Over the several years of working at the soup kitchen, Buckley observes different stages of homelessness. “You’re either on the way up or on the way down. Some homeless are very clean all the time, very presentable and very articulate. Others are just at the pit, the bottom, those who can’t even come out of the tunnels because they’re afraid to be seen.” He tries to tailor his advice to the person, watching him or her for a time before trying to provide a reason to return to a more conventional lifestyle.
Buckley is ambivalent about the underground communities because of the sense of belonging they offer.
“It’s healthy in that sense that the communities give them some sort of identity, which some of these people never had, but it’s not a healthy alternative,” he says, “because there’s no future in that kind of life. The longer they stay down there, the harder it is for them to readjust to life aboveground. Once you know that the communities offer them comfort and the self-esteem they can’t find in shelters, it’s difficult to say people shouldn’t live down there. But once you go down there and see the way they live, like animals, you can surely say no human beings should live like that.”
The other side of the argument comes from Bill, who claims he is not only content to be homeless but fascinated by the communal structure of his community and others that are underground. He argues that the underground is the best option, far better than the exposure and isolation of the streets or the danger and separation for his adopted family in shelters.
Bill, a black man in his late fifties who is called “Papa,” is deliberately sketchy about his background, except for his education. He earned a masters degree in economics, he says, after a business degree from Fordham University and some legal studies at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and Georgetown University. He was a senior mediator/arbitrator in the Bronx-Manhattan Summons Court until he retired, and he’ll proudly volunteer that he’s worked for the government all of his life. His wife died a decade ago.
Bill dipped into his pension to help two of his immediate family members in need. “That’s all I’m going to say about that. They’re grown adults and I have no right to tell you about the reason,” he says, shutting the door on his personal history. He refuses to inform his family that he’s homeless now, while he tries to save for an apartment with the government checks he says he receives as a disabled veteran from the Korean War.
“We’re a community just like neighborhoods upstairs,” Bill says with a professorial smile through a short, well-groomed beard peppered with gray. “To tell you the truth, it’s adventurous, it truly is, to learn about the subculture and the subcommunities of America. I would say my community here in the Rotunda is the same as those in the tunnels. I know some of them, but I can’t bring myself to go underground for long.”
THE ROTUNDA COMMUNITY OF ABOUT FIFTY PEOPLE TAKES ITS NAME from the large, pillared structure overlooking the Hudson River. Fashion photographers often use the Rotunda to pose their models against the scenic backdrop. Each morning, Parks Department employees who clean up before the public comes to the park wake the homeless. An unspoken contract between the Parks workers and the community allows the homeless to populate the Rotunda area at night on two conditions: the morning cleanup and no public use of drugs or alcohol.
Bill had not recognized the extent of the Rotunda community before joining it. “I knew nothing about its family-like structure and its communal ways,” he says, “no idea how close these people are to each other. It’s a cross section like you find upstairs—bickerings and jealousies, love lives, hatreds, homosexuals.”
In order to occupy a spot in the Rotunda, “you have to be invited,” he says. “You’d be trespassing if you came uninvited, just like in a house. There has to be a vacant spot you can set up in. We share everything from food to clothing. If food is being given out somewhere, one person from the community will run back here to tell all. If a person is sick, people here will take him to a hospital and note when he’s coming out and take care of him when he does. Some people cook, but in this setup, eating is done among the personal family.
“Almost everyone here has something to do in the daytime— cooks or maintenance men in churches—but some who come from the South have no skills and almost no education. But we also have some highly educated persons. He’s got a masters in chemistry,” Bill says, pointing to a man slumped in a stone corner. He stares out at the winter mist receding from the gray river. “He’s got a Ph.D. in biology,” Bill nods at another man, this one reading a book. “We have native Americans, a Yugoslav, an Irishman, blacks, Caribbeans, Latinos, male and female. We’re just as diverse as people upstairs,” he says, meaning people who are not homeless.
Society places the Rotunda homeless outside its traditional concept of community. “They call us a subcommunity the same way they say we have a subculture even though we believe we have our own culture in our own community,” Bill says. This culture has its own pecking order. Among other things, the Rotunda homeless feel superior to the homeless who live in tunnels directly underneath them. Bill admits he stays aloof from the underground people.
“Their communities may operate like ours, but they are different. They have their own water, electricity, cooking arrangements. They seldom come up. Generally they’re not as clean. They’re further removed than we are,” he says, as if his community is halfway between the underground homeless and traditional society.
Tunnel homeless resent the attitude of the Rotunda community. “I can’t understand why they think they’re better than we are,” says Bernard Isaacs, who lives underground about two miles due north of the Rotunda community. “If anything, we’re more highly developed. Our underground communities are tighter.”
However, these communities are more like each other than either is like a traditional community. Sharing a cigarette is one example. “You light a cigarette, you pass it around here,” says Bill. “It’s part of the pattern.” Also, culturally, the homeless communities have a great respect for privacy and are far less concerned with past and future. “We very rarely go into depth about each other’s backgrounds because it’s very personal, sometimes very painful. We build on everyday stuff. Sharing the past isn’t the thing that brings us close. It’s sharing the knowledge of how best to survive each day.”
When day-to-day concerns are so paramount, there is virtually no sense of future in these groups. “These communities offer no long-term alternative to society, really,” says Buckley, “because they become more and more isolated particularly as they go deeper and deeper underground, and it gets harder and harder for them to fit back into society at any level.
“They slowly die because they’re cut off from the whole. I think that’s what happens to them eventually. They get so isolated from society that it gets harder and harder for them to fit back in at any level. You’ve got to fit into society. You don’t have to fit the mold, but you’ve got to be able to fit so that you can participate. Society is society with all its faults, it’s still our culture and somehow you’ve got to be able to tap into it. You may want to change it or make an alternative, but somehow you got to be able to play along the main route.”