On Being Homeless

I’m hazarding an educated guess that if you’re reading this on a computer that is hooked up to an Internet Provider and plugged into an outlet in a residence where you either pay the rent or a mortgage, you probably have never been Homeless.

Not many people make it off the Street, and even fewer stay off the Street…and only a tiny fraction of those make their way through the social strata to arrive at a stable place with heat and electricity where they can plug in a computer and a router and browse the internet.

I want to tell you about the ugly reality of Homelessness. But before I start, I want you to understand I am coming from a place of experience. Despite having been raised up as a ‘child of privilege’, and despite having graduated from an Ivy League institution, I wound up Homeless on the New York City Street, from 1989 to 1990. I have a lot to say on the subject.

So sit back while I drop some wisdom.

To begin with, the two years I spent on the Street were the two most violent years in the city’s history. There was a tripartite war going on, and a devastating number of casualties every single night. This war was an unholy amalgamation of drugs – primarily crack cocaine, but there was a lot of heroin there too – racism, and a bioweapon called HIV. At the time, an HIV-positive diagnosis was an almost certain death sentence. Depending on where you get your statistics, there were 2,246 homicides in NYC in 1989, and 2,605 in 1990. Get it? The place was violent.

That said, I’m going to encourage you to give up on numbers. I suppose there’s a natural, even benevolent desire to know exactly how many Street people live on the Street at any given time. But that number changes with the weather, and with the varying definitions of ‘undomiciled’ you will encounter if you’re researching the subject.

I used to participate in the NYC HOPE count – the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate – until it got on my nerves. Each year, over the last several years, the City of New York spends $10,000 in one freezing night in the dead of winter (with climate change, the last one I attended – in February of 2019 – was almost temperate…but work with me here), assembling teams of volunteers, feeding them pizza, and providing them forms and pens with “HOPE NYC” emblazoned on them with which to fill out the forms…

…and after the forms are tallied, and the total is statistically adjusted to correct for persons the volunteers might have missed, the final estimate stands at, well, approximately 3500. Give or take…

It’s been about 3,500, plus or minus two to three hundred every single year since 2005.[1]

I like that NYC does this. It’s nice that people care. But I wish the public were better educated about the issue.

When I was in college, my best friend’s brother used to make a regular habit of talking to Homeless persons – buying them coffee and suchlike. Despite what you may have heard of hostile or belligerent Homeless persons screaming at you for intruding on their space, the large majority of Street people actually encourage this.

Here are some pointers for interacting with Street people.

First of all: To the uneducated, there might seem some sort of mystique to the life of a Homeless person. The Noble Savage. Some kind of Dharma Bum. A Bhikkhu. Freedom from the daily responsibilities of the Ordinary Man. A way out of the Rat Race

I need to disabuse you of this notion immediately.

There is almost no lifestyle more physically grueling, save perhaps that of a coal miner, bricklayer, ironworker, or penitent rock-breaker. The difference between the Street person and the workers I just listed is that the workers get to go home at the end of the day.

Homeless persons fall under two broad categories, with some overlap. There is the peripatetic and the stationary. I fit into the former category. Due to the absolute nonexistence of places to sleep that could be characterized as ‘safe’ – at least in the nighttime – I would wander the Street all night, and then try to crash out in a public place in the daytime. The stationary variety of Homeless persons includes those you see sleeping on grates, some of which are heated(!) by vents coming from laundry rooms below.

But if you need a place to sleep, and you’re done tramping around all night, and you haven’t carved out a niche yet…and when you’re about ready to drop from stress and exhaustion, one option is to pass out on wooden benches in the subway that are specifically constructed to discourage this. ?

When foreigners come to this great city (when it comes to civic pride, it doesn’t matter that I used to be Homeless – NYC is still the Greatest City on Earth), especially if they come from a fully developed nation or another wealthy urban center, they invariably comment on what a shame it is that there are so many people sleeping in doorways or stretched out on piles of trash. And in such a wealthy city too…

Okay, if you really want numbers, here’s a number. Get ready, because it’s a pretty big number.

