Wednesday, December 14, 2016

It's all about the "right to shelter"

From the Daily News:

We don’t know why the Ambrose family moved from Maine to New York City roughly a year ago. What we do know is that Ibanez Ambrose, 2, and Scylee Ambrose, 1, suffered terribly from severe burns before they died from exposure to radiator steam and might be alive today had their parents remained in Maine.

Did they come here for medical services for Scylee, who had a rare congenital malformation? Or was it, as their father Peter said, so the girls could grow up in a big city with big opportunities? Or was it because he knew the city must, under law, provide housing for him and his family if they couldn’t afford it?

It’s unclear how many people enter the homeless ranks only because they know New York City must, under court settlements and state regulations, provide them free housing.

Don’t get me wrong. The law is just, and I don’t oppose it. No one wants anyone, especially children, to be homeless. But given that the number of homeless people in New York City is not stabilizing despite a concerted and well-funded effort by Mayor de Blasio, city leaders should consider a public awareness campaign that lets people know that staying put, moving to a city with more affordable housing or doubling up with relatives may be a much better solution than entering a shelter system bursting at the seams.

48 comments:

Anonymous said...

The right to shelter law is hurting this state.
We can not even take care of our own and now other states residents are coming here.
Not for nothing but it is expensive to live here and all working class people who rent or own their homes see increasing taxes or rents. Fares going up and some are a paycheck away of losing everything or living paycheck to paycheck and trying to keep ahead.
Why someone from a state which is unlike NY say a little town in Massachusetts come to a big city with no job or few funds how will you survive? Sure getting on Medicaid and free housing but how long can one live like this?
The places the city puts you up in is not the best and yes better than the street but it's not Home it's a temporary place for the now until the city shuffles you to another place.
Since the homeless were moved into rented rooms in the Holiday Inns...you see more homeless sleeping on the streets here...along the LIE.....in tents....in the small city parks.
While we have the right of shelter but these people should pay something towards it not just us tax payers.

Anonymous said...

' It Takes a Village ', and apparently NYC has become the world's village.

(sarc) said...

If you leave food laying around inside and outside your home, it will attract pests, rodents and vermin ultimately leading to disease.

Why are we not attracting the smartest, best and brightest???

Anonymous said...

Another rat hole to pour taxpayer money. Wait until we stop getting federal funds because DeBlasio insists we remain a sanctuary city.

Rudy Giuliani said it best: It's easier being homeless where it is warm.

Anonymous said...

A right to shelter is a privilege not a constitutional right. What this city and state needs to do is to make it work properly and with these individuals who get a monthly check should have them pay something towards there stay in these hotels. Why should taxpayers foot the bill. If you look at it staying in these hotels...these individuals are not paying utilities and mortgages or rents. So when receiving their checks this be factored in.

Anonymous said...

I agree with all of the above regarding children, etc.
However, as was told to me by a merchant in Clinton (formerly known as Hell's Kitchen) that a homeless person he had contributed to said that the homeless man was given a one way bus ticket by the city fathers of some Midwest town to Port Authority bus terminal NYC.
That is the way some cities care for their homeless.
They deport them to other destinations within the U.S.A.
That is a true story!

Anonymous said...

Just read something in the paper today stating that the mayor pays over 600/day/family to house them in hotels meanwhile the average cost at an expensive hotel in nyc is only 325/day. This mayor sucks.....Im glad I didn't vote for this idiot but others apparently did.

Anonymous said...

Yet the writer continues to support the law? Grow a pair of balls and admit that this free lodging give-away at the expense of the NY taxpayer is wrong.

Res Ipsa said...

It may not be the P.C. Thing to say, but until there is actual opposition to this law, people are always going to take their chances and come here to take advantage of the law's benefits. You will never convince people that they should stay put or move in with relatives if there's a law that says otherwise.

JQ LLC said...

Nice of you to take notice, Karen Hinton former spokeswoman for our corrupt mayor big slow De Faustio. Maybe she should take this hindsight summation to Preet and give witness testimony.

Anonymous said...

"Don’t get me wrong. The law is just, and I don’t oppose it."

I know the NY Daily News mandates that its op-ed writers engage in a minimal amount of virtue signaling, but Queenscrap doesn't. The law is not just. Everyone who can afford market rate and chooses to pay it in NYC is opposing the law. The law is not tenable as written.

Joe Moretti said...

"Did they come here for medical services for Scylee, who had a rare congenital malformation? Or was it, as their father Peter said, so the girls could grow up in a big city with big opportunities? Or was it because he knew the city must, under law, provide housing for him and his family if they couldn’t afford it?"

