Homelessness Emerges Again at New York City

Homelessness, fueled by liberal policies, is creeping back at New York City under Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Feature the blight of vagrant encampments that erupted on Manhattan’s West Side near the Intrepid Museum. After the disorderly array of tents sprang up, per the Wall Street Journal, “some parents crossed the museum off their activity list.” Yet Hizzoner is poised to announce a plan for homelessness that is likely to worsen the problem. Mr. Mamdani has already presided over a decline in the city’s quality of life by refusing to maintain Mayor Eric Adams’s low-tolerance policy for homeless encampments. These concentrations of vagrants are not only eyesores, but also pose health and safety concerns. They help to fuel a sense, too, of a city that has lost control of one of the basic functions of governance — maintaining public order.Such encampments, the Journal reports, are “clusters of makeshift structures that can span the length of half a city block.” Upon taking office Mr. Mamdani, per the Journal, “paused homeless sweeps” that were a hallmark of Mr. Adams’s tenure. The sweeps returned, but with “a policy of delaying removal of the structures for at least seven days,” the Journal reports. Yet critics gripe that the delay gives vagrants time to simply move their tents and structures.Some 5,000 vagrants reside in the city, a rise of some 11 percent over last year. The growth could be a result of a shift away from Mr. Adams’s approach, as Mr. Mamdani adopts what a spokesman calls a focus on “meaningful street outreach, stabilization options and supportive housing.” This strategy, ostensibly humanitarian, runs the risk of, in effect, enabling the homeless to stay on the streets instead of pushing them toward drug and mental health treatments.Looking at the problem nationally, liberals tend to favor spending money to give free housing, with in effect no strings attached, to homeless individuals. These programs often refuse to require residents “to maintain treatment or employment,” or “observe strict rules,” the Times reports. These programs are costly and fail to address the root cause of the problems, like mental illness and drug addiction, that lead people to become homeless.Yet at New York, the head of the Coalition for the Homeless, Dave Geffen, is among those who back Mr. Mamdani’s tactic of laxity on encampments. “Unless you’re offering people something that’s meaningful to them,” Mr. Geffen avers, “all you’re doing is chasing them around the city and making it harder to provide them with what they need in order to get stability.” The kind of “stability” he seems to advocate, though, comes at the expense of taxpayers.As Mr. Mamdani develops his new plan for homelessness, the wisdom of Mayor Rudy Giuliani resonates. The former mayor has lamented the resurgence of vagrancy. Policing of quality-of-life crimes was needed, Mr. Giuliani said, in part to help the homeless. As he put it, “you chase ’em and you chase ’em and you chase ’em and you chase ’em, and they either get the treatment that they need” or they decamp for localities more tolerant of disorder. New York’s challenge with homelessness is aggravated, too, by a 45-year-old court order, the Callahan decree, that mandates, based on a misreading of the state constitution, a “right to shelter” for vagrants. The decree ties the city’s hands when it comes to, say, imposing work or drug treatment requirements that would aid the homeless. It’s not our intention that New York turn its back on the needy, but the Callahan decree is overdue for revision.

Homelessness Emerges Again at New York City

Homelessness Emerges Again at New York City

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