The Issue: Democratic mayoral candidates who spent the night with families in public housing.
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How nice that the mayoral candidates — City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, Public Advocate Bill DeBlasio, Comptroller John Liu, former Comptroller Bill Thompson and Anthony Weiner — all genuflect to the ego of ambulance-chaser Rev. Al Sharpton by staying overnight at the Lincoln Houses public-housing complex in East Harlem (“Spending a Night in the Slummer,” July 22).
You don’t know someone’s pain until you have walked in their shoes.
Why don’t they each try working an eight-hour shift with the police, fire, sanitation, emergency responders or drive a bus?
They collectively have no idea how middle-class people struggle day by day at work to make ends meet. Talk is cheap, but actions speak louder.
Larry Penner
Great Neck
What Quinn and her Democratic-candidate counterparts did by staying in a housing project was an absolute insult to all people who reside there.
These clowns, who paraded around with an army of NYPD officers watching them, could care less about these people before they announced they were running for mayor, and they will care nothing about them after the election.
These residents, who are mostly minorities, should wake up and realize that candidates like Quinn only act like they care when they need votes. C. Bisignano
Staten Island
The mayoral wannabes spent a night in public housing.
Now they know what it’s like, but what’s the deal with the NYPD watching their backs? Didn’t they feel safe? What were they afraid of?
If these clowns are so afraid, then why are they trying to end stop-and-frisk? Sil Crino
Mt. Sinai
Seeing The Post’s coverage of the Democratic mayoral candidates’ night in the ’hood left me with several thoughts.
First, Bill DeBlasio commented that the dwellings were second-class. They are actually third-class, but we pay first-class money to build and maintain them, and DeBlasio’s party built them.
Second, Liu could just as well be in police custody as under police protection, because from the photo, I cannot tell if he is in an apartment or a precinct.
Finally, Anthony Weiner, disheveled and leering on a park bench, seems just about right.
Scott Van Kuren
Middleburg
Sharpton, of all people, allowed the NYPD to protect these vote-seeking liberals in a black neighborhood.
What did they think was going to happen? Who will pay for the overtime the taxpayers spent for that special assignment?
Some of those candidates want to end the stop-and-frisk laws in those neighborhoods. Rev. Sharpton, weren’t they “profiling”?
Sam Lumia
Whitestone
I continue to read that many public-housing projects are plagued by ubiquitous graffiti, broken light fixtures in the stairwells and urine and even feces in the hallways.
My friends and I live in apartment buildings, and none of those conditions exist in our homes.
As a taxpayer whose dollars go in part to maintain public-housing buildings, might I inquire who is responsible for the graffiti, vandalism and public urination? Are we also going to blame those conditions on the admittedly incompetent New York City Housing Authority?
Or do at least some of the people in those projects bear responsibility for ruining their own living environment?
Edward S. Hochman
Manhattan