By Gary Tilzer
Most of NYC’s homeless are people down on their luck, penniless in a very expensive city or suffering from non-violent mental illness. Albany progressives and nonprofits funded by the government have stereotyped all the homeless as violent maniacs. By blocking judges from the ability to commit the violent mentally ill to a hospital instead of giving a homeless person spear change, a NYC humanitarian tradition, frightened women stand on top of the subway stairs or behind the steel poles holding up the station, fearing being pushed onto the tracks like Michelle Go, by every homeless person they see. Even Shelly Nortz, the deputy executive director for policy of the Coalition for the Homeless, said mental illness and homelessness are being criminalized.
How did we get to the point of criminalizing the homeless, the victims? The Coalition blames it on the mayor’s plan to get the homeless off the subway, the same group also blamed former Mayor de Blasio for also trying to remove the homeless from the trains. The nonprofit ignores the real reasons for the subway homeless violence crisis. Albany’s refusal to make common sense changes to the bail law and the decades long cut of available psychiatric hospital beds and the closing of psychiatric hospitals to save money, by Albany.
Historically, the NYC mayor is always blamed for the rise in crime. Remember the 1990 NY Post headline “Dave, Do Something,” and the more recent Post headline in 2020, “Bill, Do Something to deal with the current crime wave. In 1991 Mayor Dinkins pressured Albany to fund the Safe Streets, Safe City initiative, which enlarged the NYPD by more than 6,000 cops, while also bolstering the criminal courts.
Dinkins Helped by the Old Power Elite Who Looked Out for the City, Adams Trapped by Dysfunctional New Power Gangs Who Look Out for Themselves
Adam’s mayoralty is very different from Dinkins’ term over 30 years ago. Adams faces an ideologically driven dysfunctional NY political system, controlled by shadow lobbyists who elect puppets, most ideological and inexperienced, to win City Hall approval for their pay to play developers and city contract clients. Weakened machine bosses who worked with the city’s establishment, like the Partnership, to keep common sense government afloat in the Dinkins era, lack the power and control to do so today. Adams’ also faces a broken media business that had more experienced reporters that did not rely on press releases, made worse by the abandonment of journalism for ideology. City Hall is also controlled by a politically powerful nonprofit money hungry financial complex, raking in tens of millions each, metastasized with the lobbyists and the politicians they elect. Lobbyist Hank Sheinkopf said “Lobbyists Elect Kings to Eat the King’s Meat.”
The late great journalist Jack Newfield used to say that the city’s permanent government was protected. In his day, he was talking about developers, bankers, elected party bosses, and other political class insiders. Today lobbyists and nonprofits have joined the permanent government as the new political bosses in NY. This new private political machine is not elected like the old machine, they get their power from the developer and city contractor’s clients that hire them. Even the NY Times does not understand how these private new political machines operate, as it reports the consequences of their power.
NY Times 3/1 “After saying last year that they would conduct an audit of the more than 60 organizations that operate shelters in New York, city officials have declined to answer even basic questions about the inquiry. They would not say how many providers were cooperating. They would not disclose all of the questions that were being asked. They would not describe what the operators were revealing or say whether any problems had been identified.”
In 1993 the NY Times began to notice the creation of the nonprofit’s political machines, but they did not follow their evolution through the decades. In the 90’s the late political Assemblyman Vito Lopez created a political machine out of nonprofits to help him become boss of the Brooklyn Democratic Party. The NY Times did not cover how the non-profits with the help of lobbyists, campaign consultants and increase in government spending have become power brokers to themselves, working with lobbyists to elect office holders who will increase their funding, while ignoring what they do with their government funding . NY Times 1993 Growth of a New-Age Political Machine
The Acacia nonprofit is the largest provider of homeless housing in New York’s metropolitan area, but it is not just a shelter operator. Over the decades, Acacia has built a small empire with connections running up the ladder of city government. It has amassed a web of interconnected nonprofits and for-profits that offer shelter, affordable housing, addiction and medical services, and security. According to the city’s Department of Homeless Services website, Acacia manages “750 individual family units and four buildings for approximately 550 homeless adults.”
Acacia received $259 million in contracts from the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), which accounted for 18.5% of the department’s contracts that year. Acacia gets additional funding from the Department of Social Services and the Department of Housing Preservation and Development. Since the 2011 fiscal year, it has received over $1.1 billion worth of city contracts. This is not an isolated issue. In August, the New York Post reported that inspections of Acacia’s hotel shelters had revealed hazardous and unsanitary conditions including faulty wiring, broken carbon monoxide detectors, and damaged plumbing. As of Aug. 31, 2019, Acacia buildings had hundreds of open violations.