Let me answer that, since there has been plenty of information about the Ambroses. Both are drug addicts (not sure if they are recovering or still using), neither had full time jobs and obviously no kind of savings. Yet, with no savings, no jobs, they choose to have not one, but two kids, when they were not able to take care of themselves. He had run ins with the law as reported by The NY Post. There were also issues with child welfare, about 6 instances. They had family and friends in Maine, but none of them took them in. Wonder why, would you.

Then they move from way less expensive Maine and come to the most expensive city in the country with no job, no money, no savings.

ANSWER: They are fucking deadbeats who came to suck off the big NYC government tit, that we the tax payers have to foot the bill for deadbeats like this. This whole right to shelter bullshit is problematic. Look at places that have this in place and look at the size of those places homeless population and the problems: NYC, Los Angeles, Seattle, all have major homeless issues.

Lets just be fucking real and speak the truth. The Ambroses should be the poster folks on just how fucked up this whole system is. On one had you have asshole elected officials and DHS who have are fucking up the city and the tax payers and on the other hand you have deadbeats like the Ambrose lining up to suck up that big fat tit.

Merry Christmas.

Anonymous said...

New law:
Those coming to NY and seeking public shelter get 30 days to find a place to reside outside the shelter system. If not successful they are given a ticket back to whence they came.
If they try again, they are sent back the same day. If they give false documentation they are arrested, fined and sent back.

Anonymous said...

If you leave food laying around inside and outside your home, it will attract pests, rodents and vermin ultimately leading to disease. Why are we not attracting the smartest, best and brightest???

Because they vote Republican.

Anonymous said...

What happened to those kids was terrible.
If they came here for medical services find but before they got to that cluster apartment. They were in one previously but city moved them.
Again shuffle continues and two children are dead.
Now they will sue the city and owner and once again this all could have been prevented by the owner should have fixed issues in building with other tenants. The DHS should have checked everything out after the other family moved out of that cluster site and most important once this family was moved out of one site they should have been in permanent housing with small kids in all.
This will be an on going issue and it is sad to say DHS and the mayor only do something when people die. Why must it take someone to die before real results happen?

Anonymous said...

WE ARE A VERY GENEROUS CITY WHEN IT COMES TO PROVIDING FREE SOCIAL SERVICES. IT'S NOT ALWAYS THE BEST BUT WE DO PROVIDE IT. IF THE CITY MUST SHELTER PEOPLE THEN PUT THEM INSIDE SHELTERS. DON'T STUFF THEM INSIDE THESE DINGY CHEAP MOTELS THAT ARE POPPING UP ALL OVER THE PLACE.

Anonymous said...

The "parents" were both druggies. No wonder their kid was born with congenital malformations. It's a wonder she wasn't born with 2 heads or purple fur. The "parents" were deadbeat pieces of useless filth too busy getting high to buckle down and get jobs to provide for themselves and the children they brought into the world. Having their kids die was the best thing that ever happened to them in their miserable lives, judging from the huge inflow of GoFundMe and other donations. What are the bets it will end up spent on drugs?

The taxpayers of NYC should NOT have to foot the bill for every lazy deadbeat who whistles into town for the libtard high water level of bennies for freeloaders. Every single city which has such an asinine "required to provide housing for all who want it" program is overrun with these undesirable one-way cash flow sponges on our resources. What do they give us in return? Increased crime and debt.

The "required to provide housing for all who want it" program is unsustainable, the moonbeam idea of libtards but the tax burden of working people. People who took more care about their lives so they would NOT have to live off the backs of others. Having a stupid program like this just encourages the useless vermin from every other place in the country to come and help themselves to our stupidity, in the form of Welfare A-Z.

Anonymous said...

Hey Joe, check out Peter Ambrose's Youtube channel before he takes it down:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC38SWSIzIR2Y0YAcD_jr5vg

Quote: The Earth is Flat. Schools indoctrinate Government agendas. You've been convinced, a Human Being means no more than your name.Goodluck

Anonymous said...

If you take away the "right to shelter" the homeless populations feigns mental illness to gain admittance into the hospital.

That is much worse.

Joe Moretti said...

Sorry, but shelter is NOT a right, it is something you must EARN, like everything else in life. If where you are is too expensive like NYC, then fucking move elsewhere, I mean it is a big country.

And being a Democrat and liberal, I do believe that we should have some kind of temporary (the operative word being TEMPORARY) safety net for times when you lose a job (unemployment) or welfare/food stamps, medicaid, BUT it should not become a way of life, once you are on your feet, then that is it. For one, we cannot sustain all these people who have chosen this lifestyle as career. BUT at the same times, enough with tax breaks for mega billion dollar companies, the 1% and make religious institutions pay fucking taxes.

Now in the case with these completely irresponsible parents and deadbeats and other like them, your bad life choices, your addictions, your chronic unemployment and any other shit that causes you to be a fuck-up is NOT my problem, other people's problems or the government.

