By Steve Levy
One of the greatest tragedies of liberal rule in our inner cities is the indifference of left-leaning mayors and city councils to homeless encampments that sprout up in parks, sidewalks and subways.
More common-sense leaders would provide empathy for the homeless by giving them shelter and services, but also making sure that they would not be able to pop up a tent on a sidewalk or a park in ten-degree weather as they continue their drug habits.
Many folks thought New York City was ungovernable in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s. Then, new commonsense leadership came in with Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg that empowered the police to get the criminals off the streets and to help the homeless by giving them shelter, rather than allowing them to take over public spaces.
Their policies worked like a charm, and New York became a pleasant, safe and enjoyable place that attracted residents, workers and tourists. It was the golden age of New York City. But then New Yorkers, who took these changes for granted, elected into office the Marxist Bill de Blasio, who started to reverse the progress.
de Blasio and his housing czar, Stephen Banks, believed that we were helping the homeless by allowing them to just take over public spaces as their own. Not only did the quality of life for the city diminish significantly as a whole, but so did the quality of life for the very homeless that de Blasio was trying to help.
A United States Supreme Court decision last year confirmed that local leaders have the right to put in place rational policies related to the homeless that provide them with care and shelter, but does not make it a constitutional right to just take over public spaces.
Mayor Eric Adams, who had a flawed reign as mayor, at least got this right toward the end of his tenure. He, along with the outstanding police commissioner Jessica Tisch, started to take down homeless camps and everyone benefited.
But now, New York City will be led by a communist who is going to go back to allowing the homeless to set up camp anywhere they desire.
So when you’re on your way to work and have to step over homeless people on the sidewalk or in the subways again, or if you’re trying to enjoy your day in the park, but all the benches are taken up by the homeless, or if you’re now going to be on a free city bus where the homeless will camp out in the backseat, you’ll have no one to blame but yourselves if you helped Zohran Mamdani get into office.
After all, he told you he was going to do it, and you voted for him anyway. You have no excuse.