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Tensions are running high in Glendale, Queens, as the city moves forward with opening a homeless shelter at 78-16 Cooper Avenue.

Last month the Glendale-Middle Village Coalition, a local group created to fight the shelter, sued the city. According to the Department of Homeless Services (DHS), the shelter will occupy 200 single men and intends to open early 2020.

“You know, you put a building with 200 people, in the middle of that community, that’s like essentially like putting an entire block of people,” said Ryan Kelley, the communications director of City Councilman Bob Holden of District 30 and opposer of the shelter.

At an October 7 meeting between community members, DHS, Community Board 5, and Westhab, the organization that will run the shelter, residents aggressively yelled out of anger, one woman threatening to “burn the place down” if the shelter arises.

Elfrida Sauldinka, a resident of the area for over 50 years, attended the shelter meeting.

“Neighborhoods are changing, but this, this here is, it’s not fair. There’s problems with a lot of homeless shelters, so why not fix up the ones they have?” said Sauldinka.

“People should be allowed to, to make a decisions here, you know, they live here.”

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Despite the freezing temperatures in New York City Brenda Sprankle,60, finds it safer to sleep on the streets than to go to a shelter. Photo by Li Cohen

While New Yorkers scrambled to get indoors as single-digit temperatures sweep through Manhattan, the city’s homeless are forced to endure a chilling reality.

“I usually sleep here in my sleeping bag but it’s 15 degrees,” said 60-year-old Brenda Sprankle, pointing to a small spot nestled between 33rd Street and Fashion Avenue.  

When temperatures in the city go below 32 degrees, the Department of Homeless Services issues a Code Blue. According to the Office of the Mayor, this means that homeless individuals cannot be turned away from shelters, that drop-in centers are open 24 hours a day to shelter as many people as possible, and that chronically homeless people can get transportation to housing.

Breaking Ground, an organization partnered with DHS to provide outreach services to the city’s homeless community, said their team works 24-7 to provide housing and assistance.

“The only way to stem the homelessness crisis is to build more affordable and supportive housing  in neighborhoods throughout the city,” said Breaking Ground press contact Kate Treen in an email.

But Sprankle said this organization, among others, as well as the Code Blue system is not an effective strategy to help those living on the streets because of the hidden dangers lying within shelters. She does not want to go into a shelter because of the experiences others have told her about.

Despite the freezing temperatures in New York City, 60-year-old Brenda Sprankle finds it safer to sleep on the streets of the city than to go to designated shelters. Photo by Li Cohen

According to the NYC government website, there were 678 felony, misdemeanor and violation arrests in homeless shelters the third quarter of 2018 alone.

“People have been raped in them; they’ve been beaten in them; they’ve been robbed in them. I’m handicapped I would be the weak link,” she said. “I sleep out here with my faith in Jesus Christ. Eight years and I’ve never got hurt one time.”

After graduating college and working for 35 years, Sprankle became homeless after an unfortunate series of events following a city bus accident in California that left her permanently handicapped with a debilitating lump in her leg and permanent nerve damage in her knee. She is just one of thousands of New Yorkers who sleep on the city’s streets every night.

But choosing to sleep in the streets can have a devastating impact. When forced to stay outdoors in temperatures below 31 degrees-Fahrenheit, people can develop frostbite or hypothermia, two conditions that are potentially fatal if left untreated for a prolonged period of time. New York City’s Department of Health website states that 25 percent of hospital admission from 2005 to 2013  because of cold-related conditions were homeless individuals.

“It’s extremely dangerous for anyone to be outside in freezing temperatures,” wrote Treen. “Our street outreach teams work around the clock to reach the homeless, assess their safety and ensure they have someplace warm to go.”

Sprankle knows the effects of long-term exposure in the cold can do. She was hospitalized last winter when she caught the flu and pneumonia after being forced to sleep in zero-degree weather because she was kicked out of an indoor train station.  

“They don’t let you sit long and they don’t let you sleep,” she explained of those monitoring train systems. “They’re horrible. I don’t understand how the mayor can call it a code blue and all they do is harass you. … It’s inhumane.”

For now, Sprankle is getting through the night with only a few dollars and a cart full of blankets and possessions.

