Life on the Streets
By NATE SCHWEBERIII SEPT. 6, 2015
A reporter and a photographer visited homeless encampments across New York City,
interviewing dozens of people, from teenagers to those in their 70s. Some had serious
medical conditions; one woman was pregnant. They spoke of job losses, mental health
issues, substance abuse and problems with the city shelter system that drove them to the
streets.
Jose Morales and his 17-year-old girlfriend, Kimberly Williams, who is five months
pregnant, had built a shelter out of a blanket tethered to a fence, underneath the No.
4 train.Mr. Morales said he grew up in a troubled home in the Bronx and eventually attended
high school at a residential treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction. When he
got out, he went into foster care with a family in Brooklyn, because his mother had
been sent to prison on drug charges. He rebelled.
"I didn't want to listen, I didn't want to do no chores, I didn't want to Obey no curfew, "
he said. "If I was able to go back right now, I'd apologize and fix it."
He was sent to another foster home in the Bronx. That was when he met Ms. Williams
over Facebook. When she was kicked out of her home on Long Island after a fight with
her grandmother, Mr. Morales allowed her to stay with him — a violation Of house
rules. They were both evicted.
They squatted on a rooftop in Brooklyn before taking up residence in their current
location. They went to the city intake center in the Bronx for homeless families, but
learned they were ineligible because they were not married or in a domestic
partnership.
On Wednesday night, they huddled together on the sidewalk and watched a praying
mantis crawl on the fence above their bed.
"I go around, I ask for a job here and there, but nobody's hiring," Mr. Morales said.
This isn't good for her, it isn't good for me."
Dawn Johnson and her domestic partner, Mohamed Diallo, used to live in a shabby
Bronx apartment, supported by his job as a mechanic. The building owner allowed the
apartment to go weeks without running water and more than a year without heat.
They took the landlord to housing court, but Ms. Johnson said the constant crises
over basic utilities and the stress of navigating the legal process were too much to
juggle for Mr. Diallo, 32, who worked at a mechanic's shop. In 2013 he lost his job,
and then they lost their home.
"We had no place to go and we had no funds backed up," she said.
They tried the shelter system, but they said it lacked resources for couples without
children. Ms. Johnson said she had been treated in the past for depression, anxiety
and bipolar disorder —
conditions that make it hard for her to hold a job. She is not
being treated currently.
She and Mr. Diallo sat on folding chairs Wednesday night, next to a tattered suitcase,
a shopping cart and two coolers with bottles Of water that he hawks for money. They
shared hand-rolled cigarettes, and Mr. Diallo swilled a 24-ounce can of malt liquor.
Terrified Of being separated from Mr. Diallo, Ms. Johnson said she chose to live in city
parks and train stations, rather than risk checking into a shelter.
"I don't want to leave Mohamed," she said, weeping.
Underneath the NO. 4 train platform, Heather Pittenger raised up her tank top to
reveal a huge scar down her belly, where she said her abusive ex-husband shot her in
the late 1990s during a fight.
She had been living in Allentown, Pa., and they ran a shop called Hellbound Tattoo.
Her father, a former New York police officer, rescued her and brought her back home
to Staten Island.
Ms. Pittenger grew up in what she described as a good Jewish home. Her mother
worked as a nurse.
"I'm middle-class America," she said. "I was raised very well."
In 1999, she found her father dead — she believes of natural causes — in their home.
"I just walked away," she said. "It was the first time in my life I walked away from
everything. "
Living on the streets, she was mugged and bashed in the head with a brick — the
hairless scar still visible beneath her short, sandy hair. It took her two years to relearn
to walk, but the fatigue and vertigo made working impossible. She collects cans to
recycle for food money and begs for cigarettes. She has avoided shelters, calling them
"unsafe.
"Being sober — it just didn't work for me, " said Jason Jones, who is married and has a
daughter on Long Island.
Mr. Jones said he served in the Army and once did a stint as a fund-raiser for a
congressional candidate. It was around 2006 that alcohol began to take control of his
life, he said, along with what he described as a desire to be more aware of "what's
really going on in the world, like in Rwanda," rather than the mundane daily duties Of
working a job and tending to his family.
He bounced around the homes of family members and girlfriends before finally
winding up in the city shelter system, but he hated it. He spent time in the Wards
Island shelter, and went on to share a house with Other men from the shelter.
One Of the roommates took him on a walk through McCarren Park, where he met a
group of people who hang out around the northwest corner. He fell in with them
quickly and has spent his summer with them. But he is already thinking about the
winter, and said he intended to enroll in a back to-work program and either make
amends with family or re-enter the shelter system.
"If you're willing to work with the people inside it's not that bad," he said. "It is just
perseverance, with the winos. "
John Ruiz's parents moved from Puerto Rico to New York when he was 3 and lived in
the same apartment in Yonkers their entire lives. When they died in 1998, he
continued living there but got into an altercation with a neighbor and was arrested.
The neighbor got a restraining order, and when Mr. Ruiz was released from jail he was
told he could not return.
"The manager Of the building said I couldn't come back," he said.
Mr. Ruiz, wearing an unbuttoned shirt and blue plaid pajama pants, ate beef and rice
out of a foam container as he sat on a bench beside a push-cart with garbage bags of
clothes early on Thursday morning.
He said he had never worked.
"I suffer from depression," he said. "I was taking medication for that, and high blood
pressure. And I have problems with my legs It makes it hard to walk."
People in the neighborhood now know him well enough that he can survive on
charity.
