With the city’s homeless population at a record high of 8,950 families, Mayor Bloomberg is moving quickly to provide emergency housing. But either as a result of his own inclinations or in response to the various court orders the city must adhere to in its housing policies, he is creating too many new beds too quickly. As our Benjamin Smith reports at page one of today’s New York Sun, three neighborhoods — Jackson Heights at Queens and Fort Greene and Prospect Heights at Brooklyn — are protesting the placement of new facilities to house the homeless, moves taken on short notice and without consultation. The mayor seems more concerned with the homeless, who are lieges of the state, than with the property owners and apartment renters who support the state to which the homeless look.

In Fort Greene, the city is converting a new building on the corner of the avenues of Park and Clermont into a temporary shelter for homeless families. The neighborhood, which has been booming these last few years, already hosts housing projects, two homeless shelters, and a lockup. On Monday, the city informed local officials that a newly constructed building would be used as a shelter and that it would begin “processing clients” as soon as this week. The community had no say in this decision, which will likely have a deleterious effect on real estate values, not to mention quality of life. No doubt some homeless people will abide by the community’s standards and the city’s laws. But generally the homeless are less likely to do this than those with homes.

Few dispute the mayor’s use of the word “unconscionable” to describe homeless persons sleeping on the floor of government offices. The less fortunate, those who have made poor life decisions, and those who are mentally ill all deserve help. The question is whether the mayor will be able to create support services for those he is parking peremptorily in neighborhoods around the city. Mr. Bloomberg’s statement last week that “I will do anything that we possibly can to get those people a bed” shows a hostility or disinterest to the concerns of the working- and middle-classes (wealthy neighborhoods, fairly or otherwise, rarely seem to end up hosts to homeless centers, Medicaid clinics, methadone clinics, and the like) reminiscent of Mayor Lindsay.

According to Council Member James Davis, who represents Fort Greene and has led the neighborhood’s protests, the city was in such a rush to get the shelter there open that it failed to wait for a certificate of occupancy. The game plan — if there was one and not merely undue haste — seemed to be to get the shelter through under the radar of the local leadership. The neighborhood has only been aware of these developments for two weeks, and that came about not as a result of notification by the city. It turns out that a woman who runs a day-care center on the block the homeless shelter will be placed on saw city workers unloading mattresses from an unmarked vehicle and sounded the alarm.

Mr. Bloomberg’s stated intention that “Any facility that meets the requirements that we have either under the law or court order, we will try to negotiate to get those facilities for the homeless,” strikes at the heart of this problem. It is a kinder way of saying that social service centers that provide services for members of society least capable of obeying its laws and institutions and mores will be built in neighborhoods without the money or political clout to put up fast and firm resistance. Fort Greene has more money and clout with each passing year but is still thought of as a home for social service facilities (its change, that is, has outpaced its reputation). It is well and good for Mr. Bloomberg to consider the homeless who are hoping for better, and to give them a leg up. Perhaps he might extend the same consideration to those with a roof over their head who are striving to improve their circumstance.