HOMELESS IN NEW YORK

This past week, the New York Post published a story about a homeless drum-seller in Brooklyn who keeps being moved along after setting up camp.  His name is Thomas Harris, and in the summers, when the drum circle is active in Prospect Park, this man camps [or used to] along the edge of the park on Ocean Avenue right across from my front window. 

I wasn’t actually sure he was homeless until this Post article.  I just thought he camped on the sidewalk all summer because he didn’t want to haul his drums home every night and didn’t want to leave them alone at the park.  Now I know.

Homeless encampments are illegal in New York City, as is sleeping in the subway or blocking a sidewalk or, heaven forbid, a bank ATM.  It’s okay to sleep on a bench or on the sidewalk as long as you don’t block traffic or someone doesn’t call the police.  I suppose you could just stand up and lean against that wall and sleep if that were possible.  The homeless population in New York City all needs to find a way to Los Angeles where they can join the homeless encampments stretching for miles and miles downtown – or the smaller camps under bridges in every area. 

There’s a drive to house the homeless, but how is that going to happen in the city like New York where the housing is so limited that people fight to get an apartment.  A friend of mine once rented a “room” in an apartment that had no windows.  Creepy.  It was in an apartment that the landlord had turned into a “2-bedroom” (illegally) by putting up walls in the living room to create that second bedroom.  I know more than one person who rented an apartment in Manhattan in which the bathroom was outside the apartment in the hallway.  So how’s this rehouse-the-homeless project going to work out, unless the landlord’s get permission to rent out the hallways and janitor closets for homeless people to sleep?  While the landlord’s would love to do this, the regular tenants wouldn’t like it much.

There are some shelters in New York, but they fill quickly and they are very dangerous.  There are dumpsters to sleep inside – provided they don’t get locked at night.  There are about 75,000 homeless people in New York.  Where do they all sleep?  And where do they get their food?  Or the money for their food?

The questions about eating and sleeping for homeless people interests me a lot because, as unbelievable as it may seem, the death rate for homeless people in the City is lower than the death rate generally which includes all those for housed people.  And drug overdoses constitute a large percentage of the homeless death rate.   The death rate for the overall population of New York city is 6/10% while the death rate for homeless people is 3/10%.  That’s ½ the regular death rate.  Mindboggling.  And this statistic holds true in other cities with a large homeless population – such as Los Angeles.

Population of NYC in 2017 was 8,615,000.  Total deaths 54,000 = .6%

Homeless population of NYC was 75,500.    Total deaths 239     = .3%

Drum-seller Thomas Harris has twice the chance of survival on the streets of NYC as in an apartment or house, as do his homeless companions.  Yet, no one is asking what is it about their lives that creates that much lower death rate.

[Read the Post article here:  https://nypost.com/2018/12/09/two-heartbreaking-truths-about-the-city-and-street-homeless/]

BROOKLYN OF AMPLE HILLS

Brooklyn of ample hills was mine.

Walt Whitman

Bensonhurst, Brooklyn circa 1900

I read that line a year ago and I stopped writing on this blog.  I had to think about the Brooklyn that was mine – it had changed quite a lot since I moved there.  The real estate developers frothed at the mouth since the Nets Stadium was built and my neighborhood, across the Park from Park Slope enticing with it's run-down buildings was screaming to them to be gentrified.

Now, the steel doors to the pre-war apartment buildings attempting to make them as impenetrable as a prison, were being replaced by glass ones. Exterior vestibules were being built, getting people out of the rain and snow faster and letting them drip in a vestibule instead of the lobby.  Lobbies were getting upgraded and the all elevators were working.  

Thank you, realtors, that Brooklyn is now the most expensive city in the US.  Higher than Manhattan?  Higher than San Francisco?  Seems impossible.

The shabby, stinky grocery at the corner of Lincoln Road and Flatbush Avenue is now a glassy, classy “health food” store.  The building that housed the Chinese restaurant that used to cook everything in the same grease for a week is torn down and a new apartment house is there with a big, clean, upscale grocery store (meaning produce is about 30% higher than any of the stalls on Flatbush) with it’s own overpriced hot and cold salad bar (I must admit the mashed potatoes are great).

There are new restaurants along Flatbush that open fully at the front so their music can blare out and attract customers that love having tinnitus in the morning.  And there are restaurants that are actually inviting – serving wonderful food and a staff with smiles who will turn the music down if you ask them (Gino's Italian at Lincoln Rd. and Flatbush - great lobster ravioli or Bonafini aka Blessings which serves all day, but try them for breakfast).

There’s a huge apartment building on Flatbush which defies the ordinance that you can’t build a building that can be seen from Prospect Park.  People in the park want to feel they have escaped the city and not feel king-konged by real estate developers.  Too bad now.

The Brooklyn I knew when I first moved there is becoming gentrified, but the Brooklyn that was mine will always be mine.  The Brooklyn of winter with that first snow-globe snowfall that brings the city to a whisper.  Followed by northers that make you feel that your eyeballs might freeze.  Christmas lights and decorations and toys displayed in the windows.  Brooklyn of heart-breaking spring days with small leaves on the trees and wildflowers (daffodils and irises) in the park.  The Brooklyn of summer with cool breezes, open windows, people playing dominoes on the sidewalk and that one horribly humid month of August.  Brooklyn of glorious fall.  The 100-foot trees across the street turning yellow and rust.  The sidewalk painted with red aspen leaves, brown oak and maple.  The umbrella of yellow leaves on trees in the park. The history, the pace and passion, neurosis, complaining, anger and aggressiveness.  The sound of the train in the ditch behind the house.  The endless walking past 100 year old houses and trying to hear their stories.  The varying cultures represented in clothing, behavior, accent, restaurants, body language.  

Brooklyn of ample hills was mine and I loved it.  I still love it, but now it’s a little bit slicker on the exterior and people spend a lot of time looking at their cell phones.  The old signs are gone – replaced with new ones.  But it's still got the garbage in the gutters.  And the noises of traffic and people.  Still, underneath, it's still got the Brooklyn that was Walt Whitman’s.

Prospect Park before it was Prospect Park
looking toward Brooklyn Museum circa 1900