Guess what the annual budget is for the Department of Homeless Services in NYC. Just guess.

Nope, higher. Keep guessing. Higher.

The actual number is TWO BILLION DOLLARS. Per year.

I did the math. Two billion dollars, distributed equally among (approximately) 3,500 human beings, is $571,428. And 57 cents.

We’re doing something wrong.

Whenever I confide in someone that I used to live on the Street, one of the most common questions (it’s a bit like “where were you on the night of the murder?”) …is “How did you wind up on the Street?”

This is a useful way to start a conversation with a Street person. But there are several things I’d like to caution you about if you decide on this opening.

First, be open-minded. You may be told something along the lines of “lost everything in a fire.” “My wife kicked me out.” “I got fired for being late one day.” “I developed a cancer diagnosis, and I didn’t have enough money for treatments and rent.” Chances are really good you’re being told the God’s honest truth. Don’t judge.

Second, you’re not going to fix their problem in the space of a conversation. Believe me, the greater majority of Street persons have tried pretty much all the available options for getting themselves off the street. They have probably already gone around to the local Department of Social Services and the Social Security Administration and applied for benefits. They might have applications in for all the stuff they should be eligible for. They more than likely know where the local food pantries and soup kitchens are (…although if they don’t, you could Google it for them). They have already checked out the kinds of jobs you might be suggesting – they may even be working a job and saving up for an apartment.

Third – and this is just real – a lot of Street people are actually on drugs. This leads to another point. You can, if you so choose, contribute some change, or maybe a dollar to a person spare-changing on the subway. But realistically, this may not be a favor.

The thing about New York City Street is, you really have to work hard on starving to death. You can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a church that gives out food or feeds people meals. There are enough little church operations that feed the Homeless that a Street person might eat lunch two or three times in one day. So don’t feel too bad if you don’t feel like forking over the cash.

Regarding donations: I have a strict no-cash policy. I will buy you food. I will swipe a Metrocard for you. If you need lotion for scabies, I got you. But if you refuse me three times, and still want cash, I will leave you to contemplate the consequences of your own bad decision making.

Next, if you are planning to start an interaction with a Homeless person, here’s a pro tip: Please do not wake them up.

Sleep is an extremely precious commodity for a Homeless person. Many of them fear being raped, which is why they tend to spend the nights awake and sleep in public places when they can. Back in the late 80s, it was permissible for Homeless persons to sleep in the Penn Station gallery – the place looked a little like the last scene in Gone with the Wind just before the intermission, with casualties stretched out as far as the eye could see. It was not possible to sleep in the ticketed waiting room without a ticket. If you happened to be Homeless and you didn’t know this, you would get “rousted” (that’s the Street term for it) by the NYPD. And as you may already be aware, sleep deprivation is an actual form of torture, practiced – in addition to NYC at this time – during the Cold war in the USSR. There are not many more effective ways to render a subject completely psychotic besides sleep deprivation, but one of those ways is crack cocaine addiction, or, more generally, any sort of street drug addiction. ?

You can see how this is something of a clusterfuck.

Here's another really good way to not enrage a Homeless person. It had been proposed some time back that the condition of Homelessness actually rendered you de facto mentally ill. Fortunately, this did not get much traction. But it’s a really sensitive topic, and a great idea to not mention it.

You may reasonably find it shocking that there are so many Homeless Veterans on the street. But if you are inclined to talk to them, there are a few considerations. First, they know they are Veterans, and they know they’re Homeless. No matter how obvious it is to you that the US government does not care about its military personnel after they are out of the military, believe me, they’ve already noticed this. Please refrain from going over the obvious. You can sympathize quietly.

Also – regarding interacting with Veterans – the same rules apply whether they are Homeless or not. They may not be proud of their service. It was their job. If they’re on the street there’s a really good chance that they are suffering from PTSD. They probably don’t need amateurish therapeutic handholding, and they definitely don’t need to be judged. Buy them a cup of coffee and keep it moving. You can build trust over time.

