SOME in Maspeth, a neighbourhood in New York City’s Queens, were not at all pleased when they heard last year that City Hall had decided to convert a local hotel into a 110-bed homeless shelter. For months they held nightly protests in front of the hotel. They demonstrated outside the homes of the hotel’s owner and of the city’s homelessness commissioner. Eventually they wore down City Hall, which backed down a bit from a total conversion. Only 30 homeless men are housed in the hotel now. All of them have jobs. This is not unusual: more than one in ten of New York’s homeless people are employed.
Since 1979, when a homeless veteran of the Korean war successfully sued the city for failing to provide him with shelter, the city has had a legal duty to house those unable to afford a home. (New York’s state constitution says that “the aid, care and support of the needy are public concerns and shall be provided by the state and by such of its subdivisions.”) In recent years the number of homeless people has grown. Whereas rents increased by 18% between 2005 and 2015, incomes rose by 5%. When Rudy Giuliani entered City Hall in 1994, 24,000 people lived in shelters....Continue reading
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