Why are there so many programs while the number of homeless doesn’t seem to go down? Some say it is actually because of this perfect infrastructure that homelessness continues to exist.[70]
Indeed, things are not that rough for New York’s homeless who have a wide range of options where they can sleep and eat. Everybody can sleep in a shelter and will be delivered there on request by the police or an outreach team. Then there are the hundreds of churches, soup kitchens, synagogues and mobile teams that hand out meals and food packages around the clock. An organization even publishes the ‘Street Sheet’—a waterproof flier giving the addresses and hours of operation of dozens of soup kitchens and shelters in a particular neighborhood.[71]
“All these programs are nice and sweet, but none of them will lead to jobs and housing,” says Mike Harris, the Assistant Director of the Coalition. “You undergo rehab, if you are so lucky to find a place on the waiting list with thousands, you take some vocational and job training, but after that you are back on the street again. And everybody needs a place called home…”
Mike Harris is a big black man who, contrary to other Coalition people, is very talkative and helpful. He gets me piles of documents and pounds of information about the homeless problem and the work of the Coalition from another office. “It’s ridiculous,” he says. “With our budget of ten million we give services that should be the responsibility of the DHS.”
Apart from the voicemail experiment, the Coalition has a program with subsidized rent, and they even have a few apartment buildings. They also offer vocational training, organize summer camps for kids of homeless families, and hand out food to thousands in different locations. Every day, the Coalition has walk-in consultations for emergency cases. Mike admits that all these programs are just bandages. As a solution for the huge homeless problem, he sees gigantic construction projects that should provide jobs and housing.
“Damn,” Mike says. “Roosevelt had his New Deal during the crisis. The construction of the Bronx Zoo, the Tennessee Valley Project, the Boston subway, they all have created work for tens of thousands of people. It shouldn’t be any problem to do something similar now. The money is there, but not the political motivation.”
“The problem is that there is no centrally coordinated approach,” says Keith Cylar, the vice president of Housing Works. “There is no communication, and everybody does his own thing. The DHS is not constructing houses; other city agencies with construction projects don’t have a policy for the homeless. It looks like everybody in this country is pushing the responsibility onto someone else. Homeless are the last item on the budget.”
“It sounds interesting to see homelessness in a global perspective,” says Sergeant Bryan Henry. “But what can I do with it? I am just here at the corner of 42nd Street and Park Avenue. I am trying to do what I can.”
I dropped by the Sergeant’s to bring him some photos of our last trip under Grand Central. Henry has just picked up a mole girl seven stories below and has gotten her a sandwich and a coffee.
The girl has been homeless for eight years. She ran away from home at sixteen, and is now addicted to crack. She has already been to rehab ten times without any lasting results. She has an ugly scar running from the corner of her eye to her temple, from a fight with her boyfriend who pulled a knife. She was nearly blinded in one eye. “Oh, Bryan, can you put in the sugar and milk for me,” she says like a little spoilt girl that doesn’t want to open the sugar and creamer bags herself.
“Stop whining, honey,” Henry says sternly. He has made a couple of calls and found an empty bed for her in a rehab center on Staten Island. When she has finished her coffee, she walks out with a big white police officer who will drop her off at the center. She is holding his hand like a sweet little girl. “See you,” she waves us a friendly goodbye.
Henry sighs. “A predictable scenario. Three weeks in the clinic, next month back at the station.” In the last week, Henry scored a small victory. He managed to unite another homeless girl with her family after a couple of phone calls. “Homeless people are like canaries in a coal mine,” Henry ponders. “An indication that something is fundamentally wrong in our society. And the folks you see on the street are only the tip of the iceberg,” he continues somberly. “Four times as many people are cramped on top of each other in tiny apartments. Sleeping in the same bed in shifts. Rooms that have been subdivided with sheets and ropes into even smaller cubicles.”
When he worked as an NYPD paramedic, Henry confronted the most shocking examples of housing. “And we are still not there,” Henry goes on. “Social scientists predict that the generation of crack babies and neglected and abused homeless children that are now growing up will be an extremely violent class. Ruthless killers.”[72]
Henry paints apocalyptic visions. “People are already locking themselves in their houses because they don’t dare to go out on the streets anymore. In poor neighborhoods, they sleep in their bathtub for fear of stray bullets from gangs; the affluent suburbs transform themselves with barriers, fences, and security officers into impregnable fortresses. The security sector is the fastest growing industry in this country. It looks like we are going back to the Middle Ages. Cities surrounded by heavy walls to keep out the Barbarians.”
“Yeah,” Henry concludes. “Forgive me for involving Shakespeare, but something is rotten in the State of Denmark.”
24. THE ADVENTURES OF FRANKIE, PART 5: FRANKIE TALKS ABOUT HIS FATHER
“It was the gooks that got him on heroin,” Frankie says. We are taking a break from canning and are sitting on the edge of a planter eating Big Macs. McDonalds has a special offer, two for a dollar, and we bought six of them. Slowly, Frankie is telling me more about his youth and the big picture starts to emerge. His father returned from the Vietnam War traumatized and hooked on heroin. His mother died in a car crash. Frankie’s father met another woman and married her. But she and Frankie hated each other. “Probably the bitch has declared me dead by now,” Frankie says and wolfs down his second Big Mac.
Frankie tells me how his father started to drink. One fatal night, he raped his daughter. Frankie blew up. He knocked his father down and put a revolver to his head. “I’m gonna kill you,” he said and cocked the gun. His hysterically screaming stepmother prevented him from doing it. That fatal night, now ten years ago, Frankie left his parental home. He never got back in touch. Maybe there was a warrant against him for assault. If that was the case, it is now past the statute of limitations.
“I can go back and laugh in the sheriff’s face,” Frankie says finishing his third Big Mac. “But why the fuck should I come home?”
We finish our canning route and leave for WeCan on 52nd Street, a big hangar loaded with hundreds of huge bags with cans. Outside, they have a covered area where can men sort out their harvest on big tables. Inside, there is a counter with a cashier where people return their cans, neatly sorted out in flat cardboard boxes that should hold exactly twenty-four cans of the same brand. This way the staff can count in no time and write a check.
Plastic bottles are presented in separate bags. While it is too time-consuming to count the contents exactly, WeCan relies on the honesty of its clients. Frankie loves to cheat.
“Watch me,” he whispers with eyes shining. “I only have 350 bottles, but I tell ’em I got 600. Don’t say anything, eh?” he adds unnecessarily. Frankie’s trick succeeds, and he gives me a naughty wink.
70
Jencks, The Homeless. See the chapter “Do Shelters Cause Homelessness?” He argues that for people on the edge of homelessness (“couch people” and families cramped together in over-crowded apartments) the option of homelessness has become less of a deterrent since shelters and soup kitchens take the hard edge of homelessness. There are also cases of people who have moved into shelters and welfare hotels to get on the waiting list of the few, cheap apartments the city has available for emergency situations.
71
Most neighborhoods have their own
72
Recent research concludes that the effects of cocaine/crack on unborn babies are less harmful than originally feared. Brain abnormalities or developmental problems in infants and toddlers could not be attributed to cocaine use of the mother. Marijuana, alcohol, and nicotine do actually more damage. (Frank, 2001)