?One reasonable question you might raise is: “Why do you not stay at a shelter?” Be prepared for an earful. Most Street people consider it common knowledge that shelters and other institutions are a business, and the proprietors get paid by the head. So, the census might be a little skewed. And nobody in the state government is looking too closely.

Furthermore, The New York City shelters are horrible. There are exactly four intake shelters in all five boroughs, one each for adult men, adult women, families with kids, and families with kids and pregnant women. This means that getting into a shelter involves sleeping on the floor in one of these places for as many as three days. The shelters themselves are…well…spartan. Privacy is hopeless. Thieving and various sorts of violence are so rampant that most Street people will not bother trying to get into the shelters in the first place. They are not much nicer than jail, and that includes the food (it’s really bad). It is something of a statement in itself that thousands of Homeless persons prefer the exigencies of sleeping on a grate in the dead of winter to the unpredictability of sleeping in a shelter.

I’m going to be frank here and let you know there is another consideration. As I mentioned, drug use is fairly common among Street people, and the life of an active drug user can go ‘off schedule’ at any time. Street addicts find curfews confining, and drug use is officially prohibited inside the shelters. But drug use in shelters is at least as common as drug use inside jails, meaning it’s pretty common.

If you are truly concerned with the condition of Homeless persons, here’s something you may have considered, but don’t know how to answer.

Don’t feel bad, nobody in the NYC government has a good answer for this either.

What do you do if you need to take a dump? For the $571,000 per Homeless person (per year) allotted to the Department of Homeless Services, you would think New York City could at least afford to put in a gold-plated public potty or two. Almost every eating establishment in NYC has a “customers only” policy on toilet use. Getting caught defecating somewhere one isn’t supposed to poop will cost an offending Homeless person a $75 ticket. In case the ridiculous futility of this is not immediately obvious, consider that it will require a Homeless person to collect 1500 aluminum cans to pay it off. Which may be great for the environment, but a colossal fail as an element of public policy.

You might reasonably ask your City Councilman what they are doing for Homeless persons, but they will probably get defensive. The answer is: not much.

Here’s why. ?

I’m going to admit that it’s been a few years since I was last on the Street. At this point, more than 30. Back then, one of the main obstacles to getting services and benefits like food stamps was the lack of identification. Suitable identification included a driver’s license, a birth certificate, or a passport. If you didn’t happen to have any of these, no problem – the process of acquiring these takes a mere three months: just bring in a recent rent receipt or utility bill with your most recent address, fill out the requisite forms, get assigned a mailbox, make a careful note of where your mailbox is, come back in three months with the requisite documents, and you can begin the process of applying for the benefits you needed three months ago. ?If you don’t happen to have a recent rent receipt or utility bill – and let’s face it, most Street people won’t, mostly because they’ve been on the Street for too long – you are out of luck. No benefits for you.

Now I said it’s been more than 30 years since I was on the Street. What is really shocking is that what I said above hasn’t changed. ?It still takes up to three months for a Street person to acquire the documents necessary to begin the process of applying for benefits. And it is still impossible to acquire the documents unless you were only recently made Homeless and somehow managed to preserve a recent utility bill.

Why do I know this?

What follows is a shameless plug.

I am of the opinion that there is no experience so miserable that it cannot be redeemed by being found useful. When life gives you lemons, make lemon-aid.

As a consequence of having had what amounts to an immersive experience as a Homeless person; and having been through the process of applying for benefits (I had to do this multiple times, with varying degrees of success); and having finally made it off the Street! – I felt the need to put my experiences to use.

Accordingly, I formulated a comprehensive program called “StreetCard,” the premise of which is to use Information Technology to streamline the process of getting benefits to Homeless persons. There exist gaping holes in the social networks designed to provision Homeless persons with benefits like food, clothing, and shelter. It was in the process of researching the current social support system that I learned exactly how much the services have not progressed over the last 30 years.

