Before I start, check out the latest episode of Blood and Gold over at Glibertarians!
Now then: New York City is in trouble with a huge influx of the “unhoused,” Leftie-Lib Mayor Eric Adams is crying about it, and Governor Kathy Hochul has abandoned him to his fate. And, frankly, the schadenfreude is strong with this one.
This week, responding to a state judge’s implication that New York State must do more to help New York City with its migrant crisis, Governor Kathy Hochul tasked her lawyer with writing an extraordinary letter, through which the governor made an implication of her own: the city, under Mayor Eric Adams—due to its incompetence in allowing dozens of migrants to sleep on Manhattan streets, despite having vacant beds, and in failing to supervise an inept-at-best contractor—doesn’t deserve further help. The governor is trying to save her own political skin, and she missed a key opportunity really to help the mayor by getting New York out of its spurious “right to shelter” obligation. But she’s mostly right, and Adams must understand that he’s not going to get help from fellow Democrats outside of the city. The mayor must unequivocally state that New York City cannot—and will not—accept any new migrants into its homeless-shelter system, which was never designed to accommodate a global economic-migration crisis and a conflict-refugee crisis.
To paraphrase Mencken’s famous quote, the people of New York are getting what they voted for – good and hard. New York has been a “sanctuary city” for years now, and this was always the not only foreseeable but indeed the inevitable result. All it took was an open-border policy by a feckless, dementia-addled President to send things past the breaking point, and believe you me, they’re broke.
The mayor expects the crisis to cost the city $12 billion over three years. Even in a well-resourced, high-tax city, this surprise burden is not incidental: split into $4 billion a year, it comprises nearly 6 percent of annual city tax revenues and eclipses annual spending on the fire department ($2.3 billion), sanitation ($1.9 billion), transportation ($1.4 billion), or correction ($1.2 billion). It even rivals police spending ($5.8 billion). “We are past our breaking point,” the mayor said earlier this month.
And, Mayor Adams, your own policies and the policies of your fellow Democrats have put you in this position. It can’t be fixed by “more housing.” It can’t be fixed by more money for addiction treatments or mental health care. It’s gone too far for that. We can’t fix the problems these people faced in their own countries, either; we have already poured trillions of American taxpayer’s down that particular rat hole. No, it can only be addressed at this point by closing the damn border and kicking out people who remain here illegally. The most cost-effective measure is simple: When they are found, they get a one-way plane ticket back to their country of origin. End of story.
