Originally posted by mrsid2
Miko from what I heard from the news, emergency shelters in NY are overcrowded because of flood of people and can't house them all. The people interviewed were quite ordinary folks, whole families..
I don't know.. maybe our press is feeding us lies.
There are lies and there are exaggerations.
The shelter capacity in NYC is low (<8000 beds IIRC) and much lower then it used to be because they were not needed. There were plenty of jobs for whoever was willing to work and real homeless people refused to move into them.
For your information NYC is a very warm city - temperature almost never drops below freezing point and snow rarely stays more then a few days a year.
There are a lot of public places open 24 hours (like a subway system which is so huge and complex as to contain hundreds of stations) and several railroad systems, bus terminals, etc. Also many of the streets contain grid-covered vents in the pavement from which hot exhaust air from structures below can keep a sleeping person warm even if it's freezing.
Since it is illegal to prevent people from loitering in public places, many homeless live there. Their main objection to the sheters is, curiously, each others company - they do not want to stay with another people most of whom are mentally ill.
Now about the rest of us. Sept 11 attack rendered a few blocks of real prime estate uninhabitable. Since 1-bedroom appartment in Battery Park City starts at $2,500+ a month, those people while greatly inconvenienced, were not likely to end up on the street. They had to be placed in some kind of shelters like during any "regular" emergency - school gyms, ets, but they probably all got settled by now.
As for a regular joe who lost his job and cannot pay his rent - he is in a tough spot. Except that a landlord in New York cannot evict a tenant untill he is not paying rent for a few months. Then if everything is going well, the tenant can be evicted throug the Court of Law but the time for that (decision, not actual enforcement) was about 18 months. That was in good times before all that sh-t happened. I assume it is even longer now and landlords get less sympaty.
Setting aside the problems such law protection poses for landlords - who often require extensive verification of credit-worthiness from prospective tenants and have to jack up prices on the paying ones - thus the law hurting the tenants and prospective tenants (who need a home) to great extent.
Anyway, the recession started not that long ago and WTC tragedy happened even more recently, so it would be surprising if any people were evicted to become homless - just technically not possible.
There are obviously some sad cases even when economy is going full steam for a hard-working journalist to find and expose to the audience. But New York is a liberal democratic city and our newspaper would be as eager to jump on those stories and drag the city and state government through mud - considering that both are republicans. They do not do so for the obvious reason that a New Yorker, unlike an inhabitant of Finland, can step outside and see first hand what is going on.
If you care to check that, and at the same time help New York City and its people, show a finger to terrorists and have a good time - please come visit us!
We are hurting here but nowhere nearly as bad as some would wish we did.
miko
