© Mark Lennihan/APA destitute man sleeps on the sidewalk under a holiday window display, in New York.
From Harlem to the Bowery, the sentiment is the same: the man whose campaign told a tale of two cities has plenty of work to do
On a chilly Christmas Eve, it took only a minute for a group of staff and residents at a homeless shelter in Harlem to list what the city's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, needs to do when he takes office on 1 January.
"Reinstate rent-subsidy vouchers, bring back after-school programs to keep the kids away from drugs and violence, supply more affordable housing for low-income families, sort out food stamps," one woman rattled off sternly, as she dashed from the anonymous red-brick building on a quiet residential block to talk to a staff member on a cigarette break. "You want me to go on?"
The woman wasn't a user of the facility, listing demands for herself. She was a security guard, angry at the deterioration in the circumstances of the people she is employed to supervise and protect. Her colleague, shivering in the freezing temperatures, flicked his cigarette butt into the road and pointed to a building across the street - a typical example of low-income housing subsidized by the city but owned and run by a private landlord, he said.
"Housing like that is becoming less affordable. Landlords used to take families that made as little as $17,000 per household but now they demand $30,000 or sometimes $40,000, and who can afford that on minimum wage or disability payments? That keeps people in the shelters."
Comment: Perhaps Bloomberg should spend some time out on the cold streets of New York City living in the same conditions as the homeless do - just to experience, personally, how much 'better off' the poor and homeless are in New York, as opposed to elsewhere.
Don't hold your breath for that to happen.