1-      Why do you think people have developed antagonistic views of the homeless in our cities? Have people ever been sympathetic to the homeless or has this pretty much been an attitude for a long time?

A lot of people reacted very sympathetically when the homelessness problem first emerged on a broad scale in the early 1980’s. Many of the shelters and soup kitchens that exist today were started as voluntary efforts at the neighborhood level during that time. The early 1980’s was a period of recession and many people assumed that this was going to be a temporary crisis. When the problem persisted and even got worse, despite an improving economy, people became less tolerant and began to view homeless people as part of a larger disorder problem that was making the city a less appealing place to live. Many local politicians and social services providers responded to the crisis by blaming cuts to the federal budget and asked for people to be tolerant of the disruptions caused by homeless people while long-term solutions were developed and implemented. By the late 1980’s and early 1990’s people saw very few positive developments and many neighborhoods felt threatened as the city imposed homeless shelters and social services on them, which appeared to do little to reduce the level of disorder. Eventually many well meaning people became fed up and began to fight for their communities by calling for the police to take more immediate action to control the disorderly and restore the “quality of life” for local residents.

2-      Rudy Giuliani often gets credit for "cleaning" up New York City and even used this issue as a campaign talking point during his run for president. Did he create more problems than he solved? What are the ramifications of his "Quality of Life Campaign"?

Giuliani was the first politician in New York to fully understand the level of frustration city residents felt about the disorder problem and the inability of liberal politicians to either restore order through social services or policing. He made it clear that he had a solution to the problem, which was to use the police to reduce the impact of the homeless and other disorderly groups on the rest of the city. Ironically, many of these efforts began in fits and starts during the Dinkins administration but lacked a clear direction and intensity. It was Dinkins who drove the homeless out of Tompkins Square park and began the crackdown against squeegee men. When William Bratton became Giuliani’s Police Commissioner, he institutionalized these initiatives under the rubric of “broken windows” policing, which calls for the police to focus on zero tolerance enforcement of minor violations to restore order. The result was hundreds of thousands of additional misdemeanor arrests that cycled thousands of homeless people through Rikers Island, forcing many into the shelter system and others into more isolated parts of the city. It also broke up all the visible congregations of homeless people, which were a significant source of fear in the minds of the public. Despite these efforts, the number of homeless people in the city actually increased under Giuliani, and has continued to do so under Bloomberg, because of the changing nature of the city’s housing and employment markets, neither of which Giuliani addressed while in office. The poor got poorer and the rich got richer under his administration and the condition of public spaces improved largely by filling Rikers Island with low-level offenders.

3-      It seems like politicians frequently dress up laws or campaigns like the "Quality of Life Campaign", the "Patriot Act" or the "Death Tax" with certain language to influence public opinion. Is this pure deception to trick the public into supporting these policies? I mean, who would want to be against something called the Patriot Act? Or are these fair descriptions?

In this case, there can be no denying that the quality of life throughout the city declined dramatically in the 1980’s. Disorder in the form of homeless encampments, aggressive panhandlers, graffiti, squeegee men, street level drug sales and prostitution all interfered with people’s use of public spaces. What’s interesting about this phrase, however, is that it took a rather progressive term and turned into a neoconservative one. In the 1960’s and 70’s “quality of life” tended to refer to a desire to improve conditions for those on the margins by improving the housing stock, medical care, and social services to bring people into the mainstream of society. Beginning with Richard Nixon, the term took on a more conservative tone referring to the environmental concerns of rural and suburban residents in keeping with his largely anti-urban agenda. By the 1980’s, the term came to refer to the desires of the middle and upper classes to be protected from the poor and disorderly without regard to the latter groups ultimate well being. In this way, Giuliani and other urban neoconservatives hijacked people’s legitimate concerns about declining urban conditions and channeled it away from providing housing and social services for the poor, mentally ill, and homeless and towards the exclusion of these groups through heavy handed policing and punitively oriented social welfare programs.

4-      In your book, you touch on the fact that many people elected to city office view prostitution, graffiti, young men hanging out on street corners, the homeless and panhandlers as the source rather than a symptom of urban decline. Why do you think this is? Where do they get it wrong?

