Rudy Rants About ‘Work Ethic’
But Lets Rents Rise Beyond Workers’ Means

In the context of Rudolph Giuliani’s policies, his “personal responsibility” rhetoric rings as hollow and hypocritical as George W. Bush’s “compassionate conservatism.” “Personal responsibility” is simply code for lack of compassion. Giuliani’s attitude is that wealth is the result of moral worth, poverty the result of moral flaws; that the winners have earned special privileges and the losers are useless eaters who deserve to be punished.

This is a city where it’s increasingly impossible to find even a one-room apartment for less than $700 a month, while a first-year teacher takes home less than $500 a week, sanitation workers start at less than $450, a cabdriver is lucky to make $100 for a 12-hour night shift—and a 35-hour week at minimum wage won’t even gross $200. Homelessness is the tip of the iceberg. The housing crisis reaches well up into the middle class. The homeless are the poorest, the most vulnerable, and often the most screwed up.

But Giuliani has cut funding for affordable housing by more than half, for permanent housing for the homeless by almost three-quarters, according to the Coalition for the Homeless. He has undermined rent controls as much as he can without uncovering his political ass. And in the same way that he’s reserved his criticisms of racism for cabdrivers and out-of-town baseball players, it seems that the only times he’s ever talked about affordable housing have come when he was trying to justify evicting squatters and bulldozing community gardens.

Giuliani may talk about trying to teach welfare recipients a work ethic. But his housing policies are punishing people who work for a living too.

—S.W.