Mindlessness About Homelessness
EDITORIAL Mindlessness About Homelessness Paris Drake is quite a piece of work. His criminal career started when he was 14, and he has been arrested 22 times in the intervening 18 years....
...Compared with Mrs...
...They noticed the hand was moving, so figuring the body attached to it must be okay, they moved on...
...Last Wednesday, Judge Elliot Wilk, a longtime activist judge on homeless matters, temporarily halted the mayor’s plans...
...Hillary Clinton went to the New York Theological Seminary and blasted Giuliani’s policies...
...Disproportionately, they are mentally ill, often schizophrenic...
...Let’s be clear about the true state of play in New York...
...Another vagrant, known as Heavy, barricaded himself behind some mail carts when he saw the social workers coming...
...They sense that the voters in New York now take the gains of the past decade for granted and are weary of Rudy Giuliani’s aggressive style...
...His prison sentences have ranged from a day to four years, and each time he was released he picked up where he left off...
...That means prodding the homeless to take responsibility for themselves, whenever possible, by working for their benefits...
...The attack reminded New Yorkers that for all the amazing progress that has been made in bringing order to the city, there are still a lot of evil, dangerous people around...
...Hillary Clinton tries to breathe new life into the liberal orthodoxies of the mid-seventies, as if homelessness were a failure of capitalism to provide cheap housing and not a consequence of the bungled deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill...
...They sense an opportunity to return to the old policy regime, and they may be right...
...He assured them he was doing fine so they moved on...
...Clinton talks of mass arrests for the crime of lacking shelter, but that is sheer demagoguery...
...He proposed that street vagrants who refuse offers of shelter and violate the law should be issued summonses or arrested...
...They came across a man known as Shoeshine Bill with swollen ankles sitting in a puddle of his own urine...
...You would think that some of his enemies would have been moved to rethink their policy views...
...In this new era, an attempt is being made to balance liberty and license with civility and order...
...Most lead horrific lives...
...Most have some serious addiction...
...The city has some of the most generous social provisions for the homeless in the country...
...Mrs...
...Drake, a New York native who has no fixed address, has served time for drug-dealing, assault, weapons possession, larceny, and burglary...
...Some minds are permanently closed...
...The city of New York and private groups have undertaken noble and high-minded efforts to try to coax these people into shelters, where they can be given medication and treated...
...It devotes $850 million a year to homeless services...
...Mayor Rudolph Giuliani responded with measures to assert some authority over the hardest of the hardcore homeless...
...It also means building on serious efforts, undertaken in dozens of cities nationwide, to get the homeless off the streets...
...No one is turned away...
...In the short term, they see little need to go to places where they can get treatment, because activist groups bring food and clothing straight to their boxes—a delivery service that keeps the homeless untreated and fresh in the minds of the public...
...To its credit, BID hired a journalism professor to write up a candid report on the effort, which was in turn picked up by Heather Mac Donald in the City Journal...
...A young couple was lying on the street, the woman in the advanced stages of alcoholism...
...His efforts have produced obvious and remarkable improvements...
...David Brooks, for the Editors...
...The Times Square Business Improvement District (BID) procured over $2.5 million in state and federal money to hire teams of social service professionals to roam the streets, trying to persuade vagrants to visit the new “respite center...
...The Al Sharptons of the world still equate orderly streets with racism...
...If they are, there will be more Paris Drakes out on the streets, and more Nicole Barretts in the hospitals...
...Giuliani has spent the past six years trying to restore public authority in New York...
...Hillary Clinton may have some romanticized image of the homeless as Mary, Joseph, and baby Jesus, but this has nothing to do with the reality of homelessness as it is experienced by people who don’t ride in motorcades...
...They are beaten and robbed, and occasionally beat and rob in turn...
...Clinton’s crude attacks, his policy is a model of nuanced sophistication...
...All hell broke loose...
...Over the first year of the program, BID spent $700,000 and managed to persuade all of two people to accept housing...
...Since Giuliani ordered New York police to intensify their efforts to rein in homelessness, the cops have had contact with 1,674 homeless people...
...Over the past 20 years, city after city, run by Democrats and Republicans, has tried to reassert public order...
...If there were any justice in the world, Mac Donald would be knee-deep in Pulitzer Prizes and National Magazine Awards for her pioneering work on homelessness and other urban issues...
...Mayors have argued that the liberty of the homeless doesn’t necessarily trump the interests of the community...
...Then, on November 16, he became enraged because he couldn’t raise enough money to buy crack...
...New York is the only city in the country that by law must offer shelter to every homeless person who requests it...
...But as with most political struggles, there is never a conclusion...
...Clinton promised that if elected senator, she will instead work to triple the value of new housing vouchers...
...She said they violated the Christmas spirit, which celebrates “the birth of a homeless child...
...So he picked up a six-pound paving stone and hurled it at the back of Nicole Barrett’s head...
...Of those, 380 were taken to a shelter, 67 were taken to a hospital for physical or mental treatment...
...Instead, they have worked ever more aggressively over the past year to topple Giuliani and roll back his programs...
...Many of these people are not capable of thinking in their own long-term self-interest...
...Al Sharpton rounded up the usual suspects for street protests...
...These are not just unfortunate individuals down on their luck...
...Only 164 were arrested, often because there were prior warrants out for their arrest...
...The liberationists sense they are gaining strength...
...They declined to go to the shelter, though the man joked they’d be willing to go for an hour if they could get a private room with a bed...
...The whole episode serves as a depressing reminder of how tough it is to change a political culture...
...She suffered terrible head injuries and almost died...
...One day the workers came across a large cardboard box on the sidewalk across the street from the New York Times building, with a dirty hand sticking out...
...They are not families cast out of housing because of economic crisis...
...The fact is, the Giuliani policy does distinguish between the many different sorts of people who are homeless...
...She implied that Giuliani was driven merely by polls and said, “Criminalizing the homeless with mass arrests for those whose only offense is that they have no home is wrong...
...The problem is that many of the hardcore homeless do not want shelter...
...The Giuliani administration says it is time to impose the sort of tough-love approach to the hardcore homeless that seems to be producing positive results as part of welfare reform...
...He also announced that able-bodied homeless people who could work in exchange for their benefits should be asked to do so...
...Barrett is a young office worker who just happened to be walking by...
...The report describes the non-threatening approach adopted by the BID social workers...
...Nobody has a right to defecate in doorways, intimidate pedestrians, and menace store owners...
Vol. 5 • December 1999 • No. 14
