Tag: conservative

Understanding Homelessness in NYC: Myths and Realities

Living in New York City, as is the case in any major city throughout the world, one of the many daily occurrences you encounter is that of homelessness. As I walk into the subway and sit down, I expect some person claiming to be homeless and needing some help. I actually see the same person sometimes multiple times a week asking for money. I used to be pretty generous and give money to the homeless(especially if they had a visible handicap), but then one day I asked myself a question about why there were so many people who were homeless and what policy could be put into place to really address the problem.

First and foremost, homelessness, particularly in NYC, gets over-exaggerated. About less the one percent of New Yorkers are homeless. And to further break the number down, most homeless people suffer from either substance abuse or mental illness, which inhibits them from carrying out basic life necessities such as holding a steady job or maintaining basic hygiene. If you want to alleviate homelessness, more mental health hospitals and fewer shelters would prove much more effective. Now can we go around and put every homeless person who we suspect to be crazy and rush them to a mental institution no( at least not exactly) It would best be done through a system where a homeless person breaks a law such as public urination or vagrancy and having a psychiatrist do an evaluation to see if that person is susceptible to go into society and of course getting the person to consent to be institutionalized (unless the person is deemed a danger to himself or others and such consent wouldn’t be needed).

And second, the idea that I am going to give every homeless person who asks me for money throughout my day my hard-earned cash to encourage them further to beg doesn’t help anybody. It came to me one day that many homeless people actually are already receiving government assistance through disability and SSI checks that they beg because they know they can get over on people. A typical New York City subway train contains ten cars. So if you were homeless and ambitious enough to beg for money on every subway car and get at least two people to give you a dollar, you can earn twenty dollars per train. You hit five trains in a day, you can make up to a hundred dollars a day just begging for money(untaxed, mind you). So homelessness for some can be pretty lucrative.

If you don’t buy my point, look at how the Japanese deal with their homeless issues. Which can best be explained by watching this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eK–oCVP18A. I myself had gotten a chance to visit Tokyo a few years back and was struck by how different homelessness was over there than it is here. First, no homeless person can ever be seen begging. Second, I didn’t encounter any homeless person who reeked of foul odor, as is the case in NYC(whole subway carts will be emptied just because passengers can’t take the smell of some of the homeless people in it). The third most homeless people live in these makeshift communities in the Tokyo subway systems.

I do believe that we should help people who are down on their luck for their sake and ours, but I just think we’re going the wrong way about it. And that by having an honest and more open dialogue, we’ll really help these downtrodden individuals.

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Why Black America need a conservative revolution!!!

I know many black people took the victory of Donald Trump very hard, but I would like to suggest that maybe such a victory isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Black people in this country(certainly not all) are content with receiving government handouts. A Trump victory was seen as a sign of a reduction in public housing, food stamps, and Medicaid. My issue with this is how so many black people become so reliant on the government for self-sufficiency.

The bottom line is that the government is not going to help black people with their issues, which are (but not limited to) high rates of violent crime in black communities, low educational achievement, a high incarceration rate, high illegitimate births, and high instances of poverty. All these can neither be solved by either Democratic nor the Republican party.

In the case of inadequate education, is it a system of bad funding in the school systems or a culture that prompts anti-intellectualism in the black community? What is a school but not just bricks and books? It’s the pupil and the quality of teachers that truly set the educational standard. The chief reason Asians do so exceptionally well in school is because of their collective attitude towards education.

In the case of black crime, when will individual accountability be taken into account? The same sob story that has been going on for decades, of black men being forced into a life of crime because of a lack of opportunity. My argument against this is that there was even an attempt by many of these black men to make their own opportunities by investing in themselves through education, setting up their own business, etc. In a predominantly black city of Detroit, where African Americans make up 80% of the population, only 10% of the businesses are black own. Who’s at fault for this? Is it the opportunistic South Asian immigrant or the sluggishness of black entrepreneurs in these communities? Many black people complain about the inability to get loans to set up businesses, but is it racism or lack of creditworthiness that prevents many blacks can attaining loans?

Black Americans are currently caught up in a downward spiral. Black people in this country have one of the lowest median incomes of any racial group, currently standing at about 35,000$. There is absolutely no wealth being generated in swaths of black communities across this country. Constantly, people complain about gentrification, but many times, gentrification is the only way to invigorate these blighted communities with the investment and capital that is needed to improve these areas. Without urban renewal schemes, these communities, Harlem, Brooklyn, and the South Bronx, would remain poor.

Let’s talk about housing projects and how they basically became a way to keep millions of people in concentrated intergenerational poverty. Many of the urban developmental programs can trace their history back to the 1930s as a way to provide low-income citizens access to modern housing. What started out as a progressive housing policy became an urban-policy disaster from Cabrini Green to the South Bronx; thousands of public housing projects became infested with crime, poverty, and almost any case of urban blight one can think of.
The solution for the Black American for his advancement is to, as I proposed in the introductory paragraph is to stop relying on the government and start relying on himself, no more food stamps, no more public housing, no more government welfare. It’s quite simple: get educated(particularly in a marketable skill such as engineering, finance, and medicine), wait until you are married to have children, invest your money in stock and bonds instead of a pair of Air Jordans. Bottom line: take responsibility for your own life!!!

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