The problem with the Bibby Stockholm barge

For British taxpayers perturbed by their £6 million daily bill for housing asylum seekers in hotels, New York City mayor Eric Adams has the solution: handbills. Exasperated by a sudden influx he characterises as a ‘disaster’, Adams plans to dispense police-tape yellow flyers both at the city’s 188 sites for housing migrants and at America’s overrun, purely notional southern border. The leaflets warn in English and Spanish: ‘Since April 2022, over 90,000 migrants have come to New York City. There is no guarantee we will be able to provide shelter and services to new arrivals. Housing in NYC is very expensive. The cost of food, transportation, and other necessities is the highest in the United States. Please consider another city as you make your decision about where to settle in the US.’ Well, that’s one colossal headache sorted, then. Why didn’t anyone think of flyers before?

I’m reminded of being paid a pittance to distribute leaflets for a Little Richard concert in Atlanta in 1973 – a thankless task. Most pedestrians wouldn’t accept one. A few politely did, then immediately threw it away unread, often on the pavement; this was largely an exercise in secondary littering.

I had no idea that such modest slips of paper would prove the ingenious answer to a municipal crisis 50 years later. Why, now that the Big Apple is falling back on retro advertising tactics, let’s skywrite above the Rio Grande, ‘Don’t ♥ New York!’ Or maybe Adams should try his hand at radio jingles: ‘Other cities hit the spot. Ninety thousand, that’s a lot. Twice as much for a burger, too. Other cities are the place for you!’

Yet aside from exhibiting a certain, well, ineffectual quality, these leaflets are brandishing the high cost of necessities at a population that doesn’t plan on paying for them.