I visited NYC once during the administration of David Dinkins. I exited Grand Central through the south exit, with the plan of walking to the vicinity of 27th street.
After going a couple of blocks and being alarmed by the number of times I had to step over the legs and sometimes bodies of bums on the sidewalk, and occasionally dodge attempts to waylay me or reach into my pockets, I started to run.
I was in my early thirties at the time, but was no athlete by any means. Still, I was amazed at how fear-stoked adrenaline enabled me to run without stopping roughly one-half mile to my destination. The area around Grand Central was something like - I imagine - Calcutta.
It sounds like a similar circumstance has now developed under Mayor whatever-he-calls-himself.
The area around Grand Central was something like - I imagine - Calcutta.
There were dead bodies in the street?
Well, I was in New York City three weeks ago and only encountered one homeless derelict during my walk from Grand Central, some screaming and swearing guy camped out on the sidewalk with a burlap cloth draped over his head. He was still there several hours later when I returned to Grand Central.
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Maybe not: As of 2003, about one-third of the population, or 1.5 million people, lived in 3,500 unregistered squatter-occupied and 2,011 registered slums. The authorised slums (with access to basic services like water, latrines, trash removal by the Kolkata Municipal Corporation) can be broadly divided into two groups: bustees, in which slum dwellers have some long term tenancy agreement with the landowners; and udbastu colonies, settlements which had been leased to refugees from present day Bangladesh by the Government. The unauthorised slums (devoid of basic services provided by the municipality) are occupied by squatters who started living on encroached lands...mainly along canals, railway lines and roads. According to the 2005 National Family Health Survey, around 14% of the households in Kolkata were poor, while 33% lived in slums, indicating a substantial proportion of households in slum areas were better off economically than the bottom quarter of urban households in terms of wealth status.
Source: Wikipedia
Kolkata=Calcutta