Homelessness is a chronic problem in NYC, and it obviously gets worse when the economy is bad. For decades the city government has struggled with ways to deal with this problem, including shelters, drug rehab, subsidized apartments, you name it. Rates of homelessness rise and fall but the homeless have never entirely disappeared from our streets.
But maybe that will change.
Mayor Bloomberg has developed a program where the city tries to hook up homeless people with family members who live out of town. The city literally buys them a ticket out of New York and, in some cases, provides money to the families who have agreed to take in their homeless relatives.
So if you're homeless in NYC these days, the city will do everything it can to give you a helping hand ... to leave it.
This plan sounds both sensible and mean. Sensible: it dispatches the homeless from our streets and our shelters and reunites them with family. Mean: it basically says that the city can't and won't do anything more to help these poor souls and shifts the burden of taking care of them to others.
Sensible and mean ... so is life.
But maybe that will change.
Mayor Bloomberg has developed a program where the city tries to hook up homeless people with family members who live out of town. The city literally buys them a ticket out of New York and, in some cases, provides money to the families who have agreed to take in their homeless relatives.
So if you're homeless in NYC these days, the city will do everything it can to give you a helping hand ... to leave it.
This plan sounds both sensible and mean. Sensible: it dispatches the homeless from our streets and our shelters and reunites them with family. Mean: it basically says that the city can't and won't do anything more to help these poor souls and shifts the burden of taking care of them to others.
Sensible and mean ... so is life.
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