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Earlier this month, I posted a rant on Medium.com, explaining why New York’s feckless leadership has forced me to leave the city. As homelessness and crime skyrocket and residents suffer a decline in their quality of life, I wrote, Mayor de Blasio and members of the City Council seem unwilling or unable to do anything about it. After The Post reprinted my words and put them on the front page, my message went viral, and I’ve heard from a lot of New Yorkers ever since.
Some of the reaction was negative.
“Save your white tears,” posted one commenter, who also appears to be white.
“I am sorry that your yuppie NYC life has been disrupted by a global pandemic,” wrote another. “People are becoming homeless because they are losing their jobs and you are upset because you have not gotten to go to rooftop parties?”
Even homeless advocate Cea Weaver took to Twitter to bash me: “Extremely glad this person is gone from NYC and encourage those who share his analysis of the homeless to leave (well before in 2021 please).” Public Advocate Jumaane Williams has tapped Weaver for the City Planning Commission, which just proves our leaders are not only out of touch with regular, taxpaying New Yorkers, but actually want us all to suffer for not participating in their brand of activism.
Mostly, however, the response to my post has been overwhelmingly positive. In the last week, about 100 people have reached out to me via Twitter, LinkedIn and Medium. Lately, I’ve been on conference calls two to three times a day with community organizers and moderate Democrats running for public office. Much of the conversation is about organizing a voting bloc, and gathering all of the neighborhood groups (like @savetheUWS and @NYUnited4Change) into one larger organization that represents the concerns of the people at large. With primaries coming up, time is of the essence.
Many New Yorkers are fed up with their leaders, who’d rather virtue signal than get anything done. One concerned citizen is Nicole Palame, a former mental health professional turned political organizer with InformNYC.org. If anyone speaks from a place of compassion regarding our city’s mentally ill, it’s her. After she was attacked on 63rd and Lexington on a December morning by a person who was both homeless and mentally ill, Palame has been demanding reasonable solutions from City Council members Ben Kallos and Helen Rosenthal. So far, she said, it’s been an uphill battle.
“The mental health situation within the homeless situation is not being addressed,” Palame told me. “Adequate services are not being provided, and their issues are now being poured out from the shelters into the streets. We see the same scenarios play out every day in the random attacks on our streets and subways. We are failing these people every bit as much as we are failing the neighborhoods the homeless shelters are in.”
After watching New York City businesses leave or shut down amid the pandemic, Stacey Richman, a lawyer and lifelong New Yorker, also wants to see change. “Local policy must drive the economy and create jobs, which in turn serves the community by creating opportunity and hope,” she told me. “Cities have died in the history of our nation when business leaves. Business creates jobs — from the fruit guy to the restaurant, from the tradesman to the innovator. Each, in turn, provides a job that feeds a child.”
Despite what some say, it’s clear that lots of New Yorkers feel exactly like I do. They’re sick of living in fear, and no longer feel safe taking the subway, or walking their dog in broad daylight. They worry their child might be attacked in the street, and rightly so.
While “quality of life” sounds like a term used by rich people who complain about not being able to go out for martinis, it really just means how safe you feel when walking to Duane Reade. When de Blasio started out as mayor, there were an estimated 53,000 homeless people in New York City. The last estimate for the homeless population in 2019 was north of 80,000 — and that was before the pandemic.
If this is progress, then what’s failure?
Even though I was forced out of my Chelsea apartment, I’m beginning to feel a call to return to the city. Now is the time for us to come together to help solve these issues and speak truth to power — whether it be the profiteers of the Homeless Industrial Complex, or politicians who ignore the needs of the many to pander to their most extreme voter base.
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