Acacia Has Political Muscle Acacia paid one of the most powerful lobbyists in the city, the MirRam Group, $700,000. Twi$ted web of political nonprofits in Bx. – NY Post 8/26/2012. The nonprofit also paid former Bronx Councilwoman Maria del Carmen Arroyo $284,000-a-year as its vice president of administration after resigning from city government. Its $816,000-a-year CEO, Raul Russia, who was Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s probation commissioner and, later, chairman of the Local Conditional Release Commission. Acacia President Hector Diaz, who banked $311,000 in 2017, was once a city clerk.
Two Mayors With Crime Problems Face Different Albany’s
When Mayor Adams traveled to Albany over thirty years after Dinkins convinced them to fund the hiring of 6,000 more NYPD cops, he was attacked for asking the lawmakers to give Criminal Court Judges the power to hold for treatment those they believe are suffering from Mental Illness and others who have double digit violent repeat violent criminals. The new mayor was blocked by left-wing Albany law makers, the lobbyist who elected them and work for government funded nonprofits.
The Buck Stops At the Mayor’s Desk as Far as Responsibility But Not the Power to Run Government
Mayor Adams is trapped, he is held responsible for increasing crime and he cannot get Albany to change the 2019 bail law that many believe turned the state’s courts into turnstiles for criminals. Adams is not only trapped by the crime issue. Adams will also be blamed if he does not turn around the city’s COVID caused failing economy, which he knows will not improve until he gets the homeless off the subways and crime down. Tourist or suburban office workers are not coming back to a city when they watch nightly subway horrific crime videos, the latest, a mugger hitting an old lady in the head with a hammer, another subway attack included throwing feces at a woman man, who was released with no bail a day after his arrest, despite 44 prior arrests. Subway crime has skyrocketed this year. There have been 276 cases of murder, rape, robbery, assault, burglary, and grand larceny in 2022 so far, compared to 167 last year.
Lisa Sparkle Twitter @lisatropolis·Feb 25, (After the subway hammer attack) Gee Mr. Mayor, I *wonder* why everyone who can chooses to avoid the office and stay home in their pajamas
The mayor, who believes that there are many streams in the river, is trying to make lemonade out of the crime-fighting lemon he was given by Albany. Adams plan B is sending teams of cops, psychologists, and social workers to get the homeless off the subways. These teams will get some of the homeless off the subways but do not have the ability to target the violent mentally ill, like Criminal Court Judges could do, to reduce the crime wave quickly. In their first week of operation the outreach team’s data showed only 22 of the 1.000 subway homeless accepted shelter. Even the friendly NY Post is chipping at the mayor Plan B. Mayor Adams’ subway safety plan doesn’t go far enough to protect NYers – Feb. 26th Adams needs to do more, and faster, to halt soaring NYC crime – Feb. 26th
Increasing Crime Was A Big Issue In Last Years Mayor’s Race But Not In This Year’s Albany State Races
We are in an election year in which all state office holders must retire or run for reelection and there are no signs that crime fighting will be a major issue in the media’s election coverage like it was last year in the mayor race. NY Times Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race.
Lee Zeldin, Andrew Giuliani, and Tom Suozzi have not gained any support for their crime fighting statement, commercials, or press releases, according to recent polls that shows Hochul with a large lead. There is also no evidence that there is anyone organizing against Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins or campaigns being organized except in a few limited areas when Republicans can win, against state legislators blocking Adam’s bail reform plan. There is evidence that the public wants Albany to stop treating judges as clerks. A Siena College poll shows 65% of the state supports changes in the no bail law. The vast majority of those polled, 91%, said crime was a very serious or somewhat serious problem. Not only has the media ignored the crime issue when covering this year’s state races, there has not been a single story to explain the voting issue disconnect of the Manhattan District Attorney Bragg election. Bragg ran on a platform to decriminalize crime and was elected with 80% of the vote. Clearly 80% of the residences of Manhattan do not want to decriminalize crime.
Reporters Ideology Has Cut into the Middle of Crime Tweeting
NY 1 reporter Louis blamed the NY Post, cops, and court officers for a story about Bronx Supreme Court Justice Naita Semaj-Williams letting two 17-year-olds facing felonies, including on accused of murder, out without bail, but he did not blame DA Darcel Clark office for requesting bail on both suspects.
Errol Louis @errollouis Another argument against giving judges more power to set bail: news organizations like @nypost, using anonymous tips from disgruntled cops and court officers, attack and condemn individual judges. Goal is to pressure them into locking up more people.
David Toscano @itsmedavidt A journalist objects to other journalists doing their job of exposing public officials’ exercises of discretion to public scrutiny?
