WPCNR NEWS & COMMENT. By John F. Bailey. December 11, 2007: The holidays – when thoughts turn to peace and good will towards men and women and children the world over – except of course if you are undomiciled, and have a record, or a history of mental instability and just happen to be freezing every night

Nobody knows you when you’re down and out, and nobody wants to take responsibility for peace and good will to men on earth towards the down and out when there is political capital to be made.

 The Mayor of White Plains made that abundantly clear Friday night when he told WPCNR he would not open a warming shelter on his own, that it was up to the Common Council to approve the location (one or two churches in town).

Well, the President of the Common Council never got back to WPCNR this weekend on whether the Common Council would do that tonight.

So I suggest the undomiciled should trudge on over to the friendly White Plains Hospital Center Emergency Room, cough up a storm of mucus and complain of frostbite and exposure, if they have not already. The center cannot refuse them treatment. It is cold out there folks.  If they start doing that, the hospital is not going to be happy. Talk about the equalization of misery!

The Common Council, the County, the Clergy and the Mayor’s Office have kicked this issue around for three weeks instead of doing the right thing the first week which was opening a Warming Shelter. The clergy (as least the three or four leaders recognizing the horror of the county and city policies) is ready to go. But it will still take about two weeks to get the program up and running.

Ridiculous. The Red Cross housed over 40  people who were burned out of 208 West Post Road last week, and housing is now being arranged.

The Council should do the Drop In tonight now with details to be worked out. 

They won't though. Because they are our Councilpersons.

Next summer when we find a few bodies out there in the woods in shallow graves, be prepared to take those deaths of the despised and unuseful – as Cervantes wrote – “madmen are the children of God,”  on your 7 heads.

But, no, the Common Council is worried about “the outer neighborhoods,” and the inner neighborhoods.

The Council wants adequate security. Yet they can pass a site plan amendment instantly when developers snap their fingers.

Security is  very simple: you order the Department of Public Safety to assign a police officer – we already have an officer patrolling with Operation Trust looking for homeless sleeping on the streets – too bad they do not everywhere in White Plains, isn’t it? You never know what you might find – a frozen body perhaps? Like they found this past summer in front of Bloomingdale’s?

All right, so if you cannot spare the White Plains police, you hire a private security firm – we certainly hire enough consultants and  specialty lawyers who fan monthly on tax certs, don’t we? How about hiring Grace Church Community Services  (to run the Drop In) with our own money?

Or is the new sales tax increase  of ¼% strictly reserved to pay for a 5% raise across the board for the White Plains unions next year?  You bet it is.

Now about this issue of a Warming Center being a threat to neighborhood security:

 The Open Arms Shelter had  many more incidents when last totaled according to police records than the 85 Court Drop In Shelter had. So the county-run and county-approved Drop In was not as safe as the Drop IN…

As for the Sexual Offender argument – police only reported a couple of Sex Offenders showing up at the 85 Court Drop In center and they WERE identified when they checked in.  Philip Grant, the convicted murderer who was homeless did not stay at the 85 Court Drop In. 

Now, the argument against the drop-in is security. Is anyone using their heads here? I don’t think so.

If you have, and I am not saying you do, disturbed, mentally ill persons in this population – if you have persons who once were violent – don’t you think they would be safer if the community knew where they were at night – in a drop-in shelter, accounted for – and not out and about driven crazy by the cold perhaps a little too much one night until they snapped and committed something? 

Normal persons get into arguments over car accidents. Normal persons push and shove waiting in lines. Imagine how a normal person had no place to stay out of the miserable 33 degree rain last night?

There was an incident reported last week when a person acting out of the goodness of their hearts actually housed a homeless person, who turned on them  when they were asked to leave.

This was sad and shows, at least in one case, that this undomiciled person even when helped could not accept it for some reason. Who knows what caused this Good Samaritan act to go wrong. It shows you are not dealing with persons who can think rationally. You cannot treat them with an accept this or else attitude.

It demonstrates the difficulty in trying to help the undomiciled.

But I am not going to convince the fearful and the prejudiced who, I presume, would much prefer the homeless to simply go away, since if they cannot be used as a source of revenue, we have no use for them.

The homeless – many of whom are African-American or Hispanic – have no advocates.

 Go die. Go freeze. That’s what the county, the Mayor and the Common Council have been saying since August 5 when the Drop-In  in White Plains closed.

Real leaders say: we have to help these people and we’re going to work out the details later.

Politicans say what’s the downside for me? What’s the upside?

Saying it is responsible to think of all the people when reestablishing a Drop-In due to security issues in neighborhoods as an excuse for not opening a White Plains Drop In – ignores the real threat that lurks when as a matter of policy  you force  mentally unstable people, or even normal people down on their luck, or more violent homeless persons to stay in the elements.

It makes them colder and madder and more resentful of any kind of help – and could result in criminal acts, perhaps. A homeless person  who actually stays at the county-run drop-in shelter in Valhalla was arrested last week on a charge of stealing a $295 jacket.

So the Mayor, in his best washing-hands manner, has challenged the Common Council to do the right thing.

Will the Common Council delay action and a vote for another week? What holiday spirit!

Peace and good will towards men indeed.

The shame of White Plains city government and county ineptitude is not to be believed.

I have one comment on whether the County Legislators who are about to give themselves a stealth raise today – a despicable tactic exposed by the League of Women Voters.

Do legislators who condone a budget and a projection process that overestimates their revenue collections in sales tax by 40%  deserve a raise? That is gross stupidity and calls into question the entire county budget process.

I think everybody knows the answer to whether these legislators deserve a raise.

They don’t.

Let the Legislators eat cake.

They are incompetent and irresponsible and don’t pay attention to the budget except when voting themselves raises and establishing more positions for political hacks.

The raises are a disgrace.

But politicians have no sense of disgrace.

They are pathological hypocrites.