Update On "Homelessness" In New York

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Update On "Homelessness" In New York

  • Recently (May 2026) I did an update on the “homelessness” situation in San Francisco. The title was “The Homeless Industrial Complex Eats San Francisco For Lunch.”‍ ‍

  • I have taken a particular interest in “homelessness” in San Francisco ever since that city had a big referendum back in 2018 to pass a special payroll tax supposedly to solve the “homelessness” problem once and for all. The result in San Francisco, you will not be surprised to learn, was that the Homeless Industrial Complex has since swallowed up all the new funding and much more, while the number of people identified as “homeless” has only gone up, and then up some more.

  • But how about New York? In recent years the City hasn’t exactly been bragging about its success in this area, so data have been a little hard to come by. However, a few days ago (September 5) the New York Post had a story that gives an idea of the overall picture.

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Here's An Idea To Get 30% Cheaper Groceries In New York Without Taxpayer Subsidies: Allow Walmart!

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Here's An Idea To Get 30% Cheaper Groceries In New York Without Taxpayer Subsidies: Allow Walmart!

  • During his campaign for office last fall, our new Mayor Zohran Mamdani promised to make groceries “affordable” for New Yorkers; but he provided few specifics.

  • Some specifics then emerged in late July, when Mamdani issued a big press release on his proposed public grocery store project. We learned that there are plans for five municipally-owned stores — one in each borough of the City — and that the groceries these stores will sell, or at least a “core basket” of them, will be “30% cheaper.” We know that the groceries will be “30% cheaper” because the Mayor’s press release says so multiple times:

  • Today [July 28], Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani, Deputy Mayor for Economic Justice Julie Su and New York City Economic Development Corporation (NYCEDC) announced that a core basket of everyday groceries will be 30 percent cheaper at the five new municipal grocery stores. . . . “A trip to the grocery store shouldn’t spell dread for New Yorkers [said Mayor Mamdani]. That’s why we are guaranteeing a 30% discount on the most common and most critical groceries. . . .” ‍ ‍

  • Well OK, 30% cheaper than what?

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The Brain's Concept Of The World Versus The Real World

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The real world — It’s full of complexities, ambiguities, unknowns, trade-offs, risks, and evils that we would prefer not to acknowledge. Perfection can be sought and approached, but nothing close to perfection can be achieved.

And then there’s the world that we can imagine in our minds. In that world, we can ignore the complexities and ambiguities and the rest. Achieving perfection can be imagined as just a matter of overcoming a few simple obstacles. I often write about the musings of people who conjure in their minds imaginary scenarios of perfection that are inconsistent with anything that can be achieved in the real world. The most important example is a socialist economic system of perfect justice and fairness. Another example is an energy system that produces always-available electricity in infinite amounts from the intermittent wind and sun.

Consider now another example: the crime found in fiction versus the crime found in the real world.

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The Fantasyland Of New York City's Discount Grocery Stores

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The Fantasyland Of New York City's Discount Grocery Stores

If you have paid attention at all to New York’s idiotic new Mayor Zohran Mamdani, you probably know that one of his big promises is to open a chain of City-owned grocery stores. These stores, supposedly, will solve the problem of “affordability” of groceries by offering a basket of standard items at prices some 30% below what the other stores charge.

Now I recognize that there has been some substantial inflation in the food sector of the economy in the past few years. In some cases, and for some families, the price increases have been unpleasant or even difficult. However, I submit that there is no way to look at the American food supply and delivery system without seeing it as something close to a miracle for human flourishing.

According to the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service, the share of disposable personal income spent on food by U.S. consumers in 2025 was 9.7%.

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Rolling Blackouts Hit New York

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  • At least since New York passed its Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) back in 2019, it has been clear that trouble has been coming for New York’s electrical grid. The CLCPA effectively prohibits construction of new fossil fuel power plants, even natural gas plants; and the old ones are aging and are forbidden to be replaced or upgraded.

  • Supposedly, lots of wind and solar generators were going to be added to the system. But those have been slow to come and, more importantly, can’t be counted on to generate anything when you need them. In addition, new construction of such things has now been stalled by the end of federal subsidies. At some point the lines of diminishing reliable generation and increasing demand would have to cross.

  • However, here at this website I have held off predicting imminent grid failure. The reason is that I don’t want to be the boy who cried wolf. Our grid operators are competent people, and they have a lot of tricks up their sleeves to hold things together even in difficult circumstances. In a pinch, they can start up every ancient “peaker” plant, and then import some power from PJM, or New England, or even from Canada. Despite New York’s hostile energy environment, they could get lucky and avoid blackouts for at least several more years.

  • So I think it is important to report that on this past July 2 and 3, Con Edison ran out of options and imposed rolling blackouts in parts of the North Bronx and Southern Westchester County.

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New York Court Refuses To Block State's Plan For A "Renewables" Program

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  • For a couple of years now, I have been collaborating with a small group of friends here in New York to see if we can introduce some rationality into the State’s completely insane energy plans. The other three members of our little cabal (Roger Caiazza, Richard Ellenbogen and Constantine Kontogiannis) are a scientist (Caiazza) and two engineers who are knowledgeable about how the electrical grid works.

  • Our efforts have included things like submitting comments on various regulatory proposals, intervening in Public Service Commission proceedings, and even bringing court proceedings to try to block crazy and impossible schemes from taking effect. So far we have scored exactly zero public successes, although we do occasionally receive communications (always confidential and never in writing) from various bureaucrats who say things like “I know you’re right, but I can’t speak up or I will lose my job.”

  • On Monday (July 13) we achieved our latest defeat when a Justice of the Albany County Supreme Court (William Little) issued an Order dismissing a Petition we had filed seeking to overturn a May 2025 Order of the Public Service Commission on the subject of the State’s Renewable Program and Clean Energy Standard.

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