Letitia James Quotes

Even six months later, they have not figured out how do we help the people from the area get housing.

New Yorkers want to be compassionate, and they want to live in a city where homeless people aren't stuffed into shelters, spilling out onto the streets. They also want a support system that works.

The status quo is clearly broken, and we must strive for bigger, bolder solutions that will provide New Yorkers with the support they need to remain in their homes.

Shelter Network's programs and services are a rainbow in the clouds for homeless children and adults.

A proper home can provide the bridge across that terrible gulf between poverty and a better future.

Larry Silverstein has betrayed the public's trust and that of all New Yorkers.

The young folks that are coming into each of your services are anywhere from 17 to 22 or 23. Gee whiz, the hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur. So we've got to be very careful how we address it on our side.

I am growing to love DC. But the core of Sonia is a New Yorker.

I made practice runs down to skid row to get ready for my future.

Being a New Yorker is never having to say you are sorry.

The largest portion of our state budget is Health and Human Services. It will grow by approximately $500 million. A half a billion dollars is a very big number.

New Yorkers like to boast that if you can survive in New York, you can survive anywhere. But if you can survive anywhere, why live in New York?

I just think, realistically, there's a lot of room outside the Trump populist right and the Bernie-Sanders-Elizabeth-Warren populist left. There are a lot of us who believe in open trade, open borders, a dynamic forward-looking economy, not a nostalgic economy, but do want to provide a significant level of social service or sort of economic Milton Friedman foreign policy, Ronald Reagan domestic policy, Franklin Roosevelt. And there's a lot of room in the center.

Planned Parenthood should absolutely be defunded. I mean if you look at what's going on with that, it's terrible. And many other things should be defunded and many things should be cut.

My idea of government support was, you supply me with hospitals, schools and the environment to do well and that will do me fine. But do not poke your nose in my business.

You cannot simultaneously have free immigration and a welfare state.

Under the notion that unregulated market-driven values and relations should shape every domain of human life, the business model of governance has eviscerated any viable notion of social responsibility while furthering the criminalization of social problems and cutbacks in basic social services, especially for the poor, young people and the elderly.

Don't show up around here until your social worker's helped.

We're going to establish a procedure where people can leave the line, go outside, take care of themselves and the government's gonna pay.

I still have a suspicion of charity and think the state has a role to play in many areas. And although for most of the years since I have been a rather privileged writer, I identify more closely than perhaps I should with those social workers. Had I not become a writer that would have been me. Lots of our friends are still in that world and I do feel part of that generation of people who were rather idealistic in the 70s and became disillusioned in the 80s. Not just about social services issues, but the world.

Organized charity itself is. . . the surest sign that our civilization has bred, is breeding and is perpetuating constantly increasing numbers of defectives, delinquents and dependents

If somehow every volunteer vanished tomorrow, so much of this country would come to a standstill: schools, hospitals and libraries. You can't name an institution that doesn't depend on volunteers.

The true New Yorker secretly believes that people living anywhere else have to be, in some sense, kidding.

In some instances even certain social services that normally were supplied, or pre-empted by the state. Take the United States, the [Ronald] Reagan administration is withdrawing assistance, all kinds of welfare programs, and if people don't improvise their own resources to cope with problems of the ageing, problems of the sick, problems of the young, problems of the poor, problems of tenant rights, who will?

Compassion is good but politicians have turned compassion into the welfare state.