Homelessness is Real, Mr. Mayor

We are not sure what changed Mayor Bill de Blasio’s mind about the homeless crisis, but he’s no longer denying it is dramatically increasing. Maybe he ventured over to 125th Street and Lexington, or strolled along Eighth Avenue in lower Manhattan, or took a ride on the A-Train early one morning. At any of these sites—and thousands more—he would have seen living evidence of homelessness.

You don’t have to go far in the city to see people sprawled out on benches in public parks, covered with cardboard blankets at church doorways or pushing shopping carts full of their belongings and clustered at various subway stations. If these huddled masses escaped the mayor’s “perception,” he may have arrived at a new reality from negative news reports and respondents to polls citing their disgust with his response to the problem.