The blowback blight and anarchy from NYC's Open Restaurants Law

 

 

Impunity City

Since eating indoors was still a major risk of contagion for months on end last year, City Council and Mayor de Blasio addressed the existential threat the virus had on the dining and drinking industry and started the Open Restaurants initiative which lifted restrictions and eased regulations for restaurants to build sheds on the street curbs so patrons can come back and dine again outside of their establishments. Despite usurping parking spaces from residents, these businesses were able to recoup some losses and were able to make money again. The city also integrated this program with the Open Streets initiative to “re-imagine” public streets initially centered on cycling and pedestrian commuting by evolving them to plazas with the intent to foster community activity and keeping vehicular traffic out (both initiatives annoyingly prodded by bike zealot/car abolitionist lobby Transportation Alternatives). With the sheds on the asphalt, restaurants were able to extend their businesses by placing tables on the street, enabling to serve more customers. At the time it was logical and necessary.

Even though this was enacted for emergency purposes to keep businesses thriving in a still near dead city (with more prodding from agent of the city TransAlt weaponizing this program to banish cars)  the City Council Cronies and The Blaz decided to make restaurant outdoor sheds permanent, which was buoyed by a bill written by the State Senate and signed by Mario’s Son Governor Cuomo. Now even though restaurants are under the regulatory purview of the Department of Health, the Blaz left the responsibility of monitoring the street sheds under the Department Of Buildings. If this isn’t bizarre enough, the Department of Transportation seems are wholly left out of this even though the streets are officially under their purview. And as expected with the Blaz and the Council Cronies, they conjure these laws without considering the ramifications of them as some restaurants and even non-food related establishments opportunistically took advantage of the bureaucratic fugazi of  NYC’s Open Restaurants and Streets policy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The homeless survey says....the city's shelters suck

 

NY Post

Most New Yorkers living on the street and subways have been through the city’s shelter system — and don’t want to go back, according to a new survey of 200 “unsheltered” city residents.

More than three-quarters of respondents from all five boroughs — 77 percent — said they had stayed in the shelter system before and opted to return to the street, according to the report released Monday by the Coalition for the Homeless.

Of those who eschewed shelters, 38 percent cited concerns about their safety while another 44 percent blamed city social workers for being either inefficient, overly-controlling, inattentive or disrespectful, the report said.

“No discipline, security don’t do nothing, food sucks, feel like I’m in prison, no love,” one survey respondent said of the city-run system.

“I’m a human being,” said another. “I don’t want to be treated like an ASPCA mutt.”

City social workers, meanwhile, had approached 84 percent of the individuals surveyed. Yet three-fifths of those approached refused the services offered by the workers — usually a trip back into the shelter system.

Fifty-three percent of respondents said they need real housing to get off the streets, while 26 percent also cited jobs and income.

Survey respondents were approached while living anywhere from subways stations and sidewalks to parks and office building atriums.

Their answers suggest New York City’s street homeless “see the sacrifice of their safety, dignity, and agency as the unacceptable cost of entering the shelter system and so they are left with no choice but to bed down in public spaces,” the report argued.

Update: George The Atheist reporting from Woodside on the city's homeless policy failure