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February 3, 2010
Children lead way in record New York homelessness
AFP
by Sebastian Smith
Why does it take the French wire service AFP to point out the irony in New York City's eviction of homeless families at the behest of Bruce Ratner while facing a homelessness crisis of epic proportions? We're lookin' at you, New York Times.
Kariana, aged three, has a lonely existence in the New York homeless shelter her parents moved into last year. Lonely, but not alone -- there are nearly 16,000 children just like her.
Homelessness in New York has soared as a result of the damaged US economy and children make up almost half of that growing population.
...New York's homelessness commissioner Robert Hess said record numbers are taking advantage of the city's guarantee to shelter.
"Given this terrible economic downturn we've seen -- the worst in our lifetimes, certainly here in New York -- we're seeing an unprecedented number of families with children coming into the shelter system," he told AFP in an interview.
Figures for January showed a total of 37,487 homeless people in the city, including 8,850 families with children. There were 15,853 children.
"We had 51 percent more applicants this year than two years ago of women with children," Hess said. "We've been adding capacity right and left in order to meet that demand."
By "adding capacity," Hess means "closing a homeless shelter on Martin Luther King Jr.'s birthday in sub-freezing temperatures so Bruce Ratner can create more facts on the ground before building a huge parking lot that might not be replaced for decades."
But activists paint a less hopeful picture of a city awash in money and run by multi-billionaire Mayor Michael Bloomberg, yet unable to care for its poor.
Maria Walles, who has been in and out of shelters with her husband and daughter since 2007, joined a handful of other homeless last week to protest outside the offices of Bruce Ratner, a major developer.
He is due to demolish a homeless shelter as part of a glitzy sports arena project in Brooklyn, one of the many works transforming formerly gritty areas of New York. The shelter, which housed some 80 families, was shut on January 15.
"I think it's dead wrong. My heart says, 'wow,'" Walles said. "Why close a shelter now when it's winter? All we asked was for it to be kept open until spring."
The city responds that it is always increasing shelter space, even going as far as renting from landlords of upscale apartment buildings erected in the boom years and left empty by the recession.
NoLand Grab: Are they joking? That program does far more to bail out the real estate speculators who overbuilt during the Bloomberg-fueled condo bubble than it does for homeless families.
Posted by eric at February 3, 2010 1:10 PM