MSNBC Host Complains About Homeless People “All On The Upper West Side,” Blames De Blasio And “Misguided Liberalism”

MSNBC's Scarborough: “I Swear To God, The Squeegees Will Be Coming Out” In Central Park And The Upper West Side. On the August 25 edition of MSNBC's Morning Joe, host Joe Scarborough lamented what he called a “homeless epidemic” sweeping across New York City, which he blamed on the “misguided liberalism” of Mayor Bill de Blasio. Scarborough repeatedly claimed it was “a lie” that the increased homelessness could be explained by the “previous administration's cuts to the homeless budgets,” instead blaming de Blasio for threatening to reverse “one of the greatest governmental miracles that's ever happened in the past 200 years”:

SCARBOROUGH: Have we noticed what's happening to the city? Have we noticed that we have people now coming up? Just, just-- the squeegees are coming. I swear to god, the squeegees will be coming out in the next month or two. People are-- the homeless are all over the city--

BARNICLE: Increasingly so.

SCARBOROUGH: Increasingly so. All through Central Park. They're all on the Upper West Side. They're all other-- and you know, by the way if anyone is watching and saying “oh, Joe is such a mean person.” No, I don't live here most of the time anymore, but this is what it looks like in the '80s and the '70s, we're moving back to that direction.

And, if anybody thinks it is more humane to sleep outside exposed than to sleep in the shelters that we have all around the city. Then, they don't understand the case. But, Mike, I have no idea why Bill de Blasio -- and I don't know if the commissioner, police commissioner has anything to do with this -- but why they are allowing a homeless epidemic to start spreading across New York again. I've had a lot of friends saying they are going to move out if this continues.

BARNICLE: Well, like you, I am a part-time resident of New York City, but even to my eye, you can see the changes in the atmosphere and the conditions on the street over the past six or seven months. Our full-time New York City residential correspondence is, of course, Mr. Willie Geist. What have you noticed?

GEIST: Well, if you live here every day, there is just no question about it. You see more homeless people on the street. We seem them around our neighborhood, around our building. And this has come up as an issue for the de Blasio administration the last couple of weeks. They say it's because of the previous administration's cuts to the homeless budget--

SCARBOROUGH: Oh that's just a lie!

GEIST: But in fact--

SCARBOROUGH: That's just a lie!

GEIST: But if you anecdotally-- anecdotally you didn't see it on the street in the way you saw it in the Bloomberg years. So something has changed over the last couple of years.

SCARBOROUGH: That's just a lie. And, by the way, unemployment is down. This isn't like 1933. This isn't like 2009. Unemployment is down. The economy is better. This isn't driven by people being in worse shape today than they were in 2009. Or New York's economy is being in worse shape. This is because Bill De Blasio, is what, is he trying to be more humane? Does somebody believe that exposing people outside, and being outside in a dangerous situation is more humane?

GEIST: If you go out and ask a beat cop, they will tell you off the record confidentially, “I'm not allowed to do anything about it.” You go, really? New rules.

SCARBOROUGH: New rules. So they've told the cops to let people sleep outside on the street where things are more dangerous to them?

GEIST: I don't know specifically what the order is to the police. But, what I do know this isn't about us feeling icky about the city. It's about people living on the street and should be in a better place, and be better taken care of.

SCARBOROUGH: By the way, I'm not offended by it. No, no, no, let's not be politically correct here. Let's not be politically correct here. Let's talk about what's best for the people who are exposed, sleeping on grates because some left-winger thinks that this is more humane. Go, let them just sleep in grates, let them sleep in Central Park where they can get beaten up, let them not like have a -- I mean this is misguided liberalism at its worst and I wonder how long New York City is going to put up with Bill de Blasio. We can elect liberals that actually give a damn about the quality of life here and aren't busy trying to turn this city into a social experiment.

I love this city. I love New York City. I absolutely love it. I have been here for the better part of 10, 11, 12 years. What happened in New York City from 1993 to 2012 is nothing short of a miracle. It's one of the greatest governmental miracles that's ever happened in the past 200 years. It's unbelievable.

Anybody that lived in New York City in 1989 knows exactly what I'm talking about. This isn't about politics. It's about how this city, and the residents of this amazing city, turned themselves around. And how people now look to New York City with love and admiration, especially after 2001. New Yorker Mark Halperin?

