What It Means To Help Those In Need

In the midst of this past week's hoopla over the choice by Amazon for it's split second headquarters, most of the focus in New York was on the enormous amount of tax breaks the state gave to the company to lure it to Queens.  Amazon will be building a major corporate campus right on the East River across from Manhattan and the state will contribute billions.  The figures show that the state is kicking in something just under $50,000 per job created.  But there's another important bit of information that seems to have been overlooked.  The land on which the new buildings will be built had been designated for low cost housing and acquired by the state for that purpose.  There were to have been thousands of affordable apartment units built there which will now not be built.  It's important to remember that affordable housing and New York City are two things that usually don't go together.  The idea of adding thousands of affordable, new units in a convenient location is one that has great appeal.  Now, the people who would have gotten the benefit of that construction are just plain out of luck.  No one in Albany or in City Hall, it seems, cared at all about these people in need of better housing when there was a chance to lure in Amazon.  That's government in New York; it professes to be all about helping the downtrodden until it actually gets the chance to do something.  Then it's Amazon all the way and the downtrodden be damned!