When I first moved to New York City in the late ’80s, I lived on the Upper West Side with a group of friends. Full of beautiful prewar brownstones and Beaux-Arts buildings, living there had long been my dream. That dream quickly devolved into a nightmare. Our apartment was robbed; my friends and I constantly were harassed on the streets; a good friend was raped not far from our apartment. We all left within the year.
A decade later, I returned to a very different New York. Mayor Rudy Giuliani had cleaned it up; crime was at an all-time low. I eventually found my way back up to the Upper West Side to an exquisite prewar apartment near Central Park. Those were the glory days of the Upper West Side, when its intimate beauty was nurtured and cherished by the family-centered community. It was also very Jewish: Judaica stores, kosher butchers, Zabar’s and, for me, Friday evenings at B’nai Jeshurun synagogue, where the emphasis on beautiful music seared my soul.
Last week, I visited the Upper West Side. The Upper East Side, where I now live, has been dramatically affected by the ongoing lockdown. Nearly half the stores are permanently closed; trash pickup is beyond slow; and my son recently was attacked by a homeless man on Madison Avenue.
But none of that prepared me for what I saw on the other side of Central Park. The 90s streets looked like a scene from a Fellini movie: trash everywhere; a meandering of lost souls; a general sense of hopelessness and despair. Moving trucks lined the streets.
Farther down in the 70s and 80s, the heart of the Upper West Side, there was less trash and more bustle. But the sacred beauty of the area had a disheveled layer of grunge.
My mission was to check out a story about how — without notifying residents — Mayor Bill De Blasio had placed 700 men (as reported by Foxnews.com) who had been living in shelters, into three luxury hotels, including the Hotel Belleclaire, one block from a playground and the PS 87 elementary school, the New York Post reported; the Lucerne and the Belnord Hotel, patch.com reported. De Blasio told the Post on Aug. 17, “We had to get a lot of people out of shelters temporarily into hotels, to space people out and make sure they were safe.”
At $175 a night — the cost a community board member told the Post — one could question the wisdom of that choice, given that the Javits Center, which had thousands of beds set up for COVID-19, has remained sparsely populated throughout the pandemic.
But the cost turned out to be the least of the problems. According to an Aug. 6 story in the Post, at least 10 of the men were registered sex offenders, some still on parole. One “had forced sex with a four-year-old girl,” Foxnews.com reported; another had abused a 6-year-old.
Only after the Post reported on the illegality of allowing sex offenders to live within 1,000 feet of a school did the mayor move them.
The Post also reported there have been stabbings; robberies; drug deals; public urination and masturbation; stalking and incessant sexual harassment on the needle-littered streets.
Needless to say, many of the residents are not happy. A Facebook group, Upper West Siders for Safer Streets, was created and now has 11,000 members. The nonprofit group, West Side Community Organization, hired attorney Randy Mastro, who had been deputy mayor for operations in the first Giuliani administration (1994-98).
“What the de Blasio administration has done here shocks the conscience and has to be stopped,” Mastro told the New York Post in an Aug. 19 interview. “In the guise of addressing a problem, it has created far greater problems that are proving devastating to this neighborhood and endangering residents and homeless alike.”
Kevin Stocklin wrote in an opinion piece in The Federalist on Aug. 19 that de Blasio reportedly said, “I was troubled to hear this concept that because wealthy people have a set of concerns about the city, that we should accommodate them, that we should build our policies and approaches around them. That’s not how things work around here anymore.”
The mayor finally agreed to begin the process of moving the men back to shelters. But members of the Facebook group are dubious. In fact, just a few days later, dozens of homeless men were moved into a boutique hotel in Brooklyn, the Post reported on Aug. 21.
De Blasio’s announcement did create a greater presence of police and private security around the hotels. Still, my friends on the Upper West Side told me they never go out at night anymore because of the dangerous climate.
A store manager told me about “constant shaming” she encounters. She said that one day, a couple of women came in and excitedly told her about an art project they were creating for the homeless men. “I guess they didn’t think I had expressed enough excitement about the idea so they began to berate me about my ‘values.’ I was speechless.” She added that the previous day she heard a man on 79th Street yell at two young girls: “I’m going to come back and rape you!”
Because the Upper West Side is one of the most distinctly Jewish neighborhoods in the city, Jews are, for better or worse, at the center of this ordeal.
Because the Upper West Side is one of the most distinctly Jewish neighborhoods in the city, Jews are, for better or worse, at the center of this ordeal. The three hotel owners are Jewish. And the B’nai Jeshurun clergy put out a statement that upset many Upper West Side residents who interpreted it as trying to shame parents for caring about safety.
I left the area sad and angry but decided to walk up Central Park West, the avenue adjacent to the park. It was like stepping into a different film set — the exquisite beauty of the buildings and the park remained untouched. Indeed, the park, privately managed by the Central Park Conservancy, has been diligently maintained during the past six months.
That evening I went out alone after dark in my neighborhood. I won’t do that again. And for the first time in my life, I’m going to carry pepper spray.
Will the city recover as it did after 9/11? Many New Yorkers have their doubts, and I don’t know anyone without an exit plan. Crime statistics are up 70%; the number of shooting victims are up 81% and shooting incidents are up 76% from Jan. 1 to Aug. 2, compared with the same time period last year, The Wall Street Journal reported on Aug. 10. We now live with the constant sounds of helicopters and ambulances, all under the watch of a weak and incompetent mayor.
I cry for my city.
Karen Lehrman Bloch is an author and cultural critic.
