No snow yet, though today, the Governor of New York ordered the homeless into shelters when the weather is below freezing.
The Manhattan Institute, at the recent kick off of their new publication, The Beat, released a report outlining their recommendations to address this growing problem in New York City. What to do about the homeless was the most asked question.
All kinds of people in New York have been interrupted, preventing homelessness of their own, their friends and family, and an increasing number of strangers.
A few MI recommendations I actually believe are the cause of the rise in homelessness.
What wasn't discussed was that two or three years ago, New York City repealed some of the tenement laws dating back to Teddy Roosevelt. During the heat wave of 1896, they repealed the laws preventing people from sleeping outdoors. Basically, loitering is what they called it in the olden days.
You just couldn't wander around wherever you wanted to, day or night. You either had a place to go -- to work, or you had to be going to a concert, or going to the library, to church, even a walk in the park.
That's why the wandering Charles Dickens style of writing was so popular. It gave a glance into worlds most people dared not go. It is what inspires Myron Magnet, among the celebrated Editors at The City Journal's 25th Anniversary (most of which I missed -- why? Because of crazy NY transit stories!)
In the days of social order that lead to quality of life, people were not allowed to sleep in the park or on the sidewalk.
This posed a problem during the heat wave one summer when the humidity reached 90% at a temperature of 83 degrees. Because people were forced to sleep in overcrowded apartments, mostly construction workers, factory workers and manual laborers stayed in the summer; Men even at the lowest socio-economic level paid for their wives and children to get out of the city.
Women would go to the beach, or up to a lake or river somewhere in Connecticut or just someplace where you could at least get some water and fresh air. They got out of the compounded humidity, where the heat of the concrete never really cools off in the summer. Without air conditioning and refrigeration, it was intolerable.
During the heat wave, it was the recipe for mass death. They found apartments full of dead people -- these were strong men who certainly were in top physical condition, but there simply wasn't enough ventilation. There were too many people in rooms cut up two small with few windows.
Horses died by the hundreds on the street. It was a real disaster.
Finally, what they realized was they had to allow people to get out of their apartments at night. They had to allow them to sleep on the street and sleep in the park in that heat that caused 1500 people to die in ten days.
How this morphed into people sleeping there permanently, all year round, I don't know. There may be some political protections for the ones carrying signs. They may have some free-speech rights that allow them to be there, or protects their presence on the streets more so than people who just have no other place to go.
The MI lunch revealed that in the real estate development boom, a number of SROs (Single Room Occupancy for men) have been lost. That accounts for [1500?] new homeless on the streets of the West side.
90% of sheltered homeless families are headed by single Mothers, MI reports.
Outside solutions? I attended a dinner for Good Counsel Homes in honor of Cardinal Dolan, the first Archbishop to visit the homes, hold babies while meeting their Mothers. Founder Chris Bell worked with the homeless, then started these special homes for pregnant, homeless women. They almost lost one house on Staten Island, but have funded and reopened it.
The Sisters of Life, founded by Cardinal O'Connor, also provides temporary housing and support for crisis pregnancies.
Inwood House, for young, pregnant women kicked out of foster care, recently sold its property on the Upper East side and moved uptown.
Homelessness has become a major problem since Mayor DiBlasio and Governor A. Cuomo took office under the Administration of President Obama. It has been hard for me to even write about it in the last two years because the key in political journalism is to not have it sound like a rant. Everything I write about those three sounds like a rant, so the challenge is to have a sense of humor about it and to be able to make constructive recommendations instead of just complaining.
The "Real Estate Blob" is evicting people, cutting apartments in half and cutting those into 3-bedrooms. Young people moving to town are living in a 400 sq. ft. apartment with 3 roommates and all of their boyfriends at twice the previous rent of the larger apartment. The minimum size of an apartment has been reduced from something around 500 ft.² to two or three and they can make that into a four bedroom apartment without windows in every room.
The tenement laws basically limited the number of tenants by apartment size. Children of opposite sexes could not sleep in the same room beyond age 5. Kitchens and bathrooms had to have windows. Airshafts provided adequate ventilation. There were all sorts of laws to make these places tolerable and safe. Now that's all gone. Replaced by fire hazards.
"Doubling up" as a transition to homelessness probably occurs because a tenant has blown it somehow, usually by getting into court with the landlord. Once you do that in New York, you will never be able to rent another apartment. So the people who weren't expecting to have their lease terminated, because it used to be there were protections if you were basically a good tenant and always paid your rent on time and your landlord offered you a lease in the first place. If they were selling the building, they had to buy you out. People used to make fun of tenants rights and say the tenants had all the rights and the landlord had no rights. These poor landlords are just getting hosed -- can't raise the rent, they can't fix the place up...they can't do anything.
Now they can kick anybody out for any reason or no reason, renovate the place and charge the next person a lot more money....Well that's not really working out for them either because half these people left town and did not come back. So they haven't been able to recover the funds as well as they planned. Maybe the free market will restore its own balance.
It is extremely difficult to move in New York. It is extremely strenuous. The negotiations are very difficult, it's expensive, it's more complicated than moving into a house because you have to move things into narrow stairwells; You've got to deal with schedules and doormen, double-parked moving vans (somebody has to sit in the cab of the truck at $60/hour, or me for free.) I wonder if what's happening is as some people are so taken off guard by the fact that their lease is not going to be renewed, they can't pull it off. Since the financial crisis, landlords and bankers are much more careful about who they allow in. Now they want to make sure you can really fog a mirror. They want to meet with you. They want to go over everything. You may not be able to get a mortgage in time to make yourself not homeless, so then people end up renting at the mercy of other people's decisions as to when they move, which may not be convenient for their employer, and they may lose their job. As will the brokers if everybody can't keep moving.
Another thing creating new homeless are new rules, whereas it used to be only black and Hispanic communities would kick out single mothers, now even the best buildings in case of divorce will force both spouses to leave regardless of economic circumstances. Both have to move out and both have to buy or rent new apartments. This may solve the fighting about real estate, but it is obviously very expensive. It intensifies the number one destroyer of money: divorce. Contrary to their stated goals, the new matrimonial laws have made break-ups more costly and time-consuming. Even women with houses seem to be choosing to leave their houses and pay rent. This has become a less stable choice than ever.
"Gentrification is the new Colonialism" was displayed in bright, speakeasy lights at The Brooklyn Museum of Arts' Target First Saturday. Why is a housewares store funding activists to incite paying rent to a landlord when they could own? Ownership would be more responsibility, yet much more stable.
I hope those who have not been lucky in real estate will move into permanent home-ownership.
Policy should aim to keep people with homes in them, and secure permanent housing for those without.
The current musical beds shelter system can only destabilize those in it and their surrounding communities. People are happiest settled into homes and jobs.
Drug addiction has always been a major cause/symptom of homelessness and mental health issues. The liberal loosening of drug policy is unraveling more people and their ability to function. People are becoming addicted to pain killers and prescription drugs. When those run out, they turn to heroin, the chief beneficiaries of which are the terrorists.
A wise, good and global liberal suggested a 20-year moratorium on immigration. Some refugees come here homeless. Always have, by definition, but we first must deal with these crisis levels of our own.
