The mayor argues that this is the only way to teach homeless people self-sufficiency. In early December, a pretty, young woman was hit on the head in full view of several people by an unknown man wielding a brick. The police selected homeless people for the crime and over the next few nights arrested 226 of them. As it turned out, the suspect was indeed a person of no-fixed address, but he was a career criminal who had been in jail more than out during his adult life. Not the typical profile of a homeless person, the experts say.
Many homeless people do work, in fact.
About 24,000 of them, on any given night, live in shelters. But if you have seen a shelter in all its Dickensian glory, you might understand better why some homeless people choose a blanket on a quiet SoHo street. Even the Supreme Court has ruled Giuliani's measures unconstitutional. He seems to think of homeless people as the scourge of the Earth. He wants his city nice for tourists.