Here’s a shortlist of some of the most egregious areas of waste.

I’ve already alluded to the absence of regulatory oversight on issues like shelter censuses. The fact that it takes up to three days to acquire medical records for an institutionalized Homeless person from previous hospitals and institutions costs about $10,000 per person per day. That’s in taxpayer dollars, because where would a Homeless person come up with the scratch? An unusually honest (and therefore anonymous) intake worker I spoke with suggested that the first-time success rate of applications for benefits at local Departments of Social Services is around 10%.

Meaning we could essentially set fire to 90% of the salary of an average DSS worker – don’t feel too bad, they don’t get paid that much anyway.

Putting a Homeless person in jail – instead of a home – costs the taxpayer only $60,000 per incarcerate per year. Putting a Homeless person in a long-term institution is, if anything, even more expensive.

And the cost of putting an institutional roof over the head of a Homeless person is nothing compared to what it costs to medicate them. One psychopharmaceutical frequently prescribed –not one of the classical antipsychotics, one of the newer ones (because more lucrative for Big Pharm) – costs $18 per pill…but there’s no way to know whether that’s what the pharmaceutical company charges for it, or what the taxpayer pays for it. And Homeless persons who are institutionalized are frequently prescribed five to ten medications at a time. Per day. Indefinitely. That means for the life of the patient. Or until they have a breakthrough event and have to be medicated on something else.

…And keep in mind, that patients (these days referred to as “Mental Health Consumers”) who are medicated this heavily stand a near-zero chance of ever being gainfully employed to the point where they can reimburse society for the cost of their treatment.

If you are beginning to suspect that this looming economic juggernaut is presented as a rationale for genocide…you are on the right track. If that sounds appalling to you, then good. But I submit there is an element that is seriously considering this option.?

The StreetCard is designed to be implemented in stages, each of which is installed on the success of the previous stages. The card comes with a magnetic strip, allowing the card to be processed when the cardholder goes for services. The card connects the client to a web-based application, which contains a database for Homeless Management Information Systems (HMIS) data, which is generally collected by service providers.

The first stage of the StreetCard program is for Basic Needs Providers (BNPs). This allows an accounting of goods and services provided and logs the presence of the Homeless client (more on this later). It also allows a census of the actual number of Homeless clients served. The card also connects the client to a calendar and reminder function, allowing BNPs to assist the client, and ensure that they make it to medical, psych, or social service appointments on time, and with the right paperwork.

The second stage of the StreetCard program is for Medical, Psychiatric, and Rehabilitative services. The purpose of this is to enable immediate access to electronic health records (EHRs), to minimize the time spent languishing on a hospital or psych ward while waiting for the clients’ records to be faxed over. It will also reduce the amount of time trying to empirically work out a good medication regimen when they may have already been one that worked effectively.

The third stage of the StreetCard program is for Social Services and Social Security. Ideally, we want to get a client’s applications for all the benefits they are entitled to underway - on the first try – under the “no wrong door” approach.

It is important to mention that the StreetCard program does not propose to change where a client would be allowed to sleep. But possession of the StreetCard would indicate that all the benefits they were entitled to are in process. The StreetCard would also carry a QR code that brings up a StreetCard webpage with a directory for local resources, allowing Good Samaritans to be truly helpful if they are so inclined.

One of the common arguments I hear raised against this proposal is that “they” (I think they mean “The Homeless” when they – the other “they” - those being the ones who are not Homeless – say this) will never go for this. They don’t want to be tracked. They will never agree to carry a card. They’re too disorganized to hold onto the card; they’ll lose it or forget their pin.

Alright, I’ve acknowledged that some people on the street are drug-addicted or desperately mentally ill. There’s no way of putting a number on this. I estimate that it’s a relatively small percentage of Homeless persons, but it is also important to keep in mind that the likelihood of becoming intractably drug-addicted or mentally ill increases in proportion to the length of time spend on the Street.

That said, there is a far greater number of formally Homeless persons in jail who are innocent of the crimes they are accused of.

