Homelessness in NYC Highest Since Great Depression

Borg Refinery

Borg Refinery

Active member
  • In recent years, homelessness in New York City has reached the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
  • In July 2022, there were 52,137 homeless people, including 16,650 homeless children, sleeping each night in New York City’s main municipal shelter system. A near-record 18,940 single adults slept in shelters each night in July 2022.
  • Over the course of City Fiscal Year 2021, 107,510 different homeless adults and children slept in the New York City Department of Homeless Services (DHS) shelter system. This includes 31,947 homeless children.
  • Families entering shelters predominantly come from a few clustered zip codes in the poorest neighborhoods in New York City. However, homeless families and single adults come from every community district in NYC prior to entering shelters.
  • The number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping each night in municipal shelters is now 15 percent higher than it was 10 years ago. The number of homeless single adults is 87 percent higher than it was 10 years ago.
  • Research shows that the primary cause of homelessness, particularly among families, is lack of affordable housing. Surveys of homeless families have identified the following major immediate, triggering causes of homelessness: eviction; doubled-up or severely overcrowded housing; domestic violence; job loss; and hazardous housing conditions.
  • Research shows that, compared to homeless families, homeless single adults have higher rates of serious mental illness, addiction disorders, and other severe health problems.
  • Each night thousands of unsheltered homeless people sleep on New York City streets, in the subway system, and in other public spaces. There is no accurate measurement of New York City’s unsheltered homeless population, and recent City surveys significantly underestimate the number of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers.
  • Studies show that the large majority of unsheltered homeless New Yorkers are people living with mental illness or other severe health problems.
  • Black and Hispanic/Latinx New Yorkers are disproportionately affected by homelessness. Approximately 56 percent of heads of household in shelters are Black, 32 percent are Hispanic/Latinx, 7 percent are White, less than 1 percent are Asian-American or Native American, and 4 percent are of unknown race/ethnicity.
  • In City Fiscal Year 2021, the average length of stay in the DHS shelter system was 483 days for single adults, 520 days for families with children, and 773 days for adult families.
  • In November 2019, DHS estimated that 77 percent of adult families, 68 percent of single adults, and 53 percent of families with children sleeping in shelters had at least one disability. (..)
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There seems to be a lot of corruption in NYC and NY state among public officials and others in positions of responsibility, so that appears to be part of it:

Shelter Operator Cited for Nepotism Still Gets Millions in City Funds​

New York officials found misspending by African American Planning Commission, which runs homeless shelters, but public money continued to flow.
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That is absolutely inexcusable.
 
"There seems to be a lot of corruption in NYC and NY state among public officials" O #1
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Corruption is an extremely broad spectrum, from taking a government office pen home from work, to conspiring to bury the corpses of their political enemies.

For generations I'd believed, in part because it is what I wished to believe, that corruption was the exception, not the rule. But in the past decade I'm finding that honest public servants in my New York State jurisdiction may be as rare as hen's teeth.

"Arab Spring" was a backlash against petty government corruption. It was Mohamed Bouazizi the Tunisian that reached his tolerance limit that sacrificed himself, precipitating the Arab Spring movement.

PS
Mayor Eric Adams has served the people of New York City as an NYPD officer, State Senator, Brooklyn Borough President, and now as the 110th Mayor.

I'm not sure Mayor Adams can solve these problems. But I have little doubt about his sincerity in wishing to.
 
You're quite a fan of AOC, isn't this right? AOC appears not to be a fan of Mayor Eric Adams at all - just saying.

The political pleasantries didn’t last long.

Immediately after appearing together in public for the first time Friday, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., took aim at Mayor Adams’ plan to erect a migrant tent camp in her district, charging that there’s a “better solution” to be had.

The progressive congresswoman, who’s had a simmering beef with the more moderate-minded mayor for months, offered the rebuke in a brief interview with the Daily News on the steps of City Hall following a press conference with Adams on an unrelated topic.

“I think we can get to a place with a better solution here,” Ocasio-Cortez said when asked about the tent facilities being built in the Bronx’s Orchard Beach parking lot to house upward of 1,000 Latin American migrants.

Ocasio-Cortez said she also ”very much“ sides with ”the sentiment” of Bronx Borough President Vanessa Gibson, who raised a number of concerns about the Orchard Beach site earlier this week, including poor transit access and susceptibility to flooding.
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She has a point, that does sound quite messed up, right?
 
