In the winter of 2005 myself and one other volunteer at the Coalition for the Homeless were driving around in a white van in New York City handing out food and whenever available, used clothing.
We stopped at approximately 31 designated areas ranging from lower Manhattan all the way up into the Bronx. For anyone who has ever visited or lived in New York, the winters are miserable, the wind blowing hard between the avenues. But here they were, thousands of homeless men and women, waiting every evening for a meal in all conditions – rain, sleet, and snow.
It was the Staten Island Ferry stop where I recall one man, perhaps in his 50s, who would always apologize for having to accept the meal. He would insist that he had been looking for work, that times were hard, and that he was at the bottom.
It was an astonishing admission that revealed the terrible stigma Americans attach to poverty. In a country that prides itself on hard work, on an ethos of tough luck/tough love, a homeless man, earnest and humble in his own ways, stands with his head bowed as he is handed some hot soup and a frozen orange.
In New York, a city that seems apart from anywhere I had ever lived or visited, its own life and history beset by both tragedy and triumph. In such a place, people from all walks of life, will inevitably fall through any security that such a society can provide. We cannot all be presidents, and certainly, we cannot all have our dreams achieved. Not even in that great city.
But now, things have gotten progressively worse for the homeless. There are indeed quite a few homeless individuals who have jobs but earn such low wages they are forced to remain in the streets. Now, more will find it difficult to get by at even the public shelters.
In May, the city began to charge rent to homeless workers who live in the public shelters. Some, like Vanessa Dacosta, only brings in $800 per month. She is a single mother with a 2 year old child. A few weeks after moving into a shelter in Hell’s Kitchen, she received a notice. Of the $800 she gets a month, the shelter wants at least $336.
There are some 16,000 homeless children living in New York city shelters. For the parents who are working, asking them to pay rent, could potentially send them all back out into the streets. Mayor Bloomberg’s plan to cut homelessness by 2/3 within five years has failed. And charging the working poor for rent, sometimes up to 50% of their earnings, is a dismal policy in a city that should and could do so much more.