NYC Homeless To Cuomo: Housing, Not Mandated Shelter Round-Ups

The NY Times details reaction from some NYC homeless people to his directive that they must go to shelters when the temperature hits freezing or they will be rounded up and taken their by authorities:

Bundled in blankets and enduring the frigid temperatures that arrived in New York City this week, homeless people said Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo was missing the point with his executive order directing authorities to pull them off the streets when temperatures fall to 32 degrees or below.

Homeless people need housing, “not someone telling them when to sleep and what to eat,” Sheila Turner, who is in her 50s and has been homeless for 30 years, said on Monday in East Harlem.

Ms. Turner and others who would be subject to Mr. Cuomo’s executive order called on the governor and Mayor Bill de Blasio, both Democrats, to create more units of permanent, affordable housing. Ms. Turner said she feared the governor’s directive would encourage harassment.

The Daily News had similar reaction from homeless people living on NYC streets.

Cuomo has already backtracked on his mandate after some criticism, with his counsel saying that the involuntary round-up of homeless people will only be for those deemed mentally ill and a danger to themselves or others.

That is already the protocol followed in NYC.

So what is Cuomo's mandated shelter round-up going to accomplish?

Why, putting Cuomo's name in the headlines.

You know what would be great - if Cuomo restored the $68 million he cut from a rental subsidy program that helped people stay in their homes.

That would be a headline I'd be in favor of.

It seems so would many people who are homeless in NYC.

Homeless New Yorkers Reject Cuomo's Mandated City Round-Up When Temperature Hits Freezing

The Daily News:

Homeless New Yorkers gave the cold shoulder Sunday to Gov. Cuomo’s order that could force them off the streets when the temperature dips below freezing.

“Hell no, I won’t go to a shelter! How’s that even lawful? You can’t force people off a public street,” said Luis Diaz, 31, who was shivering with his girlfriend on a Midtown streetcorner as temps hovered in the mid-40s.

“It’s going to be crazy. They don’t have enough room. They don’t have the infrastructure to do this. Where are they going to put us? If they’re shoving us in shelters with crazies and people who can’t handle being in there, there is going to be a lot of fights. We’re safer out here.”

“I feel violated by this,” added William Sanders, 45, who said he considered it “cruel and unusual punishment” to be forced into a shelter, where he said he has faced hostility from other residents because of sores on his legs but has been unable to get medical services.

“There is going to be anger and violence in the shelters if we go against our will. They are putting us in a really bad situation,” he said.

...

A handful of homeless people welcomed the new policy. “Some nights are really cold. You try to stay warm, but you can’t,” said Jose Flores, 47, who typically sleeps outside a Harlem subway station. “If I’m out here freezing, I’d welcome any van taking me to a warm place. People can die out here."

But most rejected the idea.

“That’s not right,” fumed Steve Jones, 63. “The governor can’t force people into shelters. We should have an option. People have rights.”

This is Cuomo trying to make it look like he's doing something about homelessness while really doing nothing about it.

In fact, he's exacerbated the problem.

Cuomo cut $68 million from a program that provided housing subsidies back in 2011.

He's not adding any more funds to what municipalities receive in order to deal with the mandate he imposed yesterday:

Cuomo's executive order "adds no legal or financial resources to NYC's programs to assist the homeless" https://t.co/6dpoBhKiL2

— Bill Hammond (@NYHammond) January 4, 2016

He's getting headlines, which is one of his main goals, and he's looking to make de Blasio look ineffectual, which is another of those main goals.

But as for alleviating homelessness with this mandate - not so much.

And as to his argument that it's the humane thing to do, it seems many homeless New Yorkers are rejecting that argument.

As to the practical angle of the argument, no one's quite sure how this mandate will work - kinda like other Cuomo mandates like his APPR teacher evaluation and the SAFE Act.

Cuomo's big on big announcements - not so big on making those big announcements work in the real world.

Cuomo To Involuntarily Round Up Homeless, Take Them Off Streets When Temperatures Hit Freezing

Big Brother Cuomo going to make sure everybody stays warm - and sending another arrow Bill de Blasio's way:

ALBANY — Gov. Cuomo will sign an executive order on Sunday that will bring the homeless in out of the cold — and it’s mandatory.

Citing the risks of hypothermia and possible death, Cuomo will require communities — including New York City — to take the homeless who live outside to shelters when the mercury hits the freezing mark, the Daily News has learned.

If they refuse to go, the order, which goes into effect on Tuesday, calls for the involuntary taking of the homeless to shelters when the temperatures hit 32 degrees or below.

“We’re in a period now of the winter inclement weather,” Cuomo told The News. “It’s dangerous for homeless people to be on the streets.”

Though Cuomo insists he is looking for a uniformed statewide standard to deal with homelessness, the order could add more flames to the simmering feud between the governor and Mayor de Blasio.

Without specifically singling out New York City, Cuomo’s executive order notes that “certain parts of the state are facing a crisis of homelessness unprecedented in recent history.”

Obviously this is aimed at the de Blasio administration, which has struggled with the numbers of homeless on the streets the past few years.