“I’m a survivor and I’d like to see you come out here and spend the night. Come spend the night out here, you’d be scared to death.”

The city government website suggests New Yorkers call 311 to have an outreach team help a homeless person who is outdoors in cold weather. Neither the Mayor’s office nor the Department of Homeless Services responded to comment in time for publication.

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Nestled between rising luxury apartments and the country’s largest public housing development lies the future home of Amazon’s new headquarters. For the low-income and homeless residents in Long Island City, the incoming business serves as a reminder of rampant gentrification and social injustice.

Felix Guzman, 37, is homeless and has spent time in and out of shelters, including in Long Island City. He believes that the billion-dollar company’s move is going to destroy what remains of the city’s affordability for thousands of families.

“Queensbridge actually has the biggest project in the United States,” Guzman said of the area just north of Long Island City. “Seeing how rents are being raised all over the place, do we really need a situation where excess is right next to poverty?”

Queensbridge public housing. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

After repeated attempts, Amazon did not respond to comment about what they believe their impact on New York’s homeless community will be. New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio stated the company will prove beneficial to New York City, but has not mentioned it’s direct impact on the homeless community.

Within days of someone leaking Amazon’s news on Nov. 5, housing interest in the area saw a dramatic increase. According to StreetEasy, the number of searches to purchase a home in Long Island City increased by 283 percent. That number only increased again once Amazon officially announced its plans Nov. 13, with a surge of 519 percent.

According to Amazon, the average income for their New York workers will be $150,000 a year. But the median income for Long Island City, Queensbridge and Ravenwood, is only $28,378. This insurgence of high-income residents will be be reflected in rental costs and surrounding businesses, and with 19 percent of Long Island City residents living in poverty, 9 percent facing unemployment and 48 percent feeling heavily burdened by rent, Amazon opponents believe hundreds of people will be displaced.   

Mario McMichael, director of programs and new initiatives at The Partnership for the Homeless, has seen this happen countless times in other areas of New York City and predicts the cost of living in Long Island City will only increase.  

“We know that the property values of the units immediately surrounding this area where Amazon will be will double, triple and quadruple,” McMichael said. “The expectation of the workers being there earning an average salary of $150,000 will want to live somewhere close to where they want to work. That displaces the people that are living there now.”

As Amazon moves in, so does rampant gentrification

McMichael believes tenant laws are not strictly enforced throughout the city. One of the most common problems his organization sees in gentrified areas is landlords forcing lower paying tenants out to attract those who will be willing to pay more.

“What we find is that the people at the low end of the totem pole also get just terrible, despicable landlords that violate all sorts of housing laws,” he said. “These families typically get pushed to the outer fringes, like places that aren’t the most desirable, places where there may be more poverty and higher instances of crime. They get pushed there until, of course, those places gentrify too.”

Homeless New Yorker Nathylin Flowers Adesegan, 72, leads a group of people on Nov. 26 as they march to the Amazon Bookstore on 34th street to protest Amazon opening a new headquarters location in Long Island City. Photo by Li Cohen

Nathylin Flowers Adesegan is just one of the many who have been pushed out. After living in her rent stabilized apartment for decades, the 72-year-old now shares a small, double room with three other women in a homeless shelter.

“I lost my apartment because the rent went from $475 to $1,319.16 a month,” she said. “I was there 34-and-a-half years. So many of us have been evicted and pushed out of our neighborhood and shiny new buildings pop up all around us. We can’t afford to live in them and it’s set to get worse when Amazon comes.”

While Adesegan is grateful to have a roof over her head, she explained that living in a shelter requires individuals to accept degrading treatment.

“What’s it like to live in a shelter? I have a curfew at my age. I can’t cook dinner. I have to go through a TSA search every time I go in and out. I get rationed toilet paper because the plumbing is so bad,” she said.

Research conducted at Baruch College found that it costs New York City approximately $3,522 a month to run adult shelter facilities per single adult and approximately $5,623 a month for shelter facilities that house families, though the specific number of family members was not specified in the research results.  

“What kind of luxury apartments could we have for that money?” Adesegan asked.

For the more than 800 families expected to be displaced by Amazon’s move to Long Island City, finding a solution that benefits their future and well-being will likely be difficult.

