Bloomberg Shows His Warmth For The Homeless

There have already been stories about how much empathy Bloomberg has for the least amongst us in the city. The latest to come from the desk of the plutocrat Mayor is sadly, not much different. His biggest supporters say that because he runs a media empire, running a city government should be pretty much the same way. Bloomberg prefers efficiency, expediency and a business model to good government, fairness and dedication to the public good. Unfortunately, one does not lead to the other and unless you are trying to make a profit off the city than that idea needs to be dropped in a hurry. Just like with Mayoral Control of the schools, Bloomberg is looking to bring "efficiency" to the city's homeless.

From The Gothamist:

The number of families sleeping in shelters is near an all-time high; according to the Department of Homeless Services, there were 34,774 people in shelters last week, including 9,361 families. The Bloomberg administration is now seeking state approval for a new set of policies intended to move families out of shelters more quickly and, according to the Times, apply the "market-driven, incentive-based philosophy to homeless shelters that it has used in schools." Under the new rules, the city would pay shelters more than the usual rate, which is roughly $100 a day, for the first six months that it houses a family. But after six months, if the family has not found permanent housing, the shelter would be paid 20 percent less than the standard rate. Homeless advocates deem the new policies "mean-spirited" and worry that families would be forced out after six months. But Linda Gibbs, deputy mayor for health and human services, insists families would only be ejected for "refusing to look for housing, refusing to seek employment, anything that is an unreasonable refusal to participate in the steps they need to take to overcome their homelessness." In April, homeless advocates blamed Bloomberg for the rise in homeless families.

Bloomberg meanwhile lives in his own world where those numbers are falling, thanks to some faulty calculations. The key thing is that the Mayor is looking to strip funding from homeless shelters when in these times, we need more assistance in that area to catch people who are falling behind. This isn't about market equilibriums and cost-benefit analyses, we are talking about real, live human beings and our city's government should be able to recognize that.

Bloomberg Starts Charging Rent To The Homeless

I could hardly believe the headline, that the Mayor would want to charge the homeless who have gotten jobs and live in shelters, it sounded too perverse, even for me. Yet that is exactly what the Bloomberg Administration started doing this past week.

Imagine being homeless, out on the streets with almost nowhere to turn. Then you manage to get one of those rare openings in one of the city's shelters. With that ounce of stability, in these tough times you also manage to get a job. Then the shelter, under Bloomberg's directive, orders you to pay them up to half of your wages. Feeling hurt? Angry? Whatever your emotion, there is definitely something wrong here.

From The NY Times:

Vanessa Dacosta, who earns $8.40 an hour as a cashier at Sbarro, received a notice under her door several weeks ago informing her that she had to give $336 of her approximately $800 per month in wages to the Clinton Family Inn, a shelter in Hell’s Kitchen where she has lived since March.

“It’s not right,” said Ms. Dacosta, a single mother of a 2-year-old who said she spends nearly $100 a week on child care. “I pay my baby sitter, I buy diapers, and I’m trying to save money so I can get out of here. I don’t want to be in the shelter forever.”

So what's the reasoning behind this?

City officials said the new rent requirement had been in the works since a 2007 state audit that forced them to pay back $2.4 million in state housing aid that should have been covered by homeless families with income. They argued that homeless people with income should be expected to pay for a portion of their shelter costs, a model that echoes the federal Section 8 housing voucher program.

“I think it’s hard to argue that families that can contribute to their shelter cost shouldn’t,” Robert V. Hess, the city’s commissioner of homeless services, said in a telephone interview Friday. “I don’t see this playing out in an adverse way. Our objective is not for families to remain in shelter. Ourobjective is to move families back into their own homes and into the community.”

Oh, well if the state says so, then we must make the homeless shoulder that $2.4 million dollars right?

But advocates for the homeless said the new policy was punitive and counterproductive, and some shelter residents, in protest, have already refused to sign the documents acknowledging receipt of the rent notifications.

“Families have been told to pay up or get out,” said Steven Banks, the attorney in chief for the Legal Aid Society. “The policy is poorly conceived, but even more alarmingly, it’s being poorly executed. What is happening is that we have seen cases of families being unilaterally told, without any notice of how the rent was calculated, that they must pay certain amounts of rent or leave the shelter. We’ve already had a case of a survivor of domestic violence who was actually locked out of her room.”