And in case there's any doubt of that, well, there was this "anonymous" dig:

A Cuomo aide recently said the de Blasio administration “can’t manage the homeless crisis.”

De Blaiso put some of the blame on the state and says he's got a plan to deal with the problem:

The mayor has said the city’s homeless crisis got worse after Cuomo cut a $68 million rental assistance program in 2011. After talks for a joint effort failed, the mayor recently announced a $2.6 billion, 15-year city plan to create 15,000 apartments that would cater mainly to people with mental illness and substance abuse problems.

Currently the city has a "Code Blue" protocol when temperatures hit freezing, with the city doubling down on the outreach to homeless people on the streets and letting people into shelters without the usual intake process.

But the city does not force people off the streets when it hits freezing.

Now they'll have to.

This is just another gin-up in the battle with de Blasio.

Cuomo doesn't actually care about homeless people or the mentally ill.

If he did, he wouldn't have cut funding for a rental subsidy program that kept people from, you know being homeless or threaten to eliminate state funds for homeless shelters (as he did this summer.)

He does care about one-upping de Blasio and making him look as weak and ineffectual as possible.

That's what's going on here.

The state is supposed to provide more resources for municipalities struggling with homelessness as part of Cuomo's mandate, but that remains to be seen.

Often promised monies fail to cover newly imposed mandates and I wouldn't be surprised to find out that is the case here.

And then there's the constitutional issue - is it legal to round people up and force them into shelters if they don't want to go?

Cuomo says it's fine and dandy:

Asked about whether such a move violates civil rights, Cuomo said case law is on his side.

“It’s not even a close call in my opinion or my counsel’s opinion,” he said.

“What we’re saying is these are people who are placing themselves in danger, and if you are placing yourself in danger, we believe as a society you should be given help because you can hurt yourself,” he said. “That is the premise to this action.”

Lots of actions fall under Cuomo's "People who are placing themselves in danger" premise - including smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol to excess or eating foods that are not healthy for you.

Shouldn't those activities be regulated under Cuomo's premise as well?

Enough with the bullshit from Cuomo - he needs to stop trying to one-up de Blasio, work with municipalities struggling with homelessness (not just NYC, btw - homelessness has "exploded" statewide since the recession, Hurricane Irene and Superstorm Sandy), and provide more state resources to deal with the problems instead of cutting them.

In addition, he needs to take responsibility for adding to the problem by cutting state funds to programs that helped alleviate homelessness (like the rental subsidy program), as well as pointing fingers at others for contributing to the problem.

That's what an adult would do.

But Andrew Cuomo is a man-child and so this new "Homeless Off The Streets" mandate is as much about him as it is about solving a vexing social problem.

Preetmas can't come soon enough.

Then maybe we'll see Cuomo himself taken "involuntarily" off the streets.

Mayor Bloomberg Plans On Bringing NYC's Homeless Problem To The Rest Of The World

Mayor Bloomberg, fresh from arguing that there's no place as good as NYC to be homeless and down on your luck, brags that the consulting firm he has put together to help governments around the world make their income inequality problems as bad as NYC's is very much in demand:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg, burnishing his legacy in all five boroughs this week as he prepares to leave office, shed a sliver of light today on the new consulting firm he’s planning to found once he leaves office, aimed at helping cities across the world.


Mr. Bloomberg, who was in Brooklyn to herald the opening of a new ice skating center in Prospect Park, told reporters that many other cities want to replicate the “wonderful things” New York has accomplished in his tenure.

“We’ve got enormous demand and we’ve had for years now from other cities around the world, not just around the country of, ‘How do you do these wonderful things?’” Mr. Bloomberg said. “We are, no matter we may whip ourselves, but we are the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities.”

And what are some of those good things he's brought to NYC that he now wants to bring to the rest of the world?

Why despair, hopelessness and abject poverty of course!

Wonkette has the story:

So we have all read the New York Times story about homelessness in New York, yes? And we have all cried for the smart, tough little girl named Dasani, who lives in a “520-square-foot room with her parents and seven siblings” in a most wretched shelter, where life is most wretched, and we have all said, “Goddamn, this is unacceptable and something must be done.” Yes?

No. Apparently, some of us think, ‘Meh, that’s just God for ya.’ Some of us who happen to be bazillionaires and soon-to-be-ex-mayors of New York.

Asked today if he was similarly moved by the story, current Mayor Michael Bloomberg told Politicker he’d had a different reaction.

While calling her life story “really quite extraordinary,” Mr. Bloomberg insisted Dasani’s situation was not representative of the city’s broader homeless population. 

Well, actually, Mr. Mayor, the point of the story is that actually, Dasani is not “really quite extraordinary.”

Yet Dasani is among 280 children at the shelter. Beyond its walls, she belongs to a vast and invisible tribe of more than 22,000 homeless children in New York, the highest number since the Great Depression, in the most unequal metropolis in America. 

But hey, don’t blame the city or its mayor for that. Nope, blame God.

“This kid was dealt a bad hand. I don’t know quite why. That’s just the way God works. Sometimes some of us are lucky and some of us are not,” he said. 

