What did they put in the water? From CNN:
The big news in the Big Apple this week may be what didn’t happen.
There was not a single reported slaying, stabbing, shooting or knifing in any of the five boroughs on Monday, according to the New York Police Department…[skip]
“The city hopes to finish out the year with the lowest homicide rate sine 1960,” said [Deputy Police Commissioner Paul] Browne.
If only NYC could find a way to lower the gentrification rate, too.
If all of NYC was gentrified, the result would be ?
Gentrification in the sense of improvements to real estate is a good thing, it’s the loss of affordable housing that is the problem, which is a common but not required feature of gentrification.
I think we’ve learned that putting all the poor in one place is not good for a city. Stronger laws requiring all rehab projects to include some affordable housing COULD greatly improve the lives of the poor who could not afford to renovate their living quarters on their own.
Naturally, builders and rehabbers would fight any such requirement, but if all of the poor live three hours away, Richie Rich is going to have to get down on his knees and scrub his own bathroom floor.
Homicide (and other crime) rates are malleable things; reported bookkeeping items subject to the practices and policies of the various agencies in the law enforcement industry.
That’s a pretty sad/pathetic celebration, I’d say.
Woohoo, nobody killed anybody one day!! (Well, let’s say no bodies were found that particular day.)
In Oakland CA the murder rate is already above from what it was last year – and we still have a month to go. Woohoo as well? Yeah, I thought not.
On the up side, the amount of ‘For Sale – by bank’ (ie. foreclosures) signs have gone down, although there are still too many abandoned properties around.
I guess it’s looking up, but it somehow doesn’t feel like it. Not when the neighbor across the street is about to lose her house because of cancer and her losing her job/benefits.
We ourselves are just digging ourselves out. Trying to get at least some savings back – the 401k’s are gone, as are the previous savings.
It’s still so so ugly for so so many people….