Opinion

BEGGING FOR BLIGHT

What, Osama didn’t do enough to scare away the tourists? Now the Department of Homeless Services has decided to rent out the Aladdin Hotel in Times Square to what it terms “homeless families without children” (i.e. crackheads, psychos and bums).

This is not good news for New York, and especially not for tourists and children.

More than a decade ago, welfare hotels were all over Midtown, especially in the Times Square district. Nobody much noticed – because they blended right in with the porn palaces, the hookers, the panhandlers and the three-card monte hustlers.

Today, as the whole world knows, Times Square is a very different place. From playgrounds to video arcades, toy stores to wax museums, tourists and their kids roam the district, unmindful of what used to be.

Or what might be again.

Remember the broken windows theory?

Today, it’s the Aladdin (and, just perhaps, a high-profile crime like the Midtown murder of Brian Watkins in 1990).

Tomorrow, maybe it’s a tourist hemorrhage.

Look at the map. Is the chance worth taking?