Sitting in the offices for the NYC Coalition for the Homeless I saw some middle class, educated people, the shock and trauma etched on their faces.  One was a woman whose foreign-born husband had left her, taken all her ID, emptied their joint bank account, canceled their credit cards and discontinued rent payment.  She did not make enough alone to pay for their apartment and had no way to reestablish herself without any identification, thanks to the new Homeland Security Laws, under which you need ID to get ID. Then there was the middle level ad agency man who, at 47, had been “down-sized” and was unable to find another job because he was considered ‘too old’ for the ad agency business. Next came the executive secretary who fled her abusive boyfriend, taking her three children with her. And then there was me.  A widow and stay-at-home mom, no one would hire me after my long hiatus from full time work.  Also, I was the victim of identification theft, my son’s and my own all having been stolen from a locked box I’d kept in the basement.  When the social security stopped, I was between a rock and the street curb. And so began my long strange trip through a hostile system designed to keep as many people as possible off of any assistance to get them back on their feet.  This is how I ended up in the Coalition for the Homeless’ NYC office. I had first gone to the Welfare and Food Stamp general intake center on 14^th St.  In fact, I had spent six weeks jumping through their hoops only to discover that my case had been closed due to their error.   However, they never told me my case had been closed and so I had wasted four weeks dancing to their tune, dutifully keeping my appointments, blithely thinking that I was on the road to getting a job and affordable housing.  When I found out my case had been closed (an accidental discovery on my part) and that I was to become homeless the following day, the Welfare office was less than helpful, except to tell me to go to a nightmarish ‘intake’ office in the Bronx.  While picking my way through used hypodermic needles, condoms and the like, someone from above broke a window and tried pelting me with glass bottles.  Welcome to the world of being homeless and trying to get out from under.

Applying for aid at the Welfare Office on 14^th St. was, in itself, an exercise in slow torture.  I had arrived 15 minutes before it opened and was the very first in line to file.  My case file listed the time I filed at approximately 9:00AM.  Sitting on the hard chairs in the glaring waiting area, I didn’t see a single worker except for the receptionist and a few guards until well after 10AM.  Then they started to trickle in, in dribs and drabs, talking to each other, drinking lattes, gabbing on their cell phones and having little kaffee klatches in the doorway.  My case, which was the first one (and you’re taken in first-come first-served order), wasn’t taken until after 12.  Already many of the workers had disappeared for lunch. No one, certainly not my case manager, had given me a list of steps that had to be complied with in order to make it through the system.  I was completely in the dark, and therefore dependent upon her to hand me the appropriate letters telling me which appointments to keep and where they were.   My first case worker had failed to hand me one of the appointment letters and, not knowing I needed this particular appointment, I didn’t know enough to ask.  Therefore, after I missed it, my case was cancelled.  The ‘hearing officer,’ a supercilious, superior and condescending woman who seemed to ooze racial hatred towards Caucasians, told me, essentially, that the case worker is always right.  It was my responsibility to know what I had to do.  After I quietly pointed out to her that there was no list of these things, she hinted at kicking me out, already catching the eye of a security guard who was busy talking about “titties” (“Sorry if I touched your titties,” leer, leer) with one of the case workers. On to the city's Division of Homeless Services (DHS) to get temporary housing in a shelter.  New clients must go to one place in the Bronx called PATH (I have no idea what it stands for, if anything).  The offices are not near mass transit and one must be able to read and follow directions to get there.  That lets out a lot of people who are illiterate, semi-literate or too mentally ill to follow complicated directions.

Right away this struck me as a slick move by the city to lower their statistics, as well as expenditures, on homeless people by making it impossible for them to get into the system.  Now I know why I see so many more homeless people these days. The wait time to even have an interview beyond the intake questionnaire was a minimum of four hours on the day were there, with one woman having been there for nine hours and still waiting as we left.  There was one bright spot, though.   The security staff were very nice and quite sympathetic and PATH services did provide food during our wait.

However, placing myself and my teenager in a shelter was something else entirely.  Although our caseworker was well-aware of my physical limitations, we were placed in a shelter that challenged me almost to the breaking point. (And since I am writing this on the first morning after the first night, I may yet break.)   Due to a chronic illness, I am on a restricted diet that, if I stray from, may place me in the hospital or even kill me.  What I can eat is not exotic, it is just basically no food from one food group.  Naturally, almost all the food they serve there is from the one food group I must avoid.  Then there are the stairs.  I am nearly crippled from a recent injury and we were placed in a fourth floor walk up room.  The caseworker who placed us knew these things and put us there anyway. The room itself, on this late summer night had only one window that wouldn't stay open.  The temperature in that airless closet of a room-for-two was probably well into the nineties.  And keeping the door open to get some air would be virtually a suicidal proposition