According to the Department of Homeless Services, finding a safe and steady place for the more than 60,000 people in the shelter system – and the estimated 20,000 to 30,000 not accounted for in shelters – is difficult. The Department’s Shelter Scorecard Summary for October showed that there are 485 buildings with shelter units in New York City’s boroughs and more than 12 times as many shelter violations, including health, fire, building and code violations.

In New York City even the highest-paid corporate moguls are at risk of falling to the economic bottom and being forced into these conditions. Michael Ball, 38, used to be a producer for Sesame Street, but when he suddenly lost his job, he was immersed into the city’s silenced world of homelessness.

“I’ve been homeless for two-and-a-half years,” he said at a protest against Amazon on Nov. 26. “I don’t really come from anything. I worked my way up from a low production assistant all the way up to the top [at Sesame Street] and it just so happened in my life that I ended up in this situation.”

What angers so many homeless individuals and support organizations is the fact that the city government chose to pay Amazon nearly $3 billion in subsidies to build its headquarters in the city. The company will receive $897 million from the Relocation and Employment Assistance Program, $386 million from the Industrial and Commercial Abatement Program, $505 million in grant funds and $1.2 billion in “Excelsior” credits. Meanwhile, The Department of Homeless Services will only receive $2.06 billion for Fiscal Year 2019 and one of the few homeless shelters in Long Island City that opened this past March was already bought out in a $36.5 million deal in November.

“The immediate need is housing, specifically affordable housing, but the long-term ongoing need is education and workforce development,” McMichael said. “So I definitely think putting money into both of those, that money definitely could have been used that way.”

Guzman agreed.

“If a company is going to come to the city to establish a headquarters why do the taxpayers have to subsidize that?” he said. “After we flipped the senate we find that we do have the money in fact. It’s a little bit disheartening and infuriating to hear repeatedly that we have no money, but they are able to find the money to subsidize a billion dollar corporation and one of the most wealthiest men in the world to bring him here, and buy him a home when we have more than 89,000 New Yorkers without them.”

The truth about Amazon’s employment

While the echoes of New York City’s officials dropping billions of dollars on Amazon’s shiny new floors ring through Long Island City, the only sound thousands of New Yorkers hear is the reminder that Amazon’s promises are not all that they seem.

Mayor Bill de Blasio and Governor Andrew M. Cuomo announce that Amazon will establish a new corporate headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. The announcement was made during a Nov.13th press conference. Photo courtesy of the New York City’s Mayor”s office

The company announced they are bringing 25,000 jobs to their spot in Anable Basin, about half of which will be technology-based and the other half split between miscellaneous positions. Many are convinced that most of those positions will already be filled by Amazon employees who move to the city.

Adesegun says this is just ‘what companies do.’

“They take over public spaces, public lands and they build and the most horrible part about this is that the democratic process was subverted,” she said, noting that the rate of homelessness drastically increased when the company opened its headquarters in Seattle in December 2016.

The positions that are not already occupied, including human resources, administration, custodial and communications, will likely require advanced degrees and experiences that many of the people that are displaced by the new headquarters do not have.

Kate Barnhart, director of the homeless LGBT youth advocacy organization New Alternatives NYC, explained that a company bringing in significant jobs for an underprivileged community is different from bringing in jobs that an underprivileged community is qualified for.

“A lot of their jobs require a certain degree of technical skills and our folks who are homeless or low income don’t have that,” she said. “So they end up bringing in people from outside who have skills they want, but then they are bringing in more people and that’s putting pressure on the already strained infrastructure of an area.”

A look through Amazon’s recently available jobs for New York City show that many positions require nearly a decade of experience in leading corporate projects, at least a bachelor’s degree and endless technical skills. Even smaller jobs, such as the merchant assistant that entails helping with fashion purchases, require at least two years of relevant work experience, a high school diploma or GED and Microsoft Excel experience.

While the jobs within Amazon may be hard for the poor to fill, McMichael noted that a new headquarters will create the opportunity for smaller businesses to rise in the surrounding area.

A struggling community offers solutions

New York’s homeless community and its advocates made it clear that their primary concern is being heard in the loud sounds of Amazon’s soon-to-be construction.