"You're quite a fan of AOC, isn't this right?" O #3
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I was pretty sure who (what) "AOC" was, but had to search it to verify:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez - The youngest Congresswoman
An inspiring picture book biography of Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. A stunning and accessible book for young readers from award-winning creators. Sign Up For News. Shop Online. View Events Calendar. Highlights: Customer Service Available, Catalogs Available.
https://www.harpercollins.com/
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We haven't cyber-known one another long O #3. That's why I'm puzzled about your question. I don't recall ever mentioning AOC here, not since we first cyber-met.
I vehemently abhor labels. I am not a label. But for clarity I'm a life-long classical conservative. I strongly support smaller less intrusive government. I'm opposed to laws that punish adult citizens from harming no one except argumentatively themselves.
I stridently opposed Bush's U.S. military invasion of Iraq. History has demonstrated the validity of my position.
I advocate for balanced federal budgets.
I advocate privatizing Social Security. Government should never administer such programs. Government's role is to regulate, not administer.

I eagerly welcome you explaining why you would think me an AOC fan.

I don't know enough about AOC to know if she's a classical conservative or not.

Regarding tents in NYC:
The political "tent" story that comes to my mind was Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County Arizona. I wouldn't get too worked up about "tent". What matters more is inside temperature. If it's late Summer and the temperature in the tent is comfortable, safe for human habitation, and there are no more conventional accommodations available, my concerns would not be prohibitive.
I gather Mayor Adams has a problem to solve. I wouldn't reflexively assume Adams has a much more humanitarian solution at hand, but is inflicting a tent ploy out of sadistic malice. I welcome detail that supports or refutes my position on that, or any other topic I post about in these fora.
 
Ah fair enough, had you pegged as a proggy more or less based on some correspondence we had, either here, or over on the Round Table in the 1-5 ish posts I made on there.

It appears I have either misremembered or somehow mixed up another conversation, in any case I think I called you a proggy one or more times here and you didn't appear to reject the label, so I thought you were at least semi-embracing it or I would've thought you'd correct me - as I did not label you in a pejorative way - just a descriptive way (a wrongly descriptive way it appears).

In any case, do you support Joe Biden over Trump? Just curious as we have moved over to this topic away from OP a little.

Re the NYC problem, I agree about the temperature point.
 
O #5,
"Proggy" = progressive?
That's an annoying detail about being conservative. The root word of "conservative" is "conserve". Trumpies may claim to be conservative not because they endorse the socio-political agenda, but because they want the prestige of the label, but don't have the character to earn it.
Reductio ad absurdum: original intent, strict construction, conservative absolutists would still be commuting to their job at the general store on horseback.

I'm not an absolutist. My car may not yet have anti-gravity suspension. But it does have air-conditioning, and power windows, Vivaldi, Haydn, & Brahms on the stereo. I'm certainly not opposed to progress (he posted from his computer, on the Internet).
I'm just not eager for anything new & different. I prefer to stick with what works well, until something superior replaces it.

t #6,
My political "ear" has grown thick calluses from their worldview of daily catastrophe. Biden's made his share of blunders. The student loan idea simply seems ill-considered to me. As a conservative I believe for the same cost to the tax payer could have yielded better educational results. But even that isn't an endorsement of the underlying idea.

In the U.S. education is "$free" (the student doesn't pay until after graduation when s/he joins the tax roles). But the K through 12 standard was established in a simpler world, when a citizen could expect to earn a comfortable living, raise a family, enjoy a safe workplace with a high school education, and a little OJT.
Blue collar middle class may be a vanishing breed.
I'm not smart enough, informed enough to know whether, or how far to revise that. BUT what I'm concerned about as a conservative: if our economic competitors apply a K through 14 standard, and out-compete us, we'll have signed the warrant for our own decline.
That's why I consider a minimum education standard for the U.S. a matter of national security.

Regarding Biden, I sense he's just not quite up to it. And while some leaders have successfully compensated with staff, the Biden team doesn't quite seem to be filling in the gaps.
 
titan, the Republicans hold the weaker hand. The problem is the Democrats may be better organized, better coordinated. Is their agenda substantially superior? At least some of the criticism Republicans hurl at Democrats seem true, despite the predictable partisan embellishment.
Speaker Pelosi (D) is 82. President Biden (D) will be 80 before Christmas. That's odd for the more progressive of the two parties.
 
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