Homelessness Hypocrisy
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The faltering economy is to blame for the increase in the number of homeless New Yorkers, officials of the Coalition for the Homeless said at their annual “State of the Homeless” event yesterday. A senior policy analyst for the coalition, Patrick Markee, blamed what the group called a record increase in homelessness on, among other things, the economy, government policies, and — the advocates’ all-time favorite fungible term — “lack of affordable housing.”
The idea that an economic downturn will lead to some people losing their homes is hard to dispute. But we find reason to question Mr. Markee’s consistency. After all, it was only on December 27, 2000, that Mr. Markee was quoted by the Associated Press as follows: “‘One of the perverse side effects of the strong economy is that rents have been going up,’ said Patrick Markee…’The majority of people who experience homelessness really just need some affordable housing assistance.'” Got that? A weak economy causes homelessness — and so does a strong one. In fact, the growth leads to homelessness meme is fairly widespread. Also in December of 2000, an article appeared in the American Prospect, penned by Kim Phillips-Fein, with the subhead “The richer they get in Manhattan, the more people are evicted in Brooklyn.”
The saddest part of Mr. Markee’s hypocrisy is that he is probably right on both counts. Some of the poor lose their houses when the economy tanks; and a strong economy raises housing costs, as it should, and prices some people out of the market. The problem is that, in New York City’s restrictive regulatory environment, proprietors and suppliers of housing are unable to respond properly to changing economic conditions. A boom in income should lead to a boom in construction, but a panoply of building regulations and environmental strictures, along with expensive unionized labor and rent control, prevents that from happening on the scale it otherwise would. Just don’t expect to hear Mr. Markee and his fellow “advocates” for the homeless call for unleashing the free market to keep people warm.
