, but my city’s over 300 employees of my city’s police, fire, and administrative departments earned four 24-hour days of triple-time pay – all funded by FEMA.
It’s OK, the United States will never go bankrupt under Modern Monetary Theory. Before we get there, you can, though. You just have to understand and pay your fair share. It’s just like Massachusetts: 100 economists recommend the state raise taxes on businesses in the pandemic, because it’s only fair. If half of them go broke, the other half is still making some kind of profit, so they need to pay. AOC is going to solve all these problems. She’s got a Nobel-prize winning economist who told her how to do it.
She’s speaking tonight, by the way. Part of “Nominating Speeches for the Honorable Bernie Sanders” He’s not going broke!
I’d rather see hotels given to homeless citizens than to new immigrants (why add more people when we have any homeless at all?). Entire hotels and former office spaces in my city are being booked by the govt to “temporarily” house newly arrived immigrant non-citizens, and apparently it’s happening all over canada and the uk too. Nobody will be shocked to learn that covid restrictions are mostly ignored at these sites.
You in Albany? Shocked anyone outside of the capital region knows who this guy is.
“Today is the day that I get full value out of my New York Times subscription” Thanks for getting a subscription Phil. You read the New York Times so we don’t have to!
@toucan, I have tried the NYT twice, but just couldnt stomach it. Maybe this archive.is site will salvage a few relevant thoughts.