Posted on 09/04/2020 2:29:24 PM PDT by Borges
I have been a resident of the Upper West Side for almost 15 years. In all of my years here, both single and now married and a mother of two young children, I have never felt unsafe. All that has recently changed.
A couple of years ago, we observed a noticeable uptick in the number of homeless, mentally ill and violent individuals in our neighborhood.
Along with these individuals came encampments, starting on streets in the West 60s and 70s, and extending far into the West 90s. Still, Upper West Siders carried on in a spirit of open-mindedness, compassion and goodwill.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, Mayor de Blasio’s disastrous decision to place about 700 homeless individuals (including sex offenders, convicted pedophiles, criminals, and active drug users) into hotels within a 10-block radius has burdened the neighborhood to the point of no longer feeling safe for children and families.
Pedophiles have been placed within easy walking distance of schools and playgrounds. Substance abusers have been placed near liquor stores (where nearby residents have photographed and videoed drug deals happening in broad daylight, and published them on Facebook). Restaurant owners complain that aggressive men are panhandling and harassing diners in outdoor spaces, while they are trying to keep their already struggling restaurants afloat. Mentally ill men are walking into coffee shops, pharmacies and other businesses shoplifting whatever they want — I’ve seen it with my own eyes.
It is now common to walk along Broadway near West 79th St. and come across a man defecating on the street between two parked cars, another group of men engaged in a brawl on the median, then see an individual passed out in front of a storefront with needles littered around him, to finally get to the subway stairs and find a mentally ill individual screaming, wielding a knife and demanding money.
Can you imagine having to walk with your children through such a scene? This is what we grapple with daily. (If you think this is an exaggeration, please join the Facebook group Upper West Siders for Safer Streets and see for yourself; evidence, complete with pictures and videos, is posted there on a regular basis.)
These men are not getting the help they so badly need — detox centers, rehabilitation, psychiatric help and job placement assistance, among other things. There are generally no common spaces in these hotels for them to spend their time, so they wander the neighborhood. The city says it has provided services, but they’re not in evidence to us, the residents of the neighborhood.
Longtime Upper West Siders are not the only victims here. The homeless individuals brought here with too little support are also victims, of an inept and corrupt government that dumps them from place to place while doing deals with the same hotel industry that donated handsomely to de Blasio. This is not compassion; it feels more like corruption.
A final note to those who cry NIMBYism and systemic racism. As a person of color and the daughter of immigrants — immigrants who worked hard to create a safe and secure life for themselves — playing the race card in this situation is the ultimate insult.
We have worked hard our whole lives to be able to raise our children in a safe, clean and family-friendly neighborhood. We have invested our time, money, interests and lives into the Upper West Side. The outrage over the rapid degradation of this neighborhood is not about race. It is about safety, security, cleanliness, decency and quality of life.
Racist!!!!!
It is about safety in the here and now, but sometimes one begins to take precautions based on experience. Welcome to the game many of us have had to play.
sounds like liberal paradise in EVERY city they have run for decades!
Elections have consequences. Hopefully New Yorkers will figure it out next time! Don’t forget AOC, also!
And you have consistently elected people who have enacted policies to take all that away from you.
You have to realize that NYC is totally a one party town, so half the time you couldn’t even vote GOP if you wanted to because there simply wasn’t a serious candidate.
That said, I grew up on the Upper West Side when it was wonderful in the 50s and 60s, moved away when things got hideous in the 70s, moved back when they were still hideous in the 80s (survived Dinkins)...and then came Giuliani.
So it’s been ups and downs. I think if the GOP could present a good strong candidate, he (or she) would win in a heart beat. The problem is that the GOP gets cut off downstream, so to speak, and nobody ever gets elected at a lower level and thus cannot rise to be a mayoral candidate.
I think you’d find a lot of New Yorkers would (of course, silently) be more than willing to vote for a Republican. It’s just that there aren’t any candidates.
I don’t know if “homeless hotels” is relevant here, but I was at the Gaylord Texan conference center/hotel earlier this week visiting a conference. It is a high-class, luxury venue, but there were a LOT of obvious gangster culture elements wandering around the facilities, evacuated from hurricane-ravaged areas of the Gulf Coast since group shelters are considered unsafe due to the scamdemic.
I didn’t feel safe either.
Yes dear and that’s what it is about for most of us most of the time. Hysteria to the contrary.
EXACTLY! And too stupid to realise it.
They can stay there.
The owners of the hotels, who don't live in the neighborhood, sold out the residents of Upper West Side in order to get New York City money to cover their vacancies due to Democrat decisions to lock down the city.
That’s California too. We have a one-party state, few options, no conservatives make it to the final vote, and of course vote-stealing and God only knows what else. And then, Pelosi the Hair Victim.
The big question is did she vote Democrat in the last election - if she did the hell with her and her kids. She’s reaping what she sowed
When did we stop committing people to mental institutions?
And why?
Upper West side leftists have campaigned to self-immolate. Now the time is at hand and they act iike they are surprised.
You with your compassion, open mindedness and good will voted these pukes into office and now you are concerned because its in your hood, enjoy!
This is a serious problem, and I think it’s a GOP problem because they simply will not get out and support candidates in hostile environments.
I volunteered at GOP offices in a Florida town during the first Bush election, and one time I picked up a call from a black guy who asked if we could come and put out door hangers in his neighborhood. He said a lot of people liked Bush’s message (the message was good, Bush was just totally incapable of following through on it) but they were afraid that somebody would think they were Republicans. I asked the office supervisor if we could just go and drop these off - I was willing to do it alone - and I was told “no,” because it wasn’t worth the time or the cost of the door hangers.
So that’s how we got to where we are now.
“When did we stop committing people to mental institutions?
And why?”
In the 60’s, when the liberals/Dems/protesters back then decided that all the mentally ill should have the right to choose whether or not to be institutionalized or whether they preferred to live out on the streets. They had rights, you know, even if they were loonier than a jaybird or a total drug/alcohol addict. So now we live with the results of Dem policies back then that let all of the mentally ill out onto the streets because it was their right, you know.
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