Andrew Yang, the businessman and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, depicted homeless people themselves as the problem, alleging that they degraded other New Yorkers’ quality of life. No doubt he was appealing to the affluent and heartless residents who demanded that homeless people be ejected from “their” neighborhoods. That such a vile position is accepted within the Democratic Party is a further indication of its reactionary character.
New York City to move 8,000 homeless people from hotels to crowded shelters, ending COVID-19 prevention program
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio plans to move about 8,000 homeless people out of hotel rooms, where they have been staying during the pandemic, and back to shelters. The timing of the move is uncertain, but the administration plans to complete it by the end of July. The campaign will disrupt the lives and threaten the health of homeless people to make hotel rooms available for tourists as de Blasio declares, “This is going to be the summer of New York City.”
The Delta variant of the coronavirus, which is about 2.5 times more infectious than the wild-type variant, now accounts for more than 10 percent of tested cases in New York City. It is on its way to becoming the dominant strain in the United States. Only 49 percent of city residents and 48 percent of state residents have been fully vaccinated against the virus. Moreover, vaccination rates for homeless people may be significantly lower than those in the general population, according to advocates.
Yet city, state and national politicians are prematurely proclaiming the end of the pandemic and removing all impediments to the generation of profit. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat like de Blasio, ended almost all restrictions related to the pandemic on June 15. Capacity limits, social distancing and information for contact tracing are now optional for offices, retail stores and other businesses. Shelters themselves are merely required to have residents wear masks.
“It is time to move homeless folks who were in hotels for a temporary period of time back to shelters where they can get the support they need,” said de Blasio at a news conference earlier this month. But many homeless people have continued to receive support at the hotels and do not want to return to shelters. Moreover, the Federal Emergency Management Agency offered to pay for the hotel rooms until the end of September.
“I don’t want to go back—it’s like I’m going backward,” Andrew Ward told the New York Times. Ward was moved from a shelter to the Williams Hotel in Brooklyn. “It’s not safe to go back there. You’ve got people bringing in knives.”
Before the pandemic arrived in New York, the shelters were notoriously overcrowded. In some shelters, as many as 60 people stayed in one room. These conditions enabled the rapid spread of the coronavirus. More than 3,700 residents of New York’s main shelter system became ill with COVID-19, and 102 have died, according to city data. But considering the inadequate systems for testing and contact tracing, particularly in the early stages of the pandemic, these figures are undoubtedly underestimates.
The pre-pandemic crowding of shelters, combined with the continual rise of homelessness, emphasizes that the existing shelter system is inadequate to meet the needs of all homeless New Yorkers, including those who stayed in hotels recently.
In spring 2020, the de Blasio administration moved homeless people out of the shelters and into 60 Manhattan hotels, many of which were in middle-class or wealthy neighborhoods. The residents of these neighborhoods soon complained about noise and claimed that homeless people were using drugs and urinating in public. A neighborhood group in the affluent Upper West Side area demanded that approximately 300 homeless men be evicted from the Hotel Lucerne. When the city developed a plan to move them to a hotel in the Financial District, residents of that neighborhood filed suit to stop its implementation.
Understandably, many homeless people prefer the hotels, which provide far better living conditions than the shelters. Hotel rooms have granted homeless residents privacy, kept their belongings secure and reduced confrontations involving residents with substance abuse or mental health problems. “It’s peaceful. It’s less stressful,” Ward explained to the Times. He added that if he were moved back to a shelter, “I’d just stay in the street like before.”
The spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus and the inadequate distribution of vaccines create the conditions for a health disaster if homeless people are returned to shelters or sleeping rough. “There are people sleeping in shelters who are still testing positive and getting sick,” said Giselle Routhier, policy director at Coalition for the Homeless, in a statement. “Until permanent affordable housing can be secured, the safest option remains placement in hotel rooms.”
Moreover, shelter operators have been able to maintain most of the treatment and counseling services for those without homes while the latter have stayed at the hotels. “It is simply inaccurate to say that people aren’t getting services in hotels,” said Routhier, in a direct response to de Blasio’s statement.
