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Comment by downandout | Hacker News Reader

This article is really sad and quick to blame NYC's outgoing mayor for all of the problems, but suggests absolutely no solutions. The only actionable piece of data in it is that 50% of the city is below the poverty line, which suggests that anyone that doesn't need to be in NYC should never go there. Numbers like that foretell an uprising against those that are not poor, either by the citizens themselves through violence, or by the city government through punitive laws and taxes.

I now feel very sorry for Dasani, and am more sure than ever that I won't be spending time in New York. If that was the point of the article, then well done.

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New York City has been that way for pretty much all of its modern history. My father, who was born and raised in the Bronx, told me once that NYC is a great place to be rich, and a great place to be poor, with not much room for anyone in between.

This is part of why the arts scene there is so vibrant: "starving artists" have always been able to get by in New York in a way that they couldn't elsewhere.

(Though even they've gotten squeezed in modern times: Roger Ebert quoted John Malkovich saying back in 1989 that "to have starving actors, you have to have a place for them to starve. New York is too expensive for that. You can't afford to starve there anymore." http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/slaves-of-new-york-1989)

Putting living there aside and just looking at visiting, though: if you never visit NYC, you're missing out on one of the great urban experiences the world has to offer. If you're at all interested in the things cities have to offer, it should be a bucket-list destination.

>>My father, who was born and raised in the Bronx, told me once that NYC is a great place to be rich, and a great place to be poor, with not much room for anyone in between.

I don't know about "great place to be poor," but yes, it's a great place to be if you're rich. I have a friend who used to live there, and he said that based literally on your income alone you will get invited to parties and be able to make friends with other rich people. The place is basically the epitome of rich people wanting to associate only with other rich people.

> I don't know about "great place to be poor,"

While the statement makes some assumptions, I do think that NYC provides many more services and fallbacks for the very poor that you don't find, say, in Appalachia.

The linked article presents a quite bleak existence, but many of the problems it brings to light are that the services the city provides are of low quality, whereas there are so many places where those types of services don't exist at all. Rural poverty in America can be, from what I understand, far more persistent than most urban poverty.

starving artists can put on some pretty good parties

"Alright everyone, we got a cake! Please make sure you only take a quarter slice. You there! Can you please share that with someone? Thank you."

I am so sorry about your sense of humor

Liberals like to hate on Bloomberg because they don't feel he has been effective at helping the poor in the city. What they fail to see is that he's done something more important: keeping the rich from leaving, so they stay there and be taxed to provide the money that bankrolls NYC's safety net. The alternative is to become Detroit, where the rich people have left and there is no more money to pay for social services.

The fact is that NYC will always have a ton of poor people. It's almost guaranteed by virtue of its providing subsidized housing, etc, that all the poor from the surrounding areas will migrate to NYC.

Objectively speak Bloomberg was pretty decent for the poor, the outer boroughs, the artists, and many other groups that he's accused of screwing over. The reason for all the vitriol is that he wasn't suitably enthusiastic -- he didn't pay all the required lip service, he isn't perceived to feel people's pain.

Just to take one small example, De Blasio talks about the two New Yorks, but meanwhile he took a lot of money from the large taxi medallion owning companies, and is threatening to close down the new apple green outer boroughs taxis. That's a program that unequivocally targets the "other NY".

"The reason for all the vitriol is that he wasn't suitably enthusiastic -- he didn't pay all the required lip service, he isn't perceived to feel people's pain."

I agree. He's a strong leader who didn't start doing everything "for the poor" and instead focused on making the city strong and beating back the criminal element that ruined it.

That's never popular with the self-pity/white knighting crowd (who seem to have discovered HN, alas).

oh I am sure the NYT will devote endless pages the next couple of years to blaming all the woes of NYC on him, use it as an excuse for why the new guy can't fit it all fast, and so and so on.

The question most New Yorker's should be asking is, how do the people who run this facility (Audburn) have jobs? How do the people the report to allow it to happen and if they do, they why are they employed? Having been around some big city "care" its really simply, the bigger the government the less it has to care and the more people that slip through the cracks. Too many programs competing for the same dollars, too many programs with their own rules they barely serve anyone, too many programs for those who need help they have to spend an inordinate amount of time applying to each.

I am quite sure the living conditions don't help the outlook of her parents and in part keeps them down looking for releases. Yet for all the billions spent to take care of the poor it makes you wonder, where is it all going?

If you've ever tried to use or know anything about government grants you'll find out that 50% of your time and grant money will be spent making sure you are complying with spending grant money.

Usually there will be some outrage over a small sum of money being used inappropriately. Benzes for welfare queens for example. The politicians will do something about it by putting in more checks. A few scammers will work the system. More checks are put in place. Ad infinitum. A few years later 50-80% of the budget to help the poor has gone into making sure they use the aid for what we deem appropriate.

It's bizarre to read how right-wing view things. "Fire the city workers, shrink the government, then the homeless will get the care they deserve!"

The poor conditions have to do with the budget constraints, which the GOP is actively pushing for.

Did you read all parts? Yeah her story is sad, but there is a lot of hope for Dasani...

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