The world’s biggest business capital is New York City. Where competition is the key to success.Whichever city or state that makes the most money is known to be the most successful.In each success story, there are also the downfalls; in our case, that would-be New York City’s poverty rates. While the city is being praised for what they are doing well, the public ignores the facts of what they are doing wrong. NYC has lots of attractions where people around the world come to visit yet the amount of poverty and poor in NYC is out of hand. A typical combination of research to work hand in hand shows the reality of how ‘successful’ the world’s biggest business capital is. To see what the definition of our morals is, what makes us known to be successful in the world? Being a business capital with plenty of resources there should be the right amount of decent support for the people that are not financially stable.
The articles and sites that were evaluated to get an understanding of NYC’s poverty situation compromise the facts and idea of how much poverty is in NYC and what is being done to support the impecunious. The following sites are New York Daily News, The New York Times, New York Health Foundation, and Coalition for the Homeless. The articles provide background information of data and information of what has been done and being done to deal with poverty in New York City, NY. NYC is 468.48sq miles and has 20 homeless shelters; where each one lacks some living necessity (Basic Facts About Homelessness: New York City, 2017). The base for support has to be active for it to reach out correctly to others. One idea that has been expressed in all of the articles is the amount of money being used to cover for the poverty rates in NYC, there is also the common theme of how NYC’s poverty rates are going up and more money is being used. Showing a moderate correlation of covering up problems with money but also showing no success.
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
Being homeless is a situation whereby a person does not have a place to call home or somewhere to spend the night comfortably. Most homeless people are usually poor individuals who are unable to pay their rents due to lack of jobs individuals suffering from mental sickness. Such people face a lot of problems in the streets, from insecurity, health hazards in the streets and chilling temperatures at night. The paper takes an in-depth analysis of homelessness in New York and the causes of homelessness.
Basic Facts About Homelessness: New York City. (2017). Coalition for The Homeless
Retrieved from: http://www.coalitionforthehomeless.org/basic-facts-about-homelessness-new-york-city/
This site puts together the many facets of NYC’s modern homelessness. The basic facts of what one should know when going into the world of homelessness in NYC. Due to NYC has a huge general population, this page provides a split up of what should be kept in mind to understand all facts of what is happening entirely. There are many ways the information is divided up, for topics are split to be understood in full detail of what is the crisis. All of the facts provided on the site have been researched making most crucial factors reliable. One major key that made this site stand out is the fact of how recently the rates of homelessness have become as high as the 1930s during The Great Depression. With most facts that are provided everything is kept up to date which also allows the site to be reliable.
The issue of homelessness has become common place in the contemporary world over the past three decades. New York, regarded as the world’s biggest business center, hosts thousands of homeless individuals majorly black African Americans. Indeed, recent research shows that the level of homelessness has reached a historic high and interventions will be required sooner or later. The coalition for the homeless reports that the rates of homelessness experience in New York today were last witnessed during the Great Depression. The coalition for the homeless is a non-profit making organization that advocates for the rights of the homeless by demanding for better housing on their behalf.
Available statistics show that 60,000 people from over 15,000 families currently reside in the streets of New York. What is more disheartening being that 30% of these homeless individuals are children who need education and a comfortable place to call home? In 2016 alone, more than 100,000 homeless women, children, and men lived in the New York municipal shelters. In an attempt to address the homelessness menace, New York city council provides temporary shelters for homeless families. The coalition for the further homeless reports that the number of homeless New Yorkers currently living in the municipal shelters is 76% higher than it was a decade ago.
A study has found out that the primary cause of homelessness in New York is the ever-soaring house rents. Landlords have taken advantage of New York population and the high demand for housing to increase rents annually. The report shows that a vast majority of the public earn minimal wages hence cannot raise the required rents. Domestic violence, job losses, and overcrowded housing are also attributed to the rising figures. Data further show that a majority of homeless individuals suffer severe mental problems with the prevalence being higher for the single adults. African Americans make up 58% of homeless New York population. Latinos come second at 31%, and 7% of the homeless individuals are white Americans.
Durkin Erin (2015). De Blasio pushes blame in city’ back onto Gov. Cuomo: ‘ governor to step up.’ Daily News.
Retrieved from: http://www.nydailynews.com/new-york/manhattan/de-blasio-cuomo-care-city-homeless-article-1.2446418
Here the dispute is broken down between the mayor and the governor of NYC to see what the government officials are doing. To get an understanding and base of what type of support and problems occur when the mayor and the governor are supposed to step in. This gives a good understanding of what a person should not miss in between, because there is quote unquote help for the poor but what type of aid.
The main key here is how the faults of the mayor and governor come out while they are pointing fingers at each other, you see the gaps and the mistakes that they ignore, but other people pay dearly. The state of NY citizens taxes is being used irresponsibly for the poor, instead of money being addressed directly to the problem it is only made worse by paying bills of the symptoms instead of giving out the immunization in the first place.
New York two most influential leaders tasked with the responsibility of ensuring the safety of the people they represent have resorted to blaming games and pointing fingers at each other instead of studying the problem and finding sustainable solutions to curb homelessness. The state, mayor and New York governor have always traded accusations on each other for the skyrocketing number of homeless people in New York.