“Maybe they should hire a significant amount of workers that are displaced persons,” Guzman said. “If you’re going to displace or you’re going to change the dynamic for people, perhaps there should be a compromise or an exchange, not just a total transfer of power for the tenants.”

Barnhart suggested a similar tactic, also putting an emphasis on long-term career development for underprivileged individuals.

“One of the things I think Amazon should do is create a program where they make a commitment to hiring a substantial number of homeless and very low-income individuals,” she said. “Not in minimum wage jobs, but train them to have a really meaningful employment with the company.”

Guzman, just does not want the homeless to be left behind.  

“To leave the shelter system is a chess game in itself,” he said. “No one should feel like a pawn to a system that just doesn’t validate humanity.”

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Homeless women walked the runway last night in a glittering fashion show that aimed to not only fight the stigma these women face, but give them a voice to define who they are.

“We’re labeled as being drug users, or whatever negative,” said Renee Brooks, a model in the show. “Sitting home all day with soap operas, no education. That’s not true for all of us.”

Brooks and all the models who participated in the show live at Susan’s Place, a 200-bed transitional residence for women who are medically frail or mentally in the Bronx.

They walked the runway at the 6th Annual Health Empowered Beauty Fashion Show and Benefit hosted by Care for the Homeless at the Prince George Ballroom in Kips Bay, Manhattan. The funds raised at the event helps Care for the Homeless support the women of Susan’s Place.

Brooks walked in a candy red evening gown with a black vintage shawl and a felt hat. She added a runway twirl for flourish. Brooks has been a resident of Susan’s Place for just over a year.  A heart condition required her to need a defibrillator, and she was forced to seek out long-term medical treatment from the shelter. She believes the fashion show was an opportunity for people to understand that not everyone’s situation is the same.

“They get to see us in another light,” said Brooks. “They lump us all into one group, one category and that’s not true.”

Brooks hopes to leave the center soon and get a place of her own.

Sylvia Garcia, also a model in the show, is a former resident of the shelter. After nine months of medical treatment and counseling, she was released and now has custody of her four grandchildren, ranging in ages 5 to 14. She also teaches her own crochet class once a week at Susan’s Place.

“I’m proud of myself,” said Garcia. “I’ve done a lot.”

The rhinestones on Zuleyka Cordera’s black, full length evening gown glittered as she crossed the stage with her head held high. Cordero, a native of the Dominican Republic and a resident of Susan’s Place for just under two years, was nervous for the show. She was also excited for the opportunity to thank the shelter for helping her overcome her anger and learn how to use patience to solve her problems.

“Things that are big for me are small for them,” she said. I feel like these people have been my support system.”

Special guest Emmy Award winning and Academy Award nominated filmmaker Joe Berlinger told the attendees that his first experiences with “the issues of homelessness” came more than 20 years ago, while he was making a documentary about the lives of people on the street.

“At the time, Giuliani was cleaning up the streets and getting rid of the squeegee men,” said Berlinger. “There was all sorts of policy and debates about what should be done with the homeless, but nobody was dealing with the human issue of what it’s like to be homeless.”

Cheryl Law of the Bronx came to show her support, but she was not always a supporter. When she learned a homeless shelter was to be opened near her home, she joined many of her neighbors in protest. She quickly realized that she had jumped to conclusions about the people who would be there.

“I just assumed it was people who made the choice to live that way,” said Law.

She now volunteers at the center and attends events like the fashion show to support those who are affected by homelessness. She also wants to help others who, like her, have been blinded by the misconception that all homeless people are the same.

“I was wrong,” she said. “It’s not that easy to judge who they are.”

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More than 4,000 volunteers took to the streets last night to tally up the city’s homeless population.

They were taking part in a yearly count dubbed the Homeless Outreach Population Estimate (HOPE), which is made mandatory by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Volunteers gathered at over 20 sites across the city’s five boroughs last night to receive training before canvassing their assigned blocks. Around 100 of them crammed into the cafeteria of a public school in Manhattan’s Murray Hill neighborhood at 10 p.m.

“You have come out of your homes to help people who don’t have a home to go to tonight,” said Deputy Mayor for Health and Human Services Heminia Palacio. “You’ve come out to give all of us New Yorkers the hope that we can help our neighbors — and that we can continue to bring people in off the streets.”