Our society has created a whole generation of folks who just suck the government tit dry (but we are the ones really paying for this shit) and do give not a damn thing back and end up causing fucking problems for society. AND if you cannot take care of your own damn selves, don't have kids, which are a major responsibility that rely on you financially and emotionally and neither of these douchebag Ambroses were able to do this, but YET decided it was a good ideal to have not one, but two kids that they could not care for properly. WELL FUCK YOU and others like you, YOU are not mine or anyone's problem, PERIOD.

But of course my bleeding heart liberal brothers and sisters will think otherwise, hence one reason that we have such fucking deadbeats. I did not work hard in school, college, find work, do well at it for me to take care of your dead beat asses. Every fucking thing I have I worked for it, I got it myself and it was not always easy. I did not ask for handouts, etc and I certainly did not grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth, not even bronze. When I was a kid, I asked my dad for a mini-bike, because some other kids in the neighborhood had them. And you know what, I am still waiting for it.

Yes, life is not easy, life is not fair, but you know what, FUCKING DEAL WITH IT and be a responsible adult.

Anonymous said...

Anon - it does take a village and our mayor is clearly the village idiot. I wish one GOP mayoral candidate would just say enough. On this, on zero vision, bike lanes etc.

Anonymous said...

@ Anonymous "On this, on zero vision, bike lanes etc."
Where do you ride a bike ? My taxes paid for the roads, bridges and tunnels that you use and so get over this anti bike phobia and start sharing the road with bicyclist !
I ride a bike, have two cars a motorcycle and use mass transit ! So what dose this have to do with homelessness ?

Anonymous said...

There is still something not right with how those poor children died. Where were the parents? Who was playing around with the radiator? Why were the parents looking forward to move to Italy, eventually? How? This case screams for a thorough investigation of the parents.

Anonymous said...

My taxes paid for the roads, bridges and tunnels that you use and so get over this anti bike phobia and start sharing the road with bicyclist !
---
Because bike riders are super absorbed assholes that think they are entitled to ignore laws and rules and do just about anything in weaving through traffic that their little sweet snowflake brains tell them. They seem to be stuck in a permanent 10 year old self-indulgence.

Great when daddy and mommy are taking care of you (as they still likely are you precious little 30 year old), pretty stupid when you are playing chicken with someone who learned to drive in Bombay, Bangkok or Baghdad. Pretty stupid indeed.

Anonymous said...

Bus ticket back to where they came from.

JQ LLC said...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ghG9ZoEkomE

The father singing about Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen, the girl he murdered.

Oh, lord. Make sure this guy and his wife don't shoot up their donations.

Anonymous said...

New York State doesn't have a residency law so it must provide shelter for anyone who shows up at our door. Well why can't NYC say it's shelters are full and we can ship them to another city, say Buffalo or anywhere in between.

Anonymous said...

33% of our homeless are mentally ill. Those people should not be lumped into the same category.

If we can't house the homeless then certain public spaces/parks need to allow the homeless to sleep and live there.

We need to encourage more people in need to get abortions and the government should pay for them. It would be a lot cheaper in the long run.

Anonymous said...

Get me right. The Law is unjust (to us taxpayers), and I do oppose it.
When you chum the waters, sharks from far and wide will show up.

Anonymous said...

and by the way, they'll be millionaires by next year. Courtesy of NYC.

Anonymous said...

Can I press "Like" for Joe Moretti ?

Anonymous said...

Free abortion in the first few weeks of conception. You get a happy meal coupon and a Compact Disc of your choice.
Wanna make it permanent? We can do that too. A $2,500.00 check for getting your tubes tied or vas deferens snipped. Then go blow it on Horse for all I care.

Anonymous said...

My condolences to the parents. Two little girls died horribly. I am very sorry for their loss.

Best of luck to them in their respective programs. May both the parents remain drug and alcohol free despite this horrible, wrenching loss.

I'm shocked by a lot of the cruel and inappropriate comments today.

Anonymous said...

NYC taxpayers should be able to take a percentage off their taxes. Technically, these homeless people are living off our dime. Our number of dependents should be increased so we can get something back on our tax returns. The next Mayor better propose a residency law for people seeking shelter. New Yorkers are tired of everyone sponging off them. It's hard for us to pay our bills and expenses and provide for our families.

Ned said...

"33% of our homeless are mentally ill"
And over 66& are thieving alcoholics and drug addicts run out of other states.
So what ? Does the stupid New York mayor continue to give them milk & cookies ?
No

This would be my proposal.
-clean them up and escort them on a one way (non redeemable) Amtrak to Miami with $200 worth of Publix food & booze credits they can only redeem in Florida and cant use in New York.
End of problem, the homeless will be much happier in Florida.

