TUESDAY, DEC 10, 2013 11:35 AM EST

New York Post editorial board: NYC “too generous” to city’s homeless

Responding to a landmark New York Times profile of the city's homeless, the Post says it's all "hooey"

ELIAS ISQUITH

TOPICS: THE NEW YORK POST, THE NEW YORK TIMES, HOMELESSNESS, DASANI, INEQUALITY, NEW YORK CITY,MEDIA CRITICISM, POLITICS NEWS

(Credit: AP/Mark Lennihan)

The New York Post’s editorial board has read the much-talked-about New York Times profile of Dasani, one of New York City’s thousands of homeless children, and reached a typically inhumane conclusion: the little girl should be glad to have it so good.

For context, keep in mind that the conditions the Times describes are as follows: Dasani lives in the Auburn Family Residence, a city homeless shelter where “mold creeps up walls and roaches swarm, where feces and vomit plug communal toilets, where sexual predators have roamed and small children stand guard for their single mothers outside filthy showers.”

The Post’s response? “[Dasani's] mother, father and [siblings] aren’t really homeless at all. True, they live in housing meant for ‘homeless families.’ But their 540-square-foot unit gives them a solid roof over their heads, in addition to city-provided meals and services.” What lucky duckies!

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The Post hardly bothers to grapple with the reality of life for Dasani and children like, her however, briskly passing over the depredations and indignities of homelessness in the city in order to blame Dasani’s parents for being “outrageously irresponsible.”

Ultimately, the Post concludes, the real villain in this story is “the liberal establishment” and an overly generous welfare state. “If the city is at fault here,” the Post writes, “it might well be for having been too generous — providing so much that neither the father nor mother seems much inclined to provide for their kids. That would be a story worth reading.”