This is part of broad neoconservative effort to scale down social services in favor of tax cuts and free market approaches to social problems. They have promoted the idea that the cause of neighborhood decline isn’t government and private sector disinvestment and the decimation in manufacturing jobs, but instead the declining moral standards of the poor. Rather than using city resources to develop employment opportunities for people who aren’t going to get jobs on Wall street or in Midtown, or investing in affordable housing and decent social services, the neoconservatives want to use the police to reign in the disorderly and drive them out of public view in the hopes that this will restore order to neighborhoods, allowing them to flourish. The problem is that while crime and disorder have declined, poverty and homelessness are actually increasing, and the economic conditions in many neighborhoods is worsening.

5-      The HBO series "The Wire" touches on many problems of the poor, urban enclaves of major cities and how government institutions fail the poorest and most downtrodden citizens amongst us. Do you think the problem stems from the fact that most middle and upper-class citizens just don't understand the problems that people in inner-cities face? I mean, it sounds a little oxymoronic to say we need to get rid of the homeless for our quality of life, what about people that are living on the street? Aren't they the ones with the quality of life issues?

As I mentioned before, the “quality of life” campaign has really been about putting the desire for social order by the middle and upper classes ahead of the needs of the unemployed, homeless, and mentally ill. I don’t think it’s a lack of understanding about the living conditions of these people; it’s a frustration at the seeming inability of government to address their needs in a way that restores neighborhood stability. People can only be asked to tolerate widespread disorder for so long until they demand immediate solutions—no matter how punitive. In “The Wire” we see the effects of generations of social and economic isolation of the poor, rather than ignorance of their plight. The more we marginalize the homeless and other groups, the more we guarantee their condition and their long-term presence. What is needed are real solutions to the failure of housing and employment markets and the social safety net to provide a decent standard of living for everyone, not more aggressive policing.

6-      You say that New York City is a liberal city. How do you explain, then, four republican mayoral victories in a row?

New Yorkers continue to vote overwhelmingly for Democrats in state and national elections. Even at the neighborhood level we have many very liberal City Council members. There has been, however, a crisis for liberals at the city-wide level. Over the last 16 years, Democratic mayoral candidates have had little to offer and have largely adopted the outlines of the neoconservative Republican agenda. They support giving away hundreds of millions of dollars in incentives to Wall Street and real estate developers and tax breaks for property owners, even when the city lacks resources to adequately shelter the homeless and keep food pantries stocked. They support aggressive policing targeting the disorderly and provide minimal funding for social services that inadequately treat the symptoms of the economic reorganization and social services cut-backs driving the homelessness and disorder problems. Until urban liberal politicians develop a more progressive agenda that doesn’t just rely on high finance and corporate headquarters to drive the economy, and the police and underfunded social services to pick up the pieces, then people will choose more neoconservative politicians to maintain social order in the midst of growing poverty and homelessness.

7-      If former mayor Giuliani got it wrong with the "Quality of Life Campaign", what needs to be done to solve problems like homelessness, prostitution and panhandling that plague major cities with urban populations? Are more social programs to help the poor the answer? If so, how do you avoid corruption and misuse while promoting accountability?

The real root of our disorder problem is the changing nature of New York City’s labor and housing markets. Throughout the 1970’s and 80’s liberal politicians took active steps to reorient the city’s economy towards finance, real estate, and corporate headquarters and away from manufacturing. The result has been a polarization of the econmy with a small number of people earning fantastic salaries and a growing number of people working in service industries, who are underpaid and under employed. On top of this, the city heavily subsidized the elimination of very low cost housing through a variety of real estate incentives. The result is that just as wages and employment were declining, the cost of housing increased, creating a market failure that has left hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers homeless, doubled up, or living in substandard housing. In addition, social services have been cut for those with severe personal problems such as mental illness and drug addiction. As a result, these people now wander the streets, parks, and subways. Most people would prefer to have decent work and a decent place to live rather than receive welfare or social services. For them, reorienting the city’s economy makes the most sense. For those who really can’t easily join the labor force, decent social services would help them and in the process help restore order to the public spaces we all have to use.