Volunteers milled in and out of the cafeteria, eating donuts and filling out paperwork. Sitting at plastic tables in their groups for the night, team captains led discussions on how the night would go.

In groups of three to five people, HOPE volunteers are assigned a certain amount of blocks to canvass in one of the city’s five boroughs. They spend roughly four hours — from midnight to 4 a.m. — asking everyone they encounter if they have a place to sleep that night.

Jesse Shiffman-Ackerman volunteered for this year’s count. It was his seventh year participating.

“We live in New York City, and, I mean, I’ve been here my whole life and seen homeless people all around me,” Shiffman-Ackerman said. “They need real help. That’s why I keep coming back.”

Shiffman-Ackerman said he’s typically assigned to canvass Penn Station, which also includes monitoring the trains.

“There’s always plenty of people to talk to,” he said. “And with a cup a coffee and enough people around to question, it’s pretty easy to keep up the motivation over the course of four hours.”

As a result of last year’s count, 1,500 New Yorkers were taken off the streets and remain off the streets, according to Department of Social Services Commissioner Steven Banks.

“In the past, the surveys focus was on bringing someone out of the cold for a night,” Banks said. “But we’ve shifted our goals and now we’re looking for long-term solutions for these people to keep them off the street permanently.”

There are currently 2,000 known unsheltered individuals on the city’s by-name list, which keeps track of homeless individuals as they transition off the streets, according to Banks.

“The survey enables us to know where people are and that helps us engage them and bring them off the streets,” Banks said. “It can take anywhere from one to five months to find someone permanent housing, and this survey helps us make sure we’re not missing anyone.”

Banks said the nationwide survey also gives insight into the forces driving homelessness in the city.

“In this city, rents went up almost 19 percent last year, while income went up less than 5 percent,” Banks said. “That’s obviously driving homelessness in our city. We have to pay attention to those indicators.”

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Around 6 p.m. on a breezy overcast Saturday evening, Jose Ramirez was getting ready to pick up the day’s heroin after several hours of panhandling in Washington Heights.

“Sometimes it take five minutes, sometimes it takes 45 minutes,” Ramirez said, explaining how long it takes to get the $30 to $40 for each day’s supply of drugs and food. “Sometimes it takes two hours.”

Ramirez, 36, is one of the several thousand homeless New Yorkers who have ruled out spending nights in the city’s shelters, preferring instead to take their chances on the streets and subways. The unsheltered homeless struggle with substance abuse issues and mental health issues , said Isaac McGinn, spokesman for the Homeless Services department.

McGinn said these issues make street homeless a uniquely challenging group to get off the street.

Beginning in 2016, the government of Mayor Bill de Blasio started Home-Stat, a program intended to provide daily outreach to street homeless and develop individualized plans for their eventual movement to a shelter or housing, said McGinn.

“It can take anywhere from one dozen to more than two hundred contacts to bring street homeless New Yorkers indoors,” he said.

Around 690 New Yorkers were helped off the street from March to October 2016.

Under Home-Stat, McGinn said, the city doubled the number of city outreach workers from 191 to 387. The outreach workers partner with existing homeless shelters and identify individuals for placement into drug rehabs, mental health facilities or explore possible transitional housing opportunities. Any homeless who appear to be a threat to themselves or others would be hospitalized.

But accepting the outreach efforts is voluntary and the homeless can’t be forced to utilize services or stay in a shelter, McGuinn said. Despite the city’s efforts, some of the street homeless are reluctant to move into shelters, citing safety and sanitary conditions, among other issues the facilities sometimes have.

“People get into fights in the shelters,” Ramirez said, “You never know what can happen to you.”

Instead, Ramirez spends each night in a sleeping bag underneath trees and other foliage in a closed-off area beside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway.

According to the New York Department of Homeless Services, the city’s homeless population has continued to rise over the past decade. In January 2017, more than 62,000 people slept in homeless shelters – 24,000 more than the roughly 38,000 people who were housed in shelters at the end of 2010. The numbers of homeless are now at the highest levels since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

In addition to the sheltered population, around 2,800 people, like Ramirez, sleep on the street each night, McGinn said.

