City Councilman Erik Bottcher has come to realize the detrimental impact of homeless drug addicts occupying the streets of his Midtown West district. Can he successfully persuade his progressive counterparts to address what he accurately describes as a “humanitarian crisis”?
The recent Sunday Post article on the “West Side zombie zone,” infested with mentally ill, drug-addled individuals, serves as a stark reminder of how liberal policies can deteriorate a neighborhood’s livability and jeopardize the safety of the entire city.
During a two-week period, The Post witnessed homeless, mentally ill, and drug-addicted individuals openly using drugs near the bustling Penn Station.
Bottcher expressed frustration over “individuals who have been arrested 50 or 100 times without any meaningful intervention.”
Progressives advocate for providing “harm reduction” facilities for drug users to inject drugs and oppose involuntary hospitalization of the mentally ill.
However, continuously cycling these addicted and distressed individuals through hospitals and jails is hardly compassionate.
And transforming a prominent neighborhood into a “zombie zone”?
“We are the gateway to New York City for millions of people every year,” Bottcher emphasized. “We are the district where millions of people commute to work every day.”
He urges the city to take action, but it is his council colleagues who pose the greatest obstacle, yielding to the influence of self-proclaimed “advocates” prioritizing ideology over practicality.
The severely mentally ill (and deeply addicted) must be removed from the streets and subway stations for their well-being and that of their fellow New Yorkers.
Yet progressives hinder Mayor Adams’s efforts to expand the involuntary removal and hospitalization of individuals exhibiting erratic behavior in public.
Sunday’s harrowing incident involving Ebony Butts, an unstable woman with a history of arrests, including assaulting a woman in Brooklyn, who allegedly pushed two tourists from Mexico onto subway tracks in Manhattan, exemplifies the consequences of inaction.
For these troubled New Yorkers, living on the streets (or in correctional facilities) is a poor substitute for mental health treatment and places an undue burden on society.
Despite this reality, city progressives choose to ignore the situation.
If New York is to thrive once more, Bottcher must persuade his colleagues to abandon enabling behaviors and support the mayor’s push for genuinely compassionate “tough love” solutions.