-Ned
www.nra.org

Anonymous said...

@Anonymous "Because bike riders are super absorbed assholes"
What a Maroon you are to make a statement like this !
You need to grow a pair and stop attacking bike riders on line with your Anonymous statements.
This article is not about bikes dummy !

Anonymous said...

We have a drug epidemic that ramped up when pharmaceutical companies began pushing pain meds for more than terminal cancer patients . We need more aggressive crack down on these companies .

Unknown said...

The whole concept of free shelter in New York City is a flawed concept.Free shelter dictates that anyone, from any part of the world, can come here and live on one of the the most expensive pieces of real estate in the world, for FREE.

Anonymous said...

Joe Lhota wanted to amend Article XVII to exclude non NY residents from right to shelter but since he was an old white guy he didn't stand a chance. I wonder if the program Koch had implemented is still used. He set aside buildings the city seized for tax delinquency and turned them into affordable housing with up to 15% set aside for the homeless.

Julie B. said...

Joe Moretti, YOU ARE THE MAN!!!!!!!!!!!! When I hear these stories, I always ask myself, "Why am I working, when these lazy MFers are getting shelter for free?" We bust our asses every single day for 40+ years because our fear of living on the street is too great. What if we all just stopped working and asked DHS for a place to live--then they'd have to stop this crap. After all, many of these people don't deserve free housing more than we do, do they? In reality we'd never do that, but you get my point.

Anonymous said...

If landlords were not in the business of rent gouging, a portion of the current "homeless" might not be homeless.
Soon nobody but rich Russian oligarchs, wealthy Chinese and other foreigners will be able to have a New York City abode.

Anonymous said...


Have you seen a homeless shelter? Do you really think most people feel they hit the jackpot to live at a homeless shelter for free? Most of them are dumps.

There are always going to be homeless people. Some are mentally ill, some had to leave an abusive environment, some are drug addicts, some lost their jobs and go evicted.

Propose a realistic solution instead of complaining and calling people names.

Who deserves free housing then? If many do not deserve free housing who does deserve it?
>> many of these people don't deserve free housing more than we do, do they?

>>Julie B. said.

GaryW said...

Anonymous said...
We have a drug epidemic that ramped up when pharmaceutical companies began pushing pain meds for more than terminal cancer patients . We need more aggressive crack down on these companies .

“[W]e’re not going to solve every difficult problem in terms of end-of-life care. …Maybe you’re better off not having the surgery, but taking the painkiller.”

-President Obama

Damn those drug companies following the Presidents lead.

Anonymous said...


He was referring to end of life care. People who are very close to dyeing.
The drug companies pushed the drug for all pain starting in 1990 and it dove tails with the rise in addicts.

http://www.addictions.com/opiate/the-role-of-pharmaceutical-companies-in-the-opioid-epidemic/

No, they didn't follow the presidents lead but the president and the last two presidents did not shut this down because of big donations.

>>Damn those drug companies following the Presidents lead.

Joe Moretti said...

Anonymous said...

My condolences to the parents. Two little girls died horribly. I am very sorry for their loss.

Best of luck to them in their respective programs. May both the parents remain drug and alcohol free despite this horrible, wrenching loss.

I'm shocked by a lot of the cruel and inappropriate comments today.

--------------------------

You should be SHOCKED at the powers that be that continually perpetuate this bullshit of warehousing homeless and decades of making people dependent on constant handouts. As I said before safety nets are fine temporary BUT not when they become a way of life and life long career.

And you should also be SHOCKED by irresponsible and deadbeat people like the Ambroses who were NEVER capable of bringing children into this world when they themselves could not even take of own selves. That is what is cruel and inappropriate, bringing children into the world that one cannot take care of.

So save the bleeding heart far left liberal crap that people, including me (a Democrat and liberal) are sick and tired of hearing.

Whatever happened to being responsible for your own actions, your own choices and your own destiny without involving every one else for your fuck-ups. There was a reason their family and friends did not take them in when they were in Maine.

Anonymous said...


EXACTLY!

And this is how I feel about fat people who make up 60% of the population not the .0009% that the homeless population makes up.

When you are a fat pig and have a heart attack, my premium doesn't have to increase to pay for you shoving food in your mouth.

This country needs to bring back fat shaming in full force.

>>Whatever happened to being responsible for your own actions, your own choices and your own destiny without involving every one else for your fuck-ups.

Anonymous said...

Right to shelter?
OK!
Right on the front lawn of Gracie Mansion and in City Hall Park!
FU Duh Blaz!

Anonymous said...

The majority of street drugs are generic brands coming in over the border from pharmaceutical company's in Mexico. Many are made in Costa Rica.