Ramirez, who was born in Puerto Rico and settled in the Bronx with his mother when he was 15, has been living on the streets for seven years. During that time, day-to-day life has been a battle for survival and a focused effort to find funds for the day’s heroin to keep withdrawal symptoms at bay.

Symptoms of heroin withdrawal include muscle aches, nausea, sneezing, cold sweats and anxiety.

“Every time I wake up, I’m just thinking about getting $20 to get straight,” said Ramirez, while walking along Highbridge Park in black sweatpants and a navy blue raincoat. “Without the heroin, when you be a junkie, you can’t move. You don’t want to talk to people, you don’t want to do nothing.”

Ramirez said he started selling drugs when he was 17. By 19, he was using regularly.

“I started smoking weed. I started hanging out. Start working, making a little bit of money, and I ended with the wrong people – started selling drugs,” he said. “I was selling cocaine, then I started sniffing it, hanging out. Then I started selling dope, bagging it up – I caught a habit. I couldn’t get straight. Then the dope I was getting was garbage. I couldn’t get high so I started shooting.”

As Ramirez spoke, he stopped often to recall details and at times, struggled to articulate a timeline of events.

According to Ramirez, his mother passed away in 2010. Unable to make the rent payments from the apartment and trying to sustain a heroin addiction, Ramirez reluctantly went out to Washington Heights and found himself a place among the winding expressways to set himself up.

He chose to stay in Washington Heights, rather than the Bronx, where he had been living with his mother for around 14 years.

“This is where I used to come to cop and where I had all my friends,” he said.

Ramirez recalled how he felt the first time he had to panhandle to support himself.

“There was my friend – I was sick so I didn’t have no money – but he only had $10 and he said, ‘Yo, I’m going to go get straight,’” Ramirez said.

“I’d be like, ‘Yo, can you help me out today?’” Ramirez remembered. His friend suggested he grab a sign and panhandle next to the traffic. Ramirez countered that he was “jones,” or in pain from drug withdrawal, and passersby wouldn’t give him money.

Eventually, Ramirez said he was in too much pain and did what he had to do. He grabbed a sign and planted himself along the entrance to the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, near 179th Street. After around 40 minutes, he had collected $20 and purchased two bags of heroin. Since that day in 2009, Ramirez said panhandling has been the primary way of supporting himself.

Homeless panhandlers in Washington Heights is a familiar sight to residents.

Willie Blain, 57, has lived on the Washington Heights streets since 1989. He panhandles there to buy drugs.

Willie Blain, 57, stands alongside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway near his encampment in Washington Heights. Blain is among several thousand of New York’s homeless population that choose to live on the streets instead of entering the shelter system. Photo by Razi Syed.

He spoke quickly and confidently, with a rapid-fire, staccato cadence, but occasionally mumbled and veered fluidly from topic to topic. Blain said he struggled with schizophrenia.

“I always had been in the streets – wintertime, I was in the streets; summertime, I was in the streets,” he said. “Always in Washington Heights – these are like my stomping grounds.”

Alongside the Trans-Manhattan Expressway, Blain has carved out a living place for himself with a black computer chair cardboard boxes and plywood arranged together in a small fenced off area. The road barrier provides a small area of shelter from the rain.

“The thing with other people is –- I know how to hustle so good that they act like they like me, but they don’t like me,” Blain said. “They hate me ‘cause they can’t do like I do. I make money, a lot more money than they do. I panhandle. I help people with their cars, if they have a flat tire. I can do just about anything.”

Blain said he avoids the other homeless in Washington Heights, preferring to spend his time alone.
“I have trouble with people because they like me, want to be like me, but can’t be like me,” he said.

The New York winter, brutal and resolutely unforgiving with nighttime temperatures routinely dropping below freezing, are the most difficult times for the street homeless. During the 2013-2014 winter, the latest year for which statistics are available, six homeless people died of cold-related weather.

Ramirez said he suspects the heroin he uses daily helps him and other street homeless cope with the frigid weather.

“Most of the homeless out here are heroin addicts,” Ramirez said. “People be like, ‘How you survive out here in the wintertime?’ “I’ll be thinking that the heroin keep me warm.“Like as soon as you do the dope, you don’t feel the cold.”

Life on the street is largely a solitary struggle.

