NEW YORK
Homelessness reaches levels of Great Depression
By Heather Cottin
A scourge is haunting the capital of capitalism:
homelessness. Not since the Great Depression has New York City
seen such growth in the number of families and individuals who
turn to the overcrowded municipal homeless shelters for
refuge.
In a report titled "State of the Homeless 2003," the New
York Coalition for the Homeless has revealed the appalling fact
that homelessness has grown by over 200 percent since the
housing crisis first reappeared during the Reagan era. The
decision by banks and city government to decrease New York's
affordable low-income housing stock has favored landlords and
forced thousands into destitution since the 1980s, even as the
economy was booming for most of this time.
The report indicates that homelessness primarily affects
families with children. This winter children composed 50
percent of New York City's homeless.
Children and families made up 79 per cent of those seeking
shelter last year--double what it was five years ago. Home less
ness among individuals has risen as well.
One way the city deals with families facing homelessness is
to purchase temporary housing in the form of "scattered site
units." That is a euphemism for the practice of paying
landlords $100 a night to house families. Landlords then turn
the families out on the streets. They are forced right back
into the fetid homeless shelters, which are unable to handle
the growing numbers of poor and working people who can no
longer afford to pay rent.
By supporting the landlords at $3,000 a month per apartment,
the city is contributing to the housing crisis for the poor.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg is effectively reducing the number of
apartment units available at reasonable rents. Rental prices
are thus artificially manipulated up ward, simultaneously
creating more home lessness and more profit for the mayor's
landlord constituency.
The number of low-rent apartments in New York City shrank
from over 1 million to fewer than 500,000 in the 1990s.
Because of a 1981 court ruling, Callahan vs. Carey, the
administration of Rudolph Giuliani was prevented in 2000 from
evicting homeless people from New York City shelters. The court
had ruled that individuals who face "physical, mental or social
dysfunction" have the right to temporary haven in a public
shelter.
Bloomberg has decided to ignore the ruling, and force
homeless adults out of the shelters and into the streets after
30 days. Bloomberg, like Giuliani before him, would evict men
and women, many of whom are veterans or mentally disabled.
Charles Dickens would find Bloom berg's scheme to break up
destitute families incredible. The plan would place all
homeless children in foster homes and throw their parents out
into the streets.
Bloomberg, a multi-billionaire, is displaying the depravity
of capitalism and the transparent superficiality of the
bourgeois class, which pretends to care about "family
values."
The report says there are now 40,000 homeless in New York
City. That's an 82 percent increase over 1998. The cost of one
day of war on Iraq could provide comfortable apartments for all
of them, with plenty left over for other social needs.
Reprinted from the March 6, 2003, issue of
Workers World newspaper
This article is copyrighted
under a Creative
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