Additionally, the move by the state to cut funding meant to provide shelter for the homeless has significantly contributed to the rising number of homeless people in New York. The city municipality under the mayor spends heavily on putting up temporary structures to house the homeless instead of building permanently affordable homes for the homeless. New York state spends approximately $825 million annually to aid homeless people, but no significant change has been made. The majority of the residents in the temporary structures end up in the streets due to overcrowding in the facilities and poor conditions in them.
Thousands of families live in pathetic conditions in the streets of New York. The governor claims that the city mayor lacks a strategic policy to solving the shortage of affordable and quality housing in New York. He further alleges that the mayor has a habit of throwing money at the problem without a clear agenda of how the municipal is going to address the issue of homelessness in the city. The municipal plans to invest an overwhelming $1 billion dollars in putting up permanent homes for the poor.
Frazier Ian (2013). Hidden City. The New Yorker.
Retrieved from:
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/10/28/hidden-city
NYC homelessness rates go up more and more by the year, yet some shelters do not. This report shows the history of what has been done about homelessness in NY before. As time went on the quality of help went down. Here it is also expressed how shelters quality today do not give the essential needs for life from enough living space to health aid. One thing that makes this site dependable and reliable is the way correlation between shelter history and the mayor’s actions are put together. There is a combination of interviews, history, and other reports allowing many connections to be made about homelessness.
The number of Homeless people has skyrocketed in New York in the past decade. Data on the number of homeless people shows that one in every hundred children residing in New York lacks a place to call home. The number of adults benefiting from the homeless program has risen significantly during the Bloomberg administration. Experts suggest that 47% of patients who were released from a psychiatric hospital in the 1970s ended up in the streets leading to the increase in street families evidenced today.
In 2007, the advantage program was unveiled. The program aimed at housing homeless families by paying up to 30% of the difference between an apartment’s market price and the beneficiary’s income. A year later, D.H.S commissioner announced that no recipient of the program had gone back to the streets. This, however, did not last since the government stopped the subsidy program due to financial constraints. The collapse of the program made many families return to the streets since they could not pay their rents without the support from the government.
New York Mayor Bloomberg says that claims by the Coalition for the homeless that the number of homeless people is greater than it was during the Great Depression are outrageous and unfounded. He argues that during the Great Depression time were much tough than it currently is. Most New Yorkers firmly believe that the number of homeless people has significantly increased and is much higher than it was in the previous years. Homeless people with children live in constant fear that their children might be taken away from them to live in foster homes. Homeless families are always moving from one side of the street to the other in search of food and casual jobs such as plumbing. Life in and outside the streets is a familiar cycle to many New York families.
When jobs are available and times are good, some of the families move to cheap apartments, but they never last long in the houses. In 2002, sixteen-year old boy committed suicide when he learned that his family had to back to stay in the old Emergency Assistance Unit. Many homeless people frequently spent the night in the building. The room was small, had limited ventilation and had a nill smell. The building was brought down during the Bloomberg administration, and quality shelters were set up instead.
Gibson DW (2017). New York Spends $1.2 Billion a Year on Homelessness. New York Magazine.
Retrieved from: http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/03/nyc-homelessness-crisis.html
This site gives personal insight, to understand the personal struggles of being a homeless person in NYC. It gives the sense of how a person can become homeless, what drags them down, and what makes it hard to stop being homeless. This writing piece has eight interviews of individuals that are homeless and how the government tries to chip in to help, but they are putting a band-aid on something that needs to be disinfected in the first place. There is also a variation of different types of homeless people where all of them are not in shelters and are striving to live by their support only. This site helps to cover all viewpoints that homeless people go through, so all sides are understood and explained; also with the interviews, we get an idea of exactly how much each person can get help when they are in need of it.
Although drug dependency and mental health problems have fora long time been believed to be the primary cause of homelessness experts, do not seem to agree. Statistics show that the ever-soaring rents and stagnant wages are the leading causes of homelessness in New York City. According to a study, rent increased by 19% in New York while annual income decreased by 6.3%. Within the same period, the number of homeless people in the city rose from 22000to nearly 50000. Many individuals find this to be quite overwhelming and therefore resort to street life. Employers and the government, therefore, need to harmonize salaries to reflect on the country's economy to make life easy for a vast majority of New York residents.
A few people who manage to secure housing or benefit from the housing scheme initiated by the government have a lot of issues with the system. From being subjected to inhumane treatment to being forced to live under restrictions and constant supervision. They are not allowed to receive visitors at any time of the day or purchase skates for their children due to security concerns. The majority of the residents live from hand to mouth since the wages they are paid cannot sustain them and their families. Many learned people with degrees are also forced to live in the streets and do odd jobs just to make ends due to lack of employment and peanuts their employers pay them.
Conclusion
The government and all the concerned parties should act swiftly to solve the unprecedented rate of homelessness being experienced in New York. Charity and constant donations do not do much to address the situation. Such moves only provide short term solutions as they do not obliterate the homeless from the streets. Jobs, better wages, and affordable housing have the potential of eradicating the problem of homelessness in New York. The New York leadership should work together to ensure the issues affecting their people have solved amicably.
