NYT rhapsodizes about $89K per person low-income project

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Biased, half-wit columnist
Around the corner came a little golden ball of sunshine named Madison, dressed head to toe in pink, hair arranged in Afro puffs, one wrist covered in turquoise beaded bracelets, arms opened wide. She wrapped those arms around a teacher’s legs, hugged them close and looked up with the kind of smile that sets the world right.

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glynnis
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I realize that somehow we need to take care of the Madisons who are here but ... why is it that programs like this never seem to include a birth control clinic and other personal responsibility tools? I'm sure taxpayers who applied forethought and self-discipline, and limited their families to the number they could afford to raise without the assistance of fellow citizens (and for some people, that number is zero) would like to enjoy sweeping views of the Hudson River, too. Instead we reward the improvident and ask nothing of them in return, as usual. How many residents of this new program will be having additional babies soon? The underclass is not entirely blameless for its own plight, you know.
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This absolutely had to come from someone here. Well said.

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nobodylikesyourkidbutyou
As a resident of NYS, all I have to say is that you are very well taken care over here of if you want to make a career of being a lazy welfare moo/mooch. It really doesn't pay to bust your ass for a minimum wage job here, you end up being punished so many different ways for working...you're better off leeching off the system.

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surfinbird
I used to do home care in the projects of NYC when I lived there, and I needed to bring 2 armed guards with me to protect my equipment because I got mugged once. eyes2

I don't know how much hope I have for these houses - they all get wrecked over time. I do *wish* that the kids had a way out - I really do. I'm not saying they don't. I went to Columbia with a bunch of kids who grew up in the ghetto and lived in the projects but they were REALLY self-driven, motivated kids who had poor parents, but the parents didn't take any shit. Unfortunately kids like that come along a handful at a time.

I don't know what the answer is. Welfare to work was a failure, the schools stepping in and doing everything but drag the kids off to school was a failure. I don't know what else there is to do.

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I met Madison and 50 other little rays of hope at the Dorothy Day Apartments on Riverside Drive in West Harlem.

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Melanie
I don't begrudge the kids. I hope they do break the cycle. But it's these apologistic social workers, public policy makers, law makers and journalists who get me -- too PC to ever suggest that, um, maybe disabled and mentally ill people shouldn't be having kids in the first place... and too PC or biased themselves to build disincentives for breeding into the program. Why human reproduction should be sacrosanct on an overpopulated planet that clearly -- if you look at the global economic situation -- has far more people than it needs workers -- is absolutely beyond me. We should be trumpeting the availability of abortion and paying for THAT, not $17 million for fewer than 200 people -- who also get tons of other public handouts.

Celebrating that no teens in the program are pregnant (yet) is repugnant, too. Of course it's a positive thing but my God, have we gotten to the point where we have to dance and leap and heap kudos on people merely because they have refrained from producing more offspring for US to support? "Gee, thanks for not sucking up 100 percent of the fruits of my labor, just 40 percent!"

Note that the few common-sense people who posted in the comments were called mean-spirited, haters, hateful, etc. by the rose-colored masses.

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Melanie
I don't begrudge the kids. I hope they do break the cycle. But it's these apologistic social workers, public policy makers, law makers and journalists who get me -- too PC to ever suggest that, um, maybe disabled and mentally ill people shouldn't be having kids in the first place... and too PC or biased themselves to build disincentives for breeding into the program. Why human reproduction should be sacrosanct on an overpopulated planet that clearly -- if you look at the global economic situation -- has far more people than it needs workers -- is absolutely beyond me. We should be trumpeting the availability of abortion and paying for THAT, not $17 million for fewer than 200 people -- who also get tons of other public handouts.

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spinstar
Anyway, what is this about: "Another administrator said that the environment helped to “stabilize the parents to provide a platform for the children.” And those children, she said, can create “pathways out of poverty” for the whole family."

Maybe he messed the quote up or misunderstood what she was saying, but that seems like an awful lot of responsibility for a kid, to create a "pathway out of poverty for the whole family." Anybody who's been poor knows that it's just about all you can do to drag yourself out of it, let alone bring your whole family with you.

And I'm really sick of the stupid name Madison.