When he ran for mayor eight years ago, de Blasio decried New York’s inequality, using “A Tale of Two Cities” as a major theme of his campaign and promising to reduce homelessness dramatically. Today, homelessness in the city is at its highest level since the Great Depression. During fiscal year 2020, 122,926 individual homeless men, women and children slept in the city’s shelter system. The number of homeless New Yorkers sleeping in shelters each night is 39 percent higher now than it was 10 years ago, and people from every New York City zip code are homeless.
But these stark figures do not provide a full picture, because they do not account for those who do not sleep in shelters. Natalie Monarrez is a homeless woman who works full time at Amazon’s JFK8 warehouse in Staten Island, a borough of New York City. Her hourly wage of $19.30 is too low to afford a studio apartment in Staten Island or New Jersey, so she sleeps in her car. Her clothes are stored in suitcases, and she keeps food in a cooler.
Monarrez maintains a membership at Planet Fitness gyms so that she has a place to shower and brush her teeth. She relies on fast food restaurants and retail stores for their public bathrooms. When businesses were locked down and their bathrooms inaccessible, Monarrez was forced to buy anti-bacterial wipes and use her car.
“Jeff Bezos donates to homeless shelters for tax write-offs and PR. He needs to know that some of his own workers (without family or a second income) can’t afford rent,” she told Vice News .
The candidates in New York City’s recent Democratic mayoral primary scarcely acknowledged the crisis of homelessness. As of this writing, Eric Adams, a former policeman and former Republican, is ahead in the initial first-choice results in the primary election. Adams has made vague promises to provide housing for homeless New Yorkers, but these promises are as meaningful as those that fellow Democrat de Blasio made eight years ago.
Andrew Yang, the businessman and former candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination, depicted homeless people themselves as the problem, alleging that they degraded other New Yorkers’ quality of life. No doubt he was appealing to the affluent and heartless residents who demanded that homeless people be ejected from “their” neighborhoods. That such a vile position is accepted within the Democratic Party is a further indication of its reactionary character.
The crisis of homelessness in New York City is a product of capitalism, which is itself in historic crisis. Homelessness cannot be addressed in a humane or meaningful way by either of the capitalist parties, which uphold the interests of finance capital and subordinate all other considerations to private profit.
Inflation Nation: Home Prices Rise at Fastest Pace Ever
Home prices in April jumped 14.6 percent compared with a year ago, up from a 13.3 percent rise in March, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index showed Tuesday.
This is the fastest annual pace on record, beating the housing bubble high of 14.3 percent in 2005. On a monthly and seasonally adjusted basis, home prices nationally rose 1.6 percent, also an all-time high.
“April’s performance was truly extraordinary,” said Craig J. Lazzara, Managing Director and Global Head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P DJI. “The 14.6 percent gain in the National Composite is literally the highest reading in more than 30 years of S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data.”
In addition to the national index, Tuesday’s release included both the index of the ten and 20 largest cities. The 10-city composite was up 14.4 percent year over year, an acceleration from March’s 12.9 percent annual gain. That’s the biggest annual jump on record since January 2006.
Compared with a month ago, prices in the 10-city index were up 1.4 percent. That’s actually a deceleration from March’s 1.5 percent monthly gain.
The 20-city composite jumped 14.9 percent higher, compared with 13.4 percent in March. This is the fastest pace of annual price gains since December 2005.
Compared with a month ago, prices were up 1.6 percent, the biggest monthly gain since a short-lived spike in April 2013.
Economists had forecast a 1.2 percent gain for the 20-city index on a monthly basis and a 13.5 percent gain annually.
Phoenix, San Diego, and Seattle reported the highest year-over-year gains among the 20 cities in April. Phoenix led the way with a 22.3 percent year-over-year price increase, followed by San Diego with a 21.6 percent increase and Seattle with a 20.2 percent increase. All 20 cities reported higher price increases in the year ending April 2021 versus the year ending March 2021.