"I got a lot of people here, they know me, when they see me around they give me a
couple Of dollars, they buy me food," he said. He tried the shelter system but
contracted tuberculosis during a stay, he said. "I'll sleep on a train,- he said, "when
the winter comes. "
C. J. and Tiffany Dillinger cut a tender image in the midst of hard circumstance early
on Thursday as they spooned together on Broadway on a bed made from pedestrian
plaza chairs that they had dressed with a foam mat, sheets and pillows, cocooned in
corrugated cardboard.
They were shaken awake just before 7 a.m. by a security guard for the Gramercy
District Alliance. As they stuffed their pillows and blankets into a ratty rolling
suitcase, they said they had been homeless since their house in Old Bridge, N.J., was
foreclosed on a year ago.
They had fallen behind on their mortgage. Then they were both laid Off. She had a
shipping and receiving position. He was a construction worker.
"We're trying to get some housing," Ms. Dillinger said. "I don't want to be separated
from him. "
They married 16 years ago, and homelessness is the hardest challenge they have
faced, Ms. Dillinger said. They started taking public transportation into New York City
in July because they heard it was a more manageable place to be homeless.
"Believe it or not, there's more resources here, " Ms. Dillinger said. "Soup kitchens,
places to eat. We came because we heard about a couples' shelter."
When they tried to get into the couples' shelter, however, they were denied. But Ms.
Dillinger said, "I'd rather be out here than in shelters."
As Mr. Dillinger turned the walls from their previous night's room back into flattened
cardboard and dropped it beside a curbside trash can, Ms. Dillinger's eyes misted.
"There's more resources for survival here," she said. "But I wouldn't call it living."
lerelyn Fisher sat in a wheelchair early on Thursday under a building scaffolding,
bathed in bright light, with newspapers spread across her lap. She rested her bare,
badly swollen feet on a black suitcase. Trash bags were piled high around her, nearly
bursting with her belongings.
Ms. Fisher lived for years in an apartment on Avenue D and Third Street. She taught
sewing classes in New York City public housing and also in a fabric store until 2003.
"I just couldn't find another job," she said. "I became homeless and discovered a
whole new way of living. "
She has avoided the shelter system because she says she finds the other residents
challenging.
"There are a lot of people who are upset and angry because they are homeless," she
said.
She turned to religion to deal with the stresses of being homeless and now preaches
to others.
"The biggest thing I've learned is how Satan has mistreated humans," she said. "I've
learned that God Jehovah lives above us and you have to know how to pray if you 're
going to survive in this world.
Her plan for the winter is to wrap herself in double plastic bags, as she has done for
years.
"It insulates you from the cold," she said. "Sometimes you get so hot inside you have
to take Off one Of the bags.
Manuel Reyes was upfront about the reason he was thrown out Of the apartment he
shared with his wife and three children and had to stay overnight in a playground:
alcoholism.
"I don't have another problem," he said. "Only drinking.
After he immigrated to the United States, he worked for 20 years as a superintendent
of a building, not far from the playground, he said.
People warned him that his addiction would cost him his job, Mr. Reyes said, but he
did not listen.
"Drinking, drinking, drinking," he said. "I lost my job.
By attending regular Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, he managed to stay sober for
two years, but that ended last month.
"It's not easy, not drinking," he said.
Mr. Reyes, who has a short gray beard and was wearing a raggedy flannel shirt, carried
a blue duffel bag that he said contained everything he owned. Come daylight, he
planned to visit a friend who owns a nearby bodega. They had worked out a deal. If
Mr. Reyes bought beer from the bodega, he could sleep for a few hours in the dank
downstairs storage room.
"I'm going to drink a couple of beers and stay in the basement of the bodega," he said.
"What can I tell you? It's the life. I have to live the life."
Response:
Today many don't
consider the streets because all the media's attention is focused on the
conflicts around the world and issues affecting a greater number of people.
When fifty people die in an attack no one is really concerned about the
struggles the homeless people of New York endure. A common cause to many of
these individuals' situations was alcohol.
The new Yorker on the streets cries out simply to be heard, known, and
cared for by somebody and I think they deserve to be heard. However, the
article explaining why some of these people often get into these predicaments
makes me wonder if the harsh reality of not being heard for some is justified.
This by no means implies I don't have sympathy for those individuals on the
streets, however, when they choose drinking over family, love, and a home,
knowing they may lose all three, I find no one to blame but them. A hard
childhood makes it difficult to turn away, but judging by their previously
described situation, many had already begun their life anew, but threw it all
away when they chose alcohol, girlfriends, and having no responsibility. The
voices of those who innocently lost their home and livelihood do deserve better
though. As this article was published in the New York Times, it cries out to
the citizens of New York who don't even see this misery simply because it isn't
their reality. This article was published to open people's eyes, so that while
they are caught up in their own lives and are even occasionally are interested
in the conflicts far away, they don't forget the issues and struggles of those
on their doorstep. Nate Schweber grew up in the country but experienced
firsthand what it was like to live at the bottom when he moved to the big city.
Schweber isn't afraid of the streets and wants to help those who started on the
bottom, just like him. He knows what it's like to be beat up and rejected and
even through his music reflects some of these emotions. The New York Times
covers a broad scoop of issues from around the world but also likes to reveal
the needs even in their own city. Depending on who you are this article may be
a relief to a long-awaited prayer, a issue that doesn't concern you at all, or
even an article that disgusts you with its insignificance when compared to the
bigger world's issues. None the less, this is a call to action for the city of
New York to invest more in the generation of the streets. To invest in homeless
shelters and providing basic needs.
Schweber, Nate.
"Life on the Streets."
The New York Times. The New York Times, 05 Sept. 2015. Web. 07 Sept.
2015.