Yes, God sure does work in mysterious ways, arbitrarily dealing bad hands like that. Sometimes he hands out lots of money, like to Mayor Bloomberg, who is just lucky that way, and sometimes he does not. Shrug, we guess. Whatcha gonna do? Hey, maybe you can fight the scourge of extra-large sodas! Sure, God invented the Big Gulp, but that’s, like, a Serious Problem, the kind of problem that a mayor should do his very best to do something about. Unlike homeless children living in filth and squalor and where guards sexually assault their moms, because that’s just bad luck. Sorry, Dasani and the thousands of children like you, but if you wanted to be not poor and homeless in one of the wealthiest cities in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, you should have asked God for better luck.

Yeah, NYC surely is the poster child for most of the good things that have happened in big cities and I'm sure many other cities can't wait to have Bloomberg and his consultant group bring them what he's brought to NYC.

Homeless Shelter Population Up 37% Since Bloomberg Took Office In 2002

The Mayor of Money loves data. He says numbers never lie - well, try these numbers on for size:

A record number of New Yorkers were forced into city homeless shelters last year, a new report says.

The Coalition for the Homeless says that in the 12 months ending last June 30, 113,553 New Yorkers slept in city shelters.

That's a 37% increase since 2002 when Mayor Bloomberg took office.

"A big part of this problem is caused by the failed policies of this administration," said Patrick Markee, a senior policy analyst at the coalition.

Although the annual figure is 10 months old, the coalition says the problem hasn't gotten better: In February, the number of people in homeless shelters in a single night hit an all-time high of 39,542.

Bloomberg disputes this data, says forget the overall population in the shelter system and look just at the number of families. That number, the administration says, is down from the year before.

But they don't dispute that the shelter population has increased by 37% since 2002 - the year he took over as king.

Just more evidence of the Two New Yorks - the New York that Bloomberg and Black and Trump and Wall Street and the hedge fundies inhabit and the New York that the rest of us inhabit.

And there but for the grace of the universe have we not ended up as part of the 37% increase in the shelter population.

Schools Klein/Bloomberg Are Closing Had Huge Increase In Homeless Students

Education deformers like Mayor Moneybags, Joel Klein, Arne Duncan, President Obama and their hedge fund manager/education reform buddies like to say that when children do not graduate on time or show increased improvement on their standardized test scores, it is the fault of the schools they attend and the teachers who teach in those schools.

This year, Klein and Moneybags are closing 20 public schools in New York, citing low graduate rates and stagnant test scores as reasons why the schools need to be closed and the teachers need to be fired.

But the Daily News points out some other reasons why students at those schools might not be doing so well:

All but one of the city schools slated for closure were grappling with more than failing test scores last year - they also saw a massive spike in homeless students.
At 19 of the 20 schools that the Education Department announced last month it plans to shut down, the number of homeless kids jumped by more than 100%.

The increase swamped social workers and left principals scrambling for after-school funding to give kids a place to go after classes ended, teachers and administrators say.

At Public School 332 in Bushwick, Brooklyn, there were 95 homeless children enrolled last year - close to one in five students. That's up from just 23 the year before.

"It's not just about academics," said Vanecia Wilson, a science teacher at PS332. "They come in with a lot of stress."

Her school runs an after-school program that serves dinner and provides tutoring. The constant turnover can make it hard for the children to keep up, Wilson said.

Children start in the middle of the semester and sometimes disappear when they transfer shelters.

...

The number of homeless students rose citywide last year, as the economic crisis cloaked the city. But the spike at all but one of the closing schools far exceeded the 20% citywide average.

"The [Education Department] has taken aggressive action to help address the profound challenges faced by students in temporary housing," department spokesman Danny Kanner said.

The Panel for Educational Policy will vote Jan. 26 on whether to approve the shutdown of the 20 schools deemed failing by the Education Department.

Jevommey, a ninth-grader at Christopher Columbus High School in the Bronx, began living in a shelter last June.

"It can be hard to do your homework because there's no privacy," said Jevommey, 17, who travels two hours to Columbus from a shelter in Brooklyn. "The classes are nice. I didn't want to change schools."

"It's so difficult for the child," said Christine Rowland, an English teacher at Columbus, where the number of homeless students soared by almost 200%.

"Lots of students think of this school as a home, but for some, it's more of a first home than a second home."

These schools have been dealing with many other socio-economic problems beyond huge increases in homeless students this year.

Many saw huge increases of at-risk students from other schools that have been closed by Klein and Moneybags the last few years. Many are located in neighborhoods with terrible unemployment and high rates of poverty and addiction.

But of course Klein and Bloomberg lay sole blame for the "failure" of these students on the schools and the teachers who teach in them.

Same goes for Obama and Duncan in D.C.

Poverty, homelessness, unemployment, and generations of learned dysfunction have nothing to do with students who do not graduate on time or score high on standardized tests.

It's the schools and the teachers who are to blame.

You can keep closing all the schools you want and fire all the teachers you want, but until the socio-economic problems of poverty, addiction, unemployment, homelessness, and learned dysfunction passed on from generation to generation are addressed, nothing will change.

But that's a lot harder to do than close schools and fire teachers, isn't it?