HALPERIN: It has already changed, and if the current mayor doesn't understand that things have gotten worse for everybody, then I think he probably will lose if he doesn't change things back. Because, you're right, the miracle is being undone. [MSNBC, Morning Joe, 8/25/15]

NYC Is Increasing Funding And Reversing “Dangerous” Housing Policies Of Previous Administration

Budget For Department Of Homeless Services Has Increased More Than 16 Percent Under Mayor De Blasio. According to figures released by the New York City Council, the budget allotment for the Department of Homeless Services (DHS) for fiscal year 2015 represents a nearly 16 percent increase from fiscal year 2012, the last full year of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's tenure. The city allotted $147.4 million additional dollars for the department in FY 2015, a 16.3 percent increase from FY 2012, bringing total DHS expenditures to just over $1 billion. Mayor de Blasio's budget proposal for FY 2016 calls for a additional funding increases at DHS, bringing expenditures above $1.1 billion. [The Council of the City of New York, Report on the Fiscal Year 2015 Executive Budget, 5/19/14; The City of New York Executive Budget, Fiscal Year 2016, 5/7/15]

NYT: Mayor De Blasio To Spend $100 Million On Shelter Improvement, Housing Subsidies. According to a May 7 article in The New York Times, Mayor Bill de Blasio's response to criticism of the city's housing system was to announce a $100 million annual commitment to improve New York's homeless shelters, expand housing subsidies to thousands of low-income families, and fund anti-eviction programs to keep residents off the streets. [The New York Times, 5/7/15]

Coalition For The Homeless: State Opposition To Increased Funding To Blame For Inadequate Response To Homelessness. According to a March 19 report by the Coalition for the Homeless, city officials in New York are taking “steps to combat record homelessness,” but Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D-NY) and state lawmakers in Albany need to do more to atone for housing program cuts made by previous state and local administrations. The report also cited the “lingering effects” of housing program cuts instituted by former Mayor Michael Bloomberg (emphasis original):

The good news, however, is that Mayor de Blasio's plan to address family homelessness - which aims to move more than 5,000 homeless families out of shelters and into permanent housing - will lead to reductions in child and family homelessness over the coming year. Indeed, there is early evidence that the Mayor's plan has begun to halt increases in family homelessness for the first time in years. Since December, in fact, the number of homeless families with children actually declined by more than 300 families.

In stark contrast, Governor Cuomo and his administration have done little to address rising New York City homelessness. Indeed, the Governor has opposed efforts to enhance rental assistance for homeless families and has proposed a deeply inadequate supportive housing plan that falls far short of the need. [Coalition for the Homeless, State of the Homeless 2015, 3/19/15]

PoliticoNY: Bloomberg-Era Funding For Homeless Prevention Program Has Doubled. According to a March 17 report by Politico New York, funding for the HomeBase homeless prevention program has reportedly doubled in scale since the end of the Bloomberg administration. However, the current administration “aims to move away from using cluster sites, in which residents are temporarily housed in private apartments,” the use of which “expanded” under the previous administration, instead prioritizing public housing and Section 8 housing vouchers. [Politico New York, 3/17/15]

Al Jazeera America: New York's Private “Cluster Sites” Are Run-Down, Overcrowded. A March 30 report by Al Jazeera America, titled “New York City's homeless find little comfort in shelter system,” detailed the difficult and often dangerous living conditions in the city's overcrowded private housing options favored by the previous administration. The poor living conditions came to light after de Blasio ordered an investigation by New York City's Department of Investigation (DOI) into private “cluster site” housing options for the homeless:

Under state law, the city is legally obligated to provide shelter to anyone who requests it. But families sheltered in cluster-site units live in poorly maintained buildings plagued by infestations of mice, rats, bedbugs and roaches.

[...]

The cluster-site program, originally called scattered-site housing, has drawn sharp criticism since its inception more than eight years ago.

In its scathing report released earlier this month, [Department of Investigation] inspectors found buildings to be rundown, filthy and often overrun with pests. In many apartments, inspectors witnessed roaches crawling on the walls, flytraps swarming with dead flies, chipped paint throughout the units, pools of urine in common areas, and holes in corners and under sinks, allowing rats and mice free access, the report said.

“The cluster sites are the worst maintained, the most poorly monitored and provide the least adequate social services to families,” DOI proclaimed.

The agency's commissioner, Mark Peters, said [the Department of Homeless Services] must take immediate steps to ensure that the health and safety of those families living in the shelter system are protected and that dangerous and unhealthy violations are corrected. [Al Jazeera America, 3/30/15]

Scarborough's Statements Echo Bill O'Reilly's Contempt For The Homeless

Fox News' O'Reilly: “Things Are Getting Crazy Here In New York City After The Election Of Uber-Liberal Mayor Bill de Blasio.” On the June 29 edition of Fox News' The O'Reilly Factor, host Bill O'Reilly complained that Mayor de Blasio was responsible for the influx of homeless residents sleeping in public spaces like Pennsylvania Station. Fox producer Jesse Watters then interviewed a number of apparently homeless individuals at the station in a selectively-edited segment intended to give the impression that they were all dependent on government handouts, addicted to drugs, or inclined to violence. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 6/29/15]

Fox's O'Reilly: The “Streets Of New York Are Becoming Chaotic” Because Of Mayor de Blasio, Homeless “Thugs.” On the July 27 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, host O'Reilly criticized New York's homeless population, comparing them with “thugs” and criminals. O'Reilly's anti-homeless comments were accompanied by an unflatteringly-edited video segment in which producer Watters goaded New Yorkers to attack Mayor de Blasio for what Fox characterized as the “explosion in homelessness.” As with Scarborough, the segment focused on the presence of homeless individuals in the “relatively affluent” Upper West Side. [Fox News, The O'Reilly Factor, 7/27/15]