Homelessness in the Age of Bloomberg

<...> A housing liaison gathered all the newcomers in a room to give us the rundown. We had four options: join Ready Willing and Able’s program, which prepared men to become street sweepers and janitors; sign up for a Bloomberg administration program which presents participants with a one-way ticket out of town, so long as the applicants could provide a contact person in the destination city who would agree to host them; enter the city’s shelter system, which the liaison accurately portrayed as a horror show, with gang-and-drug-infested death traps like Wards Island (Said one of my brethren, “Yo, I was at Wards Island one night, woke up and a dude was laying there dead, all cut the fuck up.”); or hop in the van with him to tour Brooklyn’s three-quarter sober houses, which were private residences that sounded a lot more promising than a shelter.

I opted for the last one, and ended up staying at a three-quarter house in East New York, Brooklyn for seven months, until the economic crisis that fall brought in a whole new influx of desperate homeless. Then, suddenly, our utopia on the first floor was disrupted by violent, mentally ill housemates and a rodent problem that I tried in vain to solve with traps and an adopted cat. Since I had a job at that point and was paying rent just to stay in a room with three other guys and some very gregarious mice, I decided to leave. (At the time, I had no idea that these three-quarter houses were mostly illegal operations that conveniently siphoned off some of the city's homeless ranks. No wonder the liaison pushed option number four so aggressively.)

Whenever a resident had a grievance with some administrator or policy, I often heard the threat, “I’m going to the Coalition!” I had seen Coalition for the Homeless vans parked in midtown but had no idea what they offered. One of my roommates told me, “If you really need a hookup with housing, don’t go to DHS , go to the Coalition.” So I went to the Coalition offices on Fulton Street and met with a counselor to see if they could direct me to some affordable housing. I don’t remember the specifics of our meeting, but afterward I did jot down one line that the counselor, a slim, 20-something Hispanic man, laid on me: “We have sort of an adversarial relationship with the Bloomberg administration. A lot of their polices run counter to what we recommend.” <...> Capital New York

Please read the whole fucked up depressing thing--especially if you have never had to deal with homelessness. It provides a good starting point toward understanding the seemingly inescapable abyss of homelessness and the kind of daily degradations the homeless have to put up with in order to survive.

to tell the truth about what has been going on around the country for years. We will hear about it non stop when they can't hide it anymore. They really think it doesn't affect them. Crime goes up and with all of the disaster around the country,flooding,tornadoes,foreclosures they seem to think that we really are some fools who don't or can't see what has been going on for decades but now it multiple to the 10th power.

After all everyone in this country knows or has seen homeless people some have people in their families. As you watch these talking heads on television you can see how they dance around it especially on morning joe,they talk about their brother,sister or brother in law who has lost their jobs and they only worry because they now have to help them but they continue to spout off the republiCON bullshit lies about GREAT AMERICA.

I am sure for many of them it is because they are shut off from the majority of society and only live or deal with people in their certain areas. Many of the same people who shout out the republiCON bullshit lies are now homeless or catching hell in some other way but they continue to shout out the same damn lies while republiCONS tell them they are going to make even worse than it already is.

Now the republiCONS are trying to pretend they are interested in JOBS while for the whole first term of Obama they spent time on defunding The Affordable Care Act and talking about birth certificates. We ARE WAITING ON YOU MEDIA,CONGRESSMEN AND WOMEN.

and it is privately owned with no obligation to air viewpoints that its owner do not like.

"When you trust your television
what you get is what you got
'cause when they own the information
oh, they can bend it all they want." -JMayer

"progressive" media?

I would like to know what Rachel or Hartmann or any of them have said that educates people about homelessness better than the corporate media.

Thank you.