In a NY Times story about another bail release, “Adams Blames Bail Law After Release of Teen Charged in Officer Shooting” Other elected officials and a lawyer for the teenage defendant disputed Mayor Eric Adams’s characterization of the law’s role in the case. NY Daily News in another bail release story, “Accused NYC serial burglar released again and again and again thanks to new bail law.”
Template Press Releases, Spin TV News Readers, Avoid Real Cause and Effects of Rising Subway Crime
With repeated appearances by friendly weather, traffic reporters, local news readers (reporters) who do not understand local politics and government, really operate as sonographers. Local news anchors only read the spin filled press releases from elected officials, special interests, including nonprofits funded by the city, without providing intelligent accurate analysis.
The Coalition for the Homeless Policy Director Jacquelyn Simone in a WCBS TV report called Adams’ remarks “sickening.” She continued, “It’s troubling that a mayor in such a large city would use terms like disgusting or cancer to refer to his homeless constituents. These are human beings who deserve care, respect, and dignity.” The coalition CEO Nortz also accused Adams of “repeating the failed outreach-based policing strategies of the past” and urged “great caution with respect to any regulatory or statutory expansion of involuntary commitment or outpatient treatment standards, including Kendra’s Law.”
What WCBS TV and the other media who are printing the Coalition for the Homeless spin press releases, do not report is that the coalition budget is over $16 million dollars, it has $21 million in assets, its CEO president is paid $400,000 and seven others on the executive board are paid between $200,000 to $100,000. It would require a return to the rich NYC muck breaking journalism of the past, for the media to treat the Coalition and other nonprofits as a special interest, looking to increase funds they receive from the government.
A WCBS reporter should ask the Coalition’s CEO Nortz if the reason she is attacking the mayor’s plan to give judges the ability to institutionalize the mentally ill homeless is that her organization would lose funding if there were less homeless on the city’s street and subway? Why hasn’t the Coalition and other nonprofits spoken out about long-time corruption in the city’s nonprofit homeless industry. Daily News Nov. 26th,The party’s over: NYC homeless services funding needs oversight, not just scrutiny after the fact NY Post Oct 3rd NYC homeless-shelter operator stashed pals on payroll, created lucrative spin-offs: records, NY Times Oct. 15th Housing Boss Earns $1 Million to Run Shelters Despite a Troubled Past. Homelessness means dollars for not only nonprofits serving the homeless, it also means billions for developers building homeless apartments “Someone Is Getting Very, Very Rich”: Neighbors Call For More Details To Be Released About Park Slope Homeless Shelters, De Blasio’s Department Of Homeless Services Can’t Fully Explain High Costs Of New Park Slope Shelters.
Spending on homelessness in NYC has more than doubled to $3.2 billion from fiscal year 2014 to 2019, according to a report released by former Comptroller Scott Stringer. There are politically connected developers of homeless housing and nonprofits sucking up billions of NY City, State, and Federal funding. It would be much cheaper to take the money away from nonprofits and developers and place the violent mental ill in psychiatric hospitals. Jewish Voice The City’s Non-Profit Political Complex Has Recklessly Spent Billions on the Homeless Who Still Occupy Our Streets and Subways.
The Coalition for the Homeless is predictably skeptical about expanding involuntary commitment at the cost of civil liberties. In 1987, Billie Boggs, a homeless person who defeated New York City’s efforts to force her into a psychiatric treatment program. Her case set legal precedents for forced psychiatric care which have hamstrung involuntary psychiatric commitments of the homeless in New York and elsewhere. Albany holds all the cards for getting the violent mentally ill, off NYC’s streets.
The question the media needs to ask the coalition and the Albany lawmakers blocking bail reform, “Should the violent homeless be committed to psychiatric hospitals?” If the media will not do it, we need to find a local project Veritas type journalist who will. Right now, the mentally ill homeless are lost in the NY political ideology that created NY’s dysfunctional governments, which are incapable and unwilling to make this a safe city again and to recover our badly damaged economy. The real Tale of Two Cities is incumbent Albany elected officials celebrating partisan redistricting and no cuts in the amount of required number of petitions that usually happens during a reapportionment year, making insiders reelection easier as New Yorkers fed-up with NY’s dysfunctional politics and government, move out of the city – Why I am moving out, Watch video. Albany pols who only care about themselves or are so caught up in ideology to reimagine government, do not care about New Yorkers getting attacked, even murdered.
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Alyssa Paolicelli Twitter @APaolicelli17 Mar 1,The husband of 62-year-old, GuiYing Ma, wipes away tears during a press conference about the death of his wife. Ma died yesterday after being in a coma for 2 months after she was attacked with a rock while sweeping her sidewalk in Queens. (Video)