After years of dumping unused properties to private developers, the city has announced it is damn tired of putting up homeless people who just won’t get an apartment already. A new plan, which the Times has an advance copy of, recommends charging shelter residents. I don’t know if anyone has told the sharp tacks who wrote this one, but if the homeless could pay rent, they would have an apartment already. This gem is built with the presumptive logic that proper programming would involve “moving resources away from emergency spending to the real solutions, which are prevention and housing.” That’s fine, but they aren’t offering numbers, plans or financing to do this. A subsequent plan is promised, but considering the big outlay, and biggest impact, will be the production of housing, rather than the collection of rent from people who don’t have a place to sleep, allow us a moment of incredulity on the likelihood of quality follow up. We’ll hold our breath for a short moment to see if the city can follow through, but given the spirit of current issuance, we’ll reserve the right to call ‘bullshit’ and offer a hearty ‘Fuck you, Mike.’ Let’s hope there is good cause to retract this comment, but the past twenty years of publicly funding housing solutions don’t provide much in the way of hope.
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Bloomberg to homeless: Drop Dead.
After years of dumping unused properties to private developers, the city has announced it is damn tired of putting up homeless people who just won’t get an apartment already. A new plan, which the Times has an advance copy of, recommends charging shelter residents. I don’t know if anyone has told the sharp tacks who wrote this one, but if the homeless could pay rent, they would have an apartment already. This gem is built with the presumptive logic that proper programming would involve “moving resources away from emergency spending to the real solutions, which are prevention and housing.” That’s fine, but they aren’t offering numbers, plans or financing to do this. A subsequent plan is promised, but considering the big outlay, and biggest impact, will be the production of housing, rather than the collection of rent from people who don’t have a place to sleep, allow us a moment of incredulity on the likelihood of quality follow up. We’ll hold our breath for a short moment to see if the city can follow through, but given the spirit of current issuance, we’ll reserve the right to call ‘bullshit’ and offer a hearty ‘Fuck you, Mike.’ Let’s hope there is good cause to retract this comment, but the past twenty years of publicly funding housing solutions don’t provide much in the way of hope.