“Homelessness is terrible,” Henry muses. “It kills you. You are set on fire by gangs, you die slowly from AIDS.” Henry started to work for the police force as a paramedic, and knows the symptoms very well. Besides tuberculosis and pneumonia, meningitis is common. Sometimes he meets people like that in the tunnel. “They have crawled away to die, they don’t know what is happening and go into a coma. In that sense it’s a merciful death.”
Septic shock is also common. “The body has so many infections, internal lesions, and subcutaneous ulcers that at some point the immune system can’t handle it anymore. Blood poisoning is the result. One minute the victim is alive and kicking, and then within a few hours he is completely dead.”
Food poisoning also happens frequently, says Henry. “Nobody has exact data about this, but for people with low resistance, it can be fatal. Homeless like to brag that they ate an excellent lobster from a garbage can but will never tell you how often they fell sick.”
Henry’s voice softens. “Slowly, as a homeless person, you are robbed of all your dignity, you lose self confidence and self respect. People yell at you ‘Go get a job!’ But those kind of people will never hire you. There are completely separate medical and legal systems. In the hospitals, you wind up with minimal care in the pauper’s section; doormen, cops and security men beat you up and you can’t sue them for assault. Really, it’s a tale of two cities.”
22. THE ADVENTURES OF FRANKIE, PART 4: A BABY IN THE TUNNEL
“Shoes out,” Frankie call out sternly as I am about to enter. Visitors who have braved an alley drenched with dog piss and shit are no longer allowed to smudge the floor of his living room with their soiled shoes. “I don’t want this place to become a junkie hole,” Frankie explains the new policy.
Five people now live in Frankie’s place. The maximum capacity has definitively been reached, so there is a need for new house rules. Ment moved in again. He is a free man now, released after doing his time for what he says was a robbery.
Ment doesn’t want to talk about his time in jail. “It was okay,” is all he says.
Fat Maria also seems to have become a permanent resident. Frankie just can’t keep waiting and yearning for Vanessa until she comes back. “A man gotta do his thing,” Frankie justifies his unfaithfulness. Ment has brought his new girlfriend to live there as well. Her name is Fatima; she is a beautiful nineteen-year-old girl with Greek and African roots. The two are hopelessly in love, and make out on Frankie’s couch like two love birds.
Number five is Jazzy, Fatima’s eighteen-month-old baby girl. The father has left them, and now Ment has become godfather. Frankie plays the sugar daddy to Jazzy who is crawling on all fours in the living room. He grabs the toddler by her feet and swings her above his head. “Stop it,” Fatima cries, terrified. Jazzy screams happily at the fun. “Yo, the rug monkey loves it,” Frankie laughs.
Tonight it is party time. Long strips of condoms hang like garlands from the ceiling. The speakers blast loud rap music, and Frankie and Ment toast with their 40’s of Miller. Fatima and Maria are dancing like Go-Go girls on top of the speakers in their tight T-shirts. Their heavy breasts shake with the rhythm. Fatima has huge stretch marks under her belly button. Jazzy must have been a tough delivery.
“Stop it,” Maria cries at Frankie. He has a black bra, a souvenir from Vanessa, wrapped around his head and is now pinching Maria’s huge ass. Jazzy has been tied up in a buggy with a pacifier in her mouth. She looks around dazed.
Kathy enters. They are friends again. “A cat is dying,” she sobs when Ment has turned down the music. Down in their bunker, the big red tomcat with the torn ears is rattling like an old man. Kathy has put a blanket over him. “Let him die in peace,” Ment says. We watch the dying cat; there is nothing we can do. Joe is lying exhausted on his bed. Three days ago, he had a small stroke. Frankie and Ment carried him out of the tunnel and brought him to the hospital where he spent only one day. “This is no life,” Kathy says with a hoarse voice and points at Joe. “He doesn’t care about his heart condition. All he does is drink. He only works one day a month. We both live on my SSI now.”
The cat passes away with one last cough, and Kathy pulls the blanket to cover its body. “Time to move out,” she sighs. “I am sick of the tunnel. I want a space where I can wash myself.”
23. AID WORKERS VS. MOLE PEOPLE
“In the beginning we were hesitant to advertise our program,” says Victoria Mason-Ailey, the spokesperson for the MTA/Connections program. We are sitting in her office on the twentieth floor on Lexington Avenue. “We were afraid our passengers would think it was a waste of time and money. After all, we are in the public transportation business, not in the social work sector. But it is in everybody’s interest, both our maintenance workers as well our passengers, not to tolerate homeless in the tunnels. A few years ago, we had a few dozen accidents with homeless in the subway tunnels every year. But over the past eight months, we’ve had only five accidents. Still five too many, but we are going in the right direction.”
“And you should hear the passengers curse when a tunnel person is run over. They don’t care about a dead homeless person but hate the subway because it has a one hour delay.”
The program started in 1990 and currently employs twenty people—psychologists, doctors, paramedics, and drug counselors. The program operates not only in all subway tunnels, stations and platforms, but also in railroad terminals like Penn and Grand Central. An estimated two thousand homeless people are on the rolls as clients. Every year, the program costs about one million dollars. Although there are big budget cuts scheduled in all MTA departments, the board has already assured Mason-Ailey that the Connections program will not be scrapped.
“A recent survey among passengers showed that the feeling of security has greatly increased now the biggest congregations of homeless on stations and platforms are gone,” says Mason-Ailey. “It rarely happened, but there was always that fear of that one crazy homeless person who would push you in front of the train.”
The MTA/Connections program has a dual approach. On the one hand there is the outreach component, making contact with the homeless to convince them they need professional help. Teams of two people go out, sometimes with police escort, and search for the homeless in stations, platforms and tunnels. The teams have special track training.
“You have to understand the subway signals,” Mason-Ailey explains. “You have to know how to deal with the third rail, feel the air flow of approaching trains. When you are looking for homeless, you are easily distracted and it can happen that a train suddenly appears out of nowhere. In my opinion, it was crazy that these two from Housing Works took the secretary of housing down in the tunnels,” she says, shaking her head.
By returning on a regular basis, the teams try to gain the trust of the homeless. They always leave a business card, in case the homeless person wants to call the outreach workers. If he or she does decide it is time to accept help, the teams can refer them to the appropriate organizations: MTA/Connections cooperates closely with groups that specialize in helping people deal with drug, alcohol, AIDS, or psychiatric problems, as well as all city hospitals.[65]
65
MTA/Connections cooperates with Project Reachout, Project Renewal, Volunteers of America, Project H.E.L.P., Bowery Residents Committee and Lenox Hill.