“Most of the time I be by myself ‘cause I always ended up getting fucked over,” he said. “I got tired of looking out for people – ‘yo, I’m sick,’ or ‘yo, I need a dollar to get over here.’ Most of these people, they never look out for you,” Ramirez said. “The heroin addicts here aren’t like before – you could be sick and someone would come and get you straight. Now it’s rough.”

The post Homeless and drug addicted appeared first on Pavement Pieces.

The snow has fallen, the Christmas trees have gone up, and the lights have been strung. The Holiday season is here. New York City is known for going out all out with decorations. It is also known for being home to over 62,000 homeless people, for whom the holidays may have a different tone. For those who call the streets their home, the holidays may be a reminder of the things they don’t have like a Christmas tree, someone to celebrate with or even being able to be inside for a week.

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There are 46 people living at The Sarah Powell Huntington House, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan, a residence for formerly incarcerated women and their children. Some are lifelong drug addicts, some were imprisoned for other crimes. Many have been separated from their children.

The House is owned by the Women’s Prison Association who opened its doors yesterday to over 100 volunteers for “Rebuilding Together” an event held to improve the facility. Volunteers spent the day repainting walls, windows, and staircases and doing repairs in the units.

Irene Bonilla resides in apartment 5D. She moved in after leaving prison and a period of homelessness.

“By 17 [years old] I was addicted to crack,” she said. “By 24 I had four children. Incarcerated in 1996, incarcerated in 2005. I’ve got 10 children including this one,” said Bonilla, gesturing to her young son.

Bonilla’s had a hard week, her sister died two days prior. Despite the grief, Bonilla insisted that she’s going to be okay. She’s worked hard to be sober for 24 months.

“I didn’t go nowhere yesterday,” said Bonilla. “Even though I felt the urge, I stayed home, here.”

Diana McHugh, the director of communications of the WPA said she’s been with the group for over five years, and was one of the organizers of “Rebuilding Together.”

Prior to working for the WPA, McHugh taught a class for women at a correctional facility. In preparing for class one day, she opened the window blinds in the room to let some light in. Less than a minute later, a prison guard came in and shut the blinds, letting her know that it was forbidden to have them open.

“There’s no humanity in prison,” she said. “They’re being denied sunshine.”

That moment in the prison has stuck with McHugh for years and was part of the reason she sought out work at the WPA first as a volunteer and now a full-time employee. For her, Saturday was about letting the women know that they have people on their side. The WPA and all of the volunteers who came to paint the walls and staircases, make repairs and improvements, are there rooting for them.

“We provide a physical space. Someplace safer, more comfortable,” said McHugh. “The most inspiring part of today is to have so many volunteers share their time and let these women know that they matter.”

Statistics show that women in prison receive less visitors from family and friends than male prisoners. As much as 79% of incarcerated women were abused at some point in their lives. More than half of women in prison were the primary caretakers of their children prior to their jail sentences.

Bonilla was happy the volunteers are making her home more cheerful.

“When the walls are dull, it makes you feel depressed,” she said. “I go to my drug program, then come home here. Every day, same routine. The wall outside my apartment is green. That makes me really happy. Green is the color of money. Of life.”

Bonilla has been reunited with one of her 10 children, 6-year-old CJ. The WPA has helped her get her life back after prison. Bonilla compared her life in prison to her life now, grateful for what she has overcome.

“Not having to stand up and be counted,” said Bonilla.. “Not having to share a shower with five other women. Waiting for everything, in line to eat, waiting to go to the bathroom.”

The WPA helps women reunite with their children, find employment, and reestablish themselves after leaving the criminal justice system.

Tiffany Hallett manages the building. She has been at the residence for five years and helped oversee “Rebuilding Together.”

“People that are on the outside, that haven’t been in correctional facilities,think that these people are different. And they’re not. They’re no different,” said Hallett.” “It’s their choices that set them apart. And people may say, ‘Oh, why do they have to drugs because something happened?’ But they may not have had the same circumstances, or made the same choices.”

Bonilla recently received the good news that the New York City Housing Authority has approved her for permanent housing.

“No Regrets,” she said. “Twenty –eight years of crack and I’m proud of me now. I’m happy. Fridays are my best days. I go to parenting [program], come home, pick up CJ and got to my mom’s [house].”

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