“Housing prices in all 20 cities rose; price gains in all 20 cities accelerated; price gains in all 20 cities were in the top quartile of historical performance. In 15 cities, price gains were in top decile. Five cities – Charlotte, Cleveland, Dallas, Denver, and Seattle – joined the National Composite in recording their all-time highest 12- month gains,” Lazzara said.
It’s still unclear how much of the surge in home prices is due to the pandemic and how much is due to rising crime, anti-police politics, and racial strife in big cities. In addition, the U.S. may be undergoing a change in housing preference away from cities and toward single-family homes in the suburbs.
“We have previously suggested that the strength in the U.S. housing market is being driven in part by reaction to the COVID pandemic, as potential buyers move from urban apartments to suburban homes. April’s data continue to be consistent with this hypothesis. This demand surge may simply represent an acceleration of purchases that would have occurred anyway over the next several years. Alternatively, there may have been a secular change in locational preferences, leading to a permanent shift in the demand curve for housing. More time and data will be required to analyze this question,” Lazzara said.
Families Fleeing California Bay Area Causing Housing Frenzy in Austin, Texas
Californians are fleeing the state to live where they can find more affordable housing, better schools, and a more rural lifestyle. A large percentage of them are choosing Austin, Texas.
The San Francisco Chronicle reported on the phenomenon of more people opting for permanent telework in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and the trend of people choosing to live in GOP-led states that didn’t impose draconian lockdowns:
Experts say Austin’s boom, particularly during the pandemic, has been accelerated by Californians and Bay Area giants like Apple, Facebook, Google and Tesla that are all hiring in Austin. Last year, a record 22,114 jobs were added from companies relocating and expanding in the region, including at least 5,000 from Tesla in its new mega-factory rising just east of Austin, according to the Austin Chamber of Commerce. Palantir co-founder Joe Lonsdale, podcast host Joe Rogan and Tesla CEO Elon Musk all made the California-to-Texas move during the pandemic. That’s a lot of newcomers looking for homes.
Last month, Josh and Jessi Rubbicco and their two kids joined the flood, moving out of the East Bay after seven years. They found a fast-growing neighborhood in southwest Austin called Belterra, where urban density gives way to lush green hills dotted with freshly built homes next to half-finished wooden frames.There are dance parties on weekends, bike and hiking trails and fishing ponds. Children can take a golf cart on wide, low-traffic roads to attend the local elementary school — parents optional, depending on age. In the Bay Area, it can take a year or two to secure child care. There’s no wait in Austin.
The weather is warm and similar to the East Bay, said Rubbicco, who works for a software company with a Bay Area office that’s allowing permanent remote work. Texas Hill Country’s offerings are reminiscent of Napa, thanks to an array of wineries and distilleries. In the nearby town of Driftwood, there’s the 54-year-old landmark Salt Lick Bar-B-Que, built on a family ranch, with its vast cooking pit overflowing with meats and drawing hungry crowds. A 25-minute drive to downtown means easy access to Austin’s raucous bars and restaurants, where live music was blasting and drinks were flowing last month, even as much of the country was still locked down.
“The pricing power of Austin, which is number one in the country, is driven by California, plain and simple,” Toll Brothers CEO Douglas Yearley said on an earnings call that took place last month. “The phenomenon is fascinating. We’ve never seen migration like this.”
The Chronicle reported the price of a typical house in the East Bay is about $1 million. And even if prices in Austin have surged 35 percent in May compared to last year, you can still get a larger, newer house with a yard and access to good schools for about half the price:
For the Rubbiccos, the daily grind of getting up early, getting kids to day care and commuting on BART to an office just to open a laptop and take phone calls has given way to a home life that allows a focus on children and family — and a bigger house and yard to enjoy it.
“I love the Bay Area, I was born and raised there. I have nothing bad to say about it,” Jessi Rubbicco said. “I think we were just looking for something different for our family. COVID put in perspective what we wanted.”
