New York City Mayor Eric Adams deserves a great deal of blame for the surge in illegal aliens entering New York City over the past year and a half. His repeated bragging about New York City being a welcoming sanctuary city indeed rolled out the red carpet for people around the world to come here illegally and demand services.
This irresponsible action led to incredible strains on our housing shelters and social safety network. But Adams is now complaining that it’s costing the city $4 billion a year to care for all these migrants. Well, Mr. Mayor, it’s your fault. It’s also your fault for not calling out the president earlier for his open border policies. The answer is not to get more money from the feds; it’s to pressure the feds to control the border as it was when the new administration took office.
But there was one silver lining in that Adams has been tough on homeless encampments. https://gothamist.com/news/migrants-budding-tent-encampment-under-the-bqe-in-brooklyn-dismantled-by-city-officials
Many mayors from Seattle to Philadelphia have taken the attitude that the homeless have a civil right to take over public places and declare it as their home. Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg did not tolerate such chaos. Unfortunately, Mayor de Blasio did, which has resulted in a massive homeless explosion.
Adams gets it that we have the legal ability to disassemble these tent cities or deny people taking all their belongings and claiming a piece of a sidewalk or park as their own.
The homeless need shelter and assistance. Allowing them to take over public spaces where they defecate in the street, publicly shoot up with heroin, and deny others access to public areas is not the answer.