The homeless situation in New York City must be bad if the New York Times is daring to report about it. It has long been the M.O. of the Leftist news media to only publish articles about homelessness during Republican presidential administrations in order to make the Republicans look uncaring for “allowing” such things to happen. Once a Democrat got elected to the Presidency such social problems seemed to disappear since the media never mentioned them (nothing to see here folks…just move along now). So it’s kind of like back in the days when the Soviet Government confessed that they had a “little” problem. If they felt it necessary to mention it at all you knew it was a dusey. One that had grown to be so big and obvious they couldn’t cover it up any more. The pernicious nuisance of muggers, “squeegee men”, aggressive beggars and homeless people getting in the way everywhere disappeared for over 20 years because of the “broken windows” policing policy of Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. It made NYC in the 1990’s and early 21st Century a much more pleasant place in which to live and work and see the sights than is was during the bad old days of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s. Now it appears the chaos is back with a vengeance under Mayor Bill de Blasio.
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Wilson Silva said he knew the homeless situation at Pennsylvania Station had grown “out of hand” when he found a man in raggedy clothing sleeping on a couch inside the shop he manages, Drago Shoe Repair, in the rail terminal’s upper level.
“There’s more homeless in the station than ever before — every day we get new faces,” Mr. Silva, 59, said as he watched his staff polish and buff the shoes on a row of well-dressed commuters.
“I try to help them, but they harass the customers, and the police can’t do anything,” said Mr. Silva, whose shop looks out on dozens of homeless men and women who live in a waiting area for New Jersey Transit passengers.
At New York City’s major transit hubs — its two railroad stations, the main bus terminal and its two airports — the persistence of homeless people seeking shelter among the blur of travelers has become a familiar sight. While the concentration of homeless people is uneven — relatively small numbers at La Guardia and Kennedy Airports and larger populations at Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal and the Port Authority Bus Terminal — they are a manifestation of an intractable homelessness problem in the city.
“For us, the terminal is a default shelter,” said Phil Mellor, 55, who said he had largely relied on Grand Central for shelter since he lost his job as a security guard several years ago and his life began spiraling downward. Now, he said, he survives on “what the tourists throw out” and spends nights sleeping on the No. 6 train when the terminal is closed. The station’s dining concourse, on the lower level, with its popular food kiosks and ample seating, attracts diners as well as several dozen homeless people.
At Penn Station, the busiest public transportation center in North America, serving more than 600,000 passengers a day, some homeless people panhandle from Amtrak customers waiting for high-speed trains to Washington and Boston. Others sell “loosies,” individual cigarettes, to one another outside an entrance on Seventh Avenue. And others try to nap on benches alongside waiting passengers. At the Port Authority Bus Terminal, homeless people fan out, seeking corners and little-used corridors to sleep without being rousted by police officers.
Ad Hoc Shelters
This ad hoc shelter system has endured for decades with homeless people staying months or even years. Against the waves of purposeful travelers and well-dressed suburban commuters, they sprawl on floors of cold tile, lit by the glare of fluorescent lights, with a constant soundtrack of final-call departures. They tote all they own in inelegant bags and pass the hours in cavernous passages between track gates or bus bays. Many seem to be grappling with mental health issues.
Like many who choose to live on the streets, the people in these hubs are what advocates describe as chronically resistant to offers of services, especially beds in shelters, which many homeless people say have too many rules and are rife with danger. Indeed, the city’s shelter system has been rocked by several episodes of violence recently, including the murders of six residents this year.
New York City officials say about 58,000 people are living in shelters, and that an estimated 3,000 sleep on the streets or in the subways every night. The city does not have jurisdiction over the transit hubs, but officials from the Department of Homeless Services participate in monthly meetings to discuss the issue with the transportation agencies that run the terminals, their law enforcement officials and homeless advocates.
Mayor Bill de Blasio has made tackling homelessness a top priority, improving security at shelters, expanding outreach to those living on the street and moving to increase transitional housing.
Michael Polenberg, vice president for government affairs at Safe Horizon, a group that works with homeless youths, said the city’s transit terminals have become shelters out of necessity.
“There aren’t a whole lot of options available,” Mr. Polenberg said, adding that the plan to open more supportive housing could help ease the problem.
“It’s all going to help, but it’s not going to help tonight or tomorrow,” he said. “These things take time to get up and running.”
Nightly counts of the homeless people at Penn Station tally about 70 people, rising to 90 on particularly cold nights, said Muzzy Rosenblatt, the executive director of the Bowery Residents’ Committee, which is contracted by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority to offer shelter placements and other services to homeless people at Penn Station and Grand Central. No census is taken at Grand Central, he said.
