New Cities/New Soviets

June 24, 2004

Bloomberg promises to reduce homeless by 2/3rds

...with well-placed cuts.

The news has this story all wrong. It should read something more like this:

Mayor of offers unfunded dreams, attacks housing rights

NEW YORK, June 23

Earlier today, autistic billionaire Michael Bloomberg unveiled his plan to undermine the right to housing in New York City. Overflowing with flowery rhetoric about ending homelessness, he promised more supportive housing units despite having no clear source of funding. At the same time, he continues his vendetta against the Emergency Assistance Unit, the de facto bottom rung of the housing system, and the only protection many of the city's homeless against a life on the street.

During the last decade, the real estate industry has made a bonanza at the expense of New Yorkers. The homeless shelter population has more than doubled, to 38,000, while the number of affordable housing units (those costing less than $600 a month) has dropped by half a million, etc, etc, etc...

The point is, this is classic: promise a few full-service units (which housing activists have been asking for), in exchange for reducing eligibility for people coming in off the streets. Basic con.

Housing security in the city is about mass low-cost housing, free housing for the unemployed and those unable to work, and available services for those who need them, not an elaborate administration for a few "noble" (or lucky) to pass elaborate tests. Everyone deserves a place to live. Period.

Posted by Sam at June 24, 2004 01:30 AM

con con con

check out the boomberg
we'd have
if we were building
say 2 million
units per annum
of public funded
rent mins nation wide
simple ecomomics here
but
bushwackonomics
prohibits
such ground rent crushers


ps meat me mean streek
requires adding
need to repeal "prevailing wage' laws
to tit twist
the con union rascals
of course

Posted by: meat me at June 25, 2004 10:02 AM

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