We should judge our city on how it treats its most vulnerable, not how well it heeds the will of its most privileged and vocal minority.
The intensification of New York’s homeless crisis is one of the starkest examples of COVID’s impact in laying bare the deep inequalities across our city.
Many of the vacant hotels-turned-shelters which the City created to support the unprecedented stress on our already inadequate shelter system embodied the chasm between the haves and have nots.
Now, as wealthy communities mobilize against these emergency hotel shelters, we have seen the Mayor’s response to this moral litmus test. In the first major clash of this kind, pitting Upper West Side NIMBYs against the 300 individuals currently living in the Lucerne Hotel, he has bowed to misplaced community frustration and put in motion a relocation policy that is short-sighted, ineffective, and counter-productive.
… We should judge our city on how it treats its most vulnerable, not how well it heeds the will of its most privileged and vocal minority. Because, at the end of the day, the real question is: whose quality of life has suffered most from the scourge of homelessness? I think we all know the answer.