Harvard Poll: Voters Greatly Underestimate Migration Inflow
The public greatly underestimates the scale of the migration crisis at the U.S.-Mexico border, which the Biden administration’s policies prompted, according to a new Harvard Harris poll.
“The media coverage to some degree is engineered to achieve that result,” responded Mark Krikorian, the director of the Center for Immigration Studies. “If you don’t stress numbers over and over again, it’s not going to sink in,” he said, adding, “[t]he [media is] not going to draw attention to the reality that people are dramatically underestimating the size of immigration because if they did, it would undermine support for their guy in the White House.”
In May, 180,000 migrants were caught crossing the border. Most were sent back to Mexico to rest before their next attempt while Biden’s deputies allowed 68,000 migrants into the United States.
An additional 50,000 migrants successfully sneaked through the border to reach jobs inside the United States, according to unpublished official estimates.
Overall, in May, roughly 230,000 migrants crossed the border, and 120,000 got through the border, including roughly 100,000 job seekers.
The June 15-17 Harvard Harris poll of 2,006 registered voters asked: “How many border crossings of illegal immigrants would you say are occurring every month in the United States right now?”
Twenty-one percent of the respondents estimated fewer than 10,000 people per month.
Thirty-one percent guessed between 10,000 and 50,000 migrants.
Nineteen percent guessed between 50,000 and 100,000 migrants.
The results show that 71 percent of respondents deeply underestimated the flow of migrants into Americans’ jobs, apartments, schools, and culture.
Just 22 percent provided answers that roughly match the inflow: 13 percent guessed between 100,000 and 150,000 migrants, 7 percent guessed 150,000 to 200,000 migrants, and 2 percent guessed 200,000 to 250,000 migrants.
If Biden’s people allow 750,000 migrants into the United States during 2021, that would add up to one migrant for every five Americans who turn 18 during the year.
So far, Republican leaders have dodged much of the immigration debate, likely because donors want more imported consumers, renters, and workers, Instead, GOP leaders have characterized Biden’s migration as a chaotic crisis, as cruel to migrants, and helpful to the drug cartels. This GOP message downplays the inflow numbers and sidelines the economic damage being done to Americans.
Numerous polls have shown that Americans underestimate the scale of migration and also prefer that companies hire Americans before migrants. For example, a June 21-25 report by Rasmussen Reports showed that 63 percent of 1,250 likely voters say that ‘it is better for the nation “for businesses to raise the pay and try harder to recruit non-working Americans even if it causes prices to rise,” than “for the government to bring in new foreign workers to help keep business costs and prices down.”
“If our leadership class, including the media, politicians, and others, actually stressed the magnitude of the influx of people from abroad, that would undermine support for immigration policy,” Krikorian said. “They want to make sure that the frog is boiled slowly,” he added.
Each year, four million young Americans enter the workforce. But they are forced by their government to compete against a growing population of illegal migrants, one million new legal immigrants, and the resident workforce of roughly two million temporary guest workers.
For many years, a wide variety of pollsters have shown deep and broad opposition to labor migration and the inflow of temporary contract workers into jobs sought by young U.S. graduates. This opposition is multiracial, cross-sex, non-racist, class-based, bipartisan, rational, persistent, and recognizes the solidarity Americans owe to each other.
The voter opposition to elite-backed economic migration coexists with support for legal immigrants and some sympathy for illegal migrants. But only a minority of Americans — mostly leftists — embrace the many skewed polls and articles pushing the 1950’s corporate “Nation of Immigrants” claim.
The deep public opposition to labor migration is built on the widespread recognition that legal immigration, visa workers, and illegal migration undermine democratic self-government, fracture Americans’ society, move money away from Americans’ pocketbooks, and worsen living costs for American families.
Migration moves wealth from employees to employers, from families to investors, from young to old, from children to their parents, from homebuyers to investors, from technology to stoop labor, from red states to blue states, and from the central states to the coastal states such as New York.
No comments:
Post a Comment