Rising Placements
Though Mr. Rosenblatt said his group was limited by the number of available beds, the number of homeless people in transit terminals who have been placed in shelters or rehabilitation, psychiatric and other programs has increased over the last two years.
Last year, 357 people were placed out of Grand Central, Mr. Rosenblatt said, compared with 292 in 2014. And 742 were placed last year from Penn Station, compared with 579 in 2014, he said.
But given how widespread homelessness has become, Mr. Rosenblatt said, as soon as someone leaves the terminal, “somebody else is going to take their place.”
The situation at the two airports in Queens is somewhat different because they are not as easy to reach and they have tended to attract fewer homeless people.
The news media, including The New York Post, described several dozen homeless people staying in La Guardia in December. But in January, the Port Authority, which runs the airports, started limiting the main terminal to passengers with tickets between midnight and 4 a.m., and now far fewer people remain.
One is Christine, a woman in her 60s who said she had been waiting at the airport for several months to save enough money to buy a plane ticket so she could move to Florida. Mike, 38, a California native, said he had been living in the airport for five years, passing the days walking constantly through the main terminal. Mike and Christine refused to give their surnames.
In the past, officials were often able to push homeless people out by setting strict rules and finding reasons to remove them. But over the years, advocates and civil rights groups have successfully challenged attempts to oust or block homeless people, calling those efforts discriminatory and selective law enforcement.
Today, all parties accept that transit terminals are public spaces that homeless people have as much right to occupy as anyone else, provided they follow regulations.
Restrictions must be enforced for all terminal users, not just for “people who some members of the public don’t want to interact with,” said Tina Luongo, a lawyer with the Legal Aid Society.
As Mr. Rosenblatt put it, “We don’t segregate public space by wealth.”
Homeless people must leave Grand Central and the bus terminal around midnight when the stations close for several hours. Penn Station is open 24 hours, but many homeless people there said they were not allowed to sleep on the floor or on benches overnight.
The solution for many is to hop on a subway train, said Caryll Corlear, 48, a homeless man who called Penn Station “the nicest pit stop in the city.” He has spent most of his time at the station ever since arriving there by train from Florida four years ago.
“It’s clean and safe; you have bathrooms, food stores and people who give you money,” said Mr. Corlear, who tows two large wheeled suitcases and often dresses in a T-shirt and shorts, since he rarely has to step outside.
“I’ve never been in a shelter, but I’ve heard the horror stories,” he said.
Survival Skills
Several blocks north, at the Port Authority Bus Terminal, a homeless man who would provide only his given name, Mike, said he had learned to nap standing against the wall — part of his strategy to avoid ejection by Port Authority police officers.
Mike, 51, who said he had stayed in the bus station for much of the eight years he has been homeless, wears a dark wool overcoat and carries a suitcase, which almost allows him to blend in.
“If they see you laying down, they tell you to get the next bus out,” he said, referring to the police.
Ramkarran Moteelall is part of a small group of scruffy men who spend days and nights lolling on the vents at the base of a huge glass facade inside Terminal 4 of Kennedy Airport.
“If you don’t do nothing wrong, they don’t mess with you,” said Mr. Moteelall, 48, a Guyanese immigrant who has been living at the airport since December but who walks about two miles to his old Queens neighborhood to buy inexpensive meals.
At Grand Central, in a cluster of tables in the station’s dining concourse, one of every three or four tables on a recent weekday was taken by people who appeared to be homeless, sharing the cavernous space with lunchtime office workers, passengers and tourists.
The homeless people foraged through trash cans, including Mr. Mellor, who pulled discarded food from the garbage and ate it as he sat next to a table of teenage girls who were visiting New York to sing with their school choir at Carnegie Hall. His meal consisted of two slices of pizza and half of a $15 strip steak from the nearby Tri-Tip Grill. He washed down his scavenged meal with swigs of cheap vodka.
“It’s a survival skill — you take a sip of vodka to kill any bacteria,” Mr. Mellor said.
Nearby, a man was panhandling while holding a sign that read, “Give me a dollar or I’ll vote for Trump!” He settled into a table and starting napping next to a man in a business suit, who surveyed the tables of tourists interspersed with shabbily dressed homeless people.
“The fact that they stay all day in a dining area, I guess, is not ideal, but I don’t see them bothering anyone,” said the man, Carlo Valladares, 22, of Long Island.
Another school group, on a class trip from Odenville, Ala., noticed the homeless people at the food court tables.
Lisa Mayhew, a chaperone, gave leftover food to some homeless people near her table.
“We were surprised to see so many homeless here, with all the tourists and nice food places,” she said. “But I told the kids, this is part of New York City.”
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