Why? Because Homeless persons keep track of events by the season and the weather, and if it was day or night, and by the occasional headlines. If you ask a Homeless person “where were you on the night of the murder?” chances are that first, they won’t have any clue the murder you’re referring to even took place, and second, they’ll have only the vaguest idea of where they were at the time the murder occurred.

Furthermore, no Homeless person has the resources for adequate representation by counsel. Thus, they are represented by public defenders, who tend to be newly out of law school, and idealistic (which is good), but grotesquely overworked; sometimes handling 100 or more cases at a time (For an excellent documentary on the subject of this career, see “Gideon’s Army”[2] )

As a consequence, a lot of Homeless persons wind up wrongly convicted.

Homeless persons are not unaware of this.

So let’s dispense with the notion that they’ll never agree to have their movements tracked.

Next, we examine the proposed reluctance to carry a card. Leaving aside the fact that people who successfully apply for food stamps are given – yes – a card(!), there is also the fact that those Homeless persons who are not desperately mentally ill are fully capable of making decisions on their own enlightened behalf. This means if you ask them to carry a card that will enable them to get benefits faster, and more effectively – and save millions of dollars (per day) profligately wasted through inefficiencies in the system, allowing expansion of distributable resources and improved conditions for everyone concerned, including the workers on the front lines who provide those services…

They’re gonna say yes.

In the 1990s, the NYPD implemented a program called “CompStat,” the aim of which was to facilitate sharing of intel across precincts to bring down crime. In the category of murder, at least, they could claim to have been successful. By 2012, homicides were down to 417 (16% of the peak in 1990).

Were the StreetCard similarly successful, it would bring the census of Homeless persons (as measured by the HOPE count) down to 560.

What I’ve given you so far is just the story of the money. There’s more, but it’s in terms of human misery.

I want you to notice the wooden benches, next time you find yourself in the subway in NYC. They’re actually long enough for a full-grown adult to sleep on. Many of them have armrests separating the individual seats, disqualifying them as beds. Some do not, but each seat is, almost sadistically, bordered by low, wooden ridges that require you to contort your spine so that one ridge winds up under your ilium, and another ridge winds up under your ribcage...and you will sleep a fitful few hours and wake up in agony.

Or, you can try falling asleep in a seated position, with your legs stretched out. This has the advantage of looking like you’re more alert, and therefore less vulnerable to Street sharks than you would be if you were stretched out. But your knees and ankles will kink up, and your neck will freeze that way. You could also sleep under the bench, but this makes you look incapacitated, and therefore more likely to get jacked.

The fact that it takes three days of sleeping on the floor at an intake facility to make it into a shelter that isn’t very much more comfortable is already bad. Homeless persons who don’t opt for the shelter, and sleep in doorways or on the subway frequently freeze to death, are victims of violent crimes, are harassed by police, or occasionally set on fire. One locally famous Homeless person would smear himself with feces and ride the bus. This may sound incomprehensible to most, but it has a certain logic if you understand the need Homeless persons have to be left alone.

I’ve seen Homeless persons wiping their butts in public. I’ve heard reports from Subway workers of finding the bodies of “mole people” (people who live in the tunnels under the subways) that have been partially eaten. I’ve been rousted, I’ve had men expose themselves to me, and I’ve had my pockets slit (ironically after falling asleep in Central Park in the daytime. I thought all the muggers had retired for the night).

I’ve also seen blocks upon blocks of “abandominiums” in the Lower East Side and East New York. At the time, I had a very simple idea. Why not, I reasonably wondered, put able-bodied Homeless persons to work renovating these burnt-out shells? If you want poetry, there it is. There are fewer abandoned buildings, but the idea still stands. Really, the only thing in the way is a bunch of corrupt politicians and some understandable unawareness about the realities of the life of the Homeless.

I hope I’ve at least addressed the latter issue.

…an’ if you don’t know, now you know…

[1] hope-2020-results.pdf (nyc.gov)

[2] Gideon's Army (2013) - IMDb