Banks is right, this is a bad policy and one that is being poorly enforced. $2.4 million dollars to the city and $2.4 million to a group of people struggling to become productive members of society is not even close to being comparable. It is even worse that a twelve-year old rule has begun to be enforced in such devastating economic times. Seriously, have a heart Mayor (or buy one) and stop punishing the homeless, especially those that are trying so hard not to be living on the streets or in a shelter.

Advocates For The Homeless Point Out Bloomberg's Disastrous Policies

Bloomberg claims on his campaign website he wants to use his "honest, independent leadership" to keep New York moving. There should be an asterisk next to that statement, so that it honestly leaves out help for the homeless. While the Mayor has no problem getting behind the ethically challenged (and very rich) car czar Steven Ratner, getting behind programs that give the homeless a leg up is something he cannot be bothered with.

From The NY Times:

The Bloomberg administration’s four-year-old policy of denying federal housing vouchers to the homeless has helped push the number of families in New York City shelters to record levels, an advocacy group for the homeless said in a report released on Wednesday.

The group, the Coalition for the Homeless, which is frequently at odds with the Bloomberg administration, predicted that the city’s policy, coupled with the economic recession, would worsen homelessness significantly in the coming months.

“We felt that it was a mistake in policy four years ago when they did it, and it’s even more mistaken now, given the recession and the rising numbers of homeless families,” said Patrick Markee, a senior policy analyst with the coalition.

According to data analyzed by the coalition, the economic downturn helped drive nearly 110,000 people into city shelters in 2008.

Tell me how exactly is that leadership that New York wants to see continued? The Mayor on the other hand tries to point out that the homeless rolls are decreasing. Why the discrepancy you ask? Well, I guess it matters how exactly one goes about counting the thousands of New Yorkers who can't afford a place to live anymore.

One In Nine Houses Are Empty In The U.S.

Thanks to an unregulated economy and a housing boom that kept the system going for the last decade, the effects of that irresponsible growth are being felt throughout the country. GDP is down, jobs are being lost, businesses are going under and the houses that were built by the tens of thousands are being left empty. In fact, out of all houses in the country, one in nine are now vacant.

From USAToday:

Census numbers show:

• More than 14 million housing units are vacant. That number does not include an estimated 4.8 million seasonal or vacation homes, most of which are occupied part of the year. The combined vacancy rate of almost 15% is higher than during previous recessions: 11% in 1991 and 9.4% in 1984.

• About 3% of owned homes are vacant. In normal times, "maybe 1% should be vacant," Myers says.

• More than 9% of homes built since 2000 are vacant compared with about 2% for older homes.

• Homes priced at $500,000 or more are just as likely to be empty as homes that cost less than $100,000.

The numbers show that like jobs reports, the economic situation is much more precarious than in prior recessions. The vacancies show that an incredible amount of people are losing their homes in this recession. The statistics on what happens after a home goes vacant is murky though because it is hard to tell how many people go homeless and what category of homelessness they fit into. The USA Today article seemed to be worried about the security situation squatters brings, but the question of if the squatters were the former owners was not brought up. What we need to be concerned with are the people who no longer have a place to live and not so much the value of the neighborhood.

Bad Times On Wall St. Are Magnified In The Alleys Behind Main St.

Congress and the White House moved quickly to try and help wealthy bankers once they had crashed their toxic system full of bundled debt resting on a tenuous housing bubble. While that situation is still working itself out, the consequences of deregulation and obscene amounts of corporate welfare have left millions outside of the Financial District without jobs and for far too many, without a place to call home. The latest figures on homelessness are truly frightening.

From USA Today:

More families with children are becoming homeless as they face mounting economic pressures, including mortgage foreclosures, according to a USA TODAY survey of a dozen of the largest cities in the nation.

Local authorities say the number of families seeking help has risen in Atlanta, Boston, Denver, Minneapolis, New York, Phoenix, Portland, Seattle and Washington.

"Everywhere I go, I hear there is an increase" in the need for housing aid, especially for families, says Philip Mangano, executive director of the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness, which coordinates federal programs. He says the main causes are job losses and foreclosures.

Other factors have been higher food and fuel prices hitting families with "no cushion," says Nan Roman of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

There is no cushion because Republican leadership has deflated our nation's programs to aid the poor and to care for those in need. In the richest country in the world, we have hundreds of thousands of Americans who sleep on our streets. With the gap between the haves and have nots widening by the day, the situation is only going to get worse. John McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates may mock Barack Obama for wanting to "spread the wealth around" by taxing the rich more but you know what, the way we are going isn't helping anyone and it is about time we make a change.