Homeless Trigger Mixed Reactions as the Problem Refuses to Go Away
Sherryl Kohl, a secretary and part-time actress from Manhattan, sometimes dips into her purse and gives them a dollar.
“I just got off the subway, and there were about 10 homeless men, all sleeping in a row,” she said recently as she waited for a train at Penn Station. “It breaks your heart to see things like that. I live in one of the best neighborhoods, 72nd and Central Park West, and you see it there, too.”
Diane Cole, a model from Long Island’s affluent North Shore, says she has stopped taking the subways because of the homeless people she encounters. “I can’t stand looking at them,” said Cole, a white fur over one arm and another in a shopping bag. “I just picked up another fur coat, and I feel guilty now. You can’t even walk down Madison Avenue without being approached.”
Emotions here are running high about the growing ranks and visibility of the homeless. Those emotions--sympathy, anger, guilt, fear, disgust--have been heightened by the case of Joyce Brown, the first mentally ill homeless person hospitalized under a new policy instituted by Mayor Edward I. Koch.
‘Enough Is Enough’
“I think the public is sick” of homelessness, said Robert M. Hayes, who left a Wall Street law firm to found the Coalition for the Homeless. “There’s a very strong undercurrent of popular opinion that says enough is enough.”
Koch’s policy of hospitalizing homeless people deemed dangerous to themselves or others has fueled an acrimonious debate about whether the homeless should be forced to accept shelter or treatment. It also has added urgency to the debate over where and what kind of shelter should be provided.
Koch says that anyone who refuses shelter is “foolish” and that, in Brown’s case, “we don’t have to wait until she’s dead to pick her up.” Brown, 40, a former secretary, had been living on a hot-air vent on Second Avenue, sometimes defecating on the street and hurling abuse at passers-by.
Norman Siegel, executive director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said it is no coincidence that Brown is black. He charged that there are “racial overtones” to Koch’s policy, saying that more than 80% of the city’s homeless are black and that those who have been hospitalized have all been removed from white Manhattan neighborhoods south of Harlem. Koch dismissed the charge as “outrageous.”
Some have been heartened by the public sympathy for Brown. Days after she was hospitalized, Siegel sat on the hot-air vent where she resided with a scrawled sign seeking information about her. To his surprise, at least three dozen neighborhood residents stopped and expressed concern about Brown.
But some activists said news-media coverage of Brown’s plight has reinforced stereotypes that most of the homeless are confused shopping-bag ladies who like the way they live.
“The myth that people choose to live on the streets is absolutely wrong,” said Hayes of the homeless coalition. “It’s insane to believe that.” He said some people stay on the streets because they cannot bear oppressive conditions in large city shelters.
Brown, a self-described “professional” at living in the streets, said recently that she would live in a residential facility if space were available. There is a shortage of such facilities here, and neighborhoods where new ones are proposed routinely rise up against them.
Hayes has a Darwinian view of homelessness, one in which the weakest groups have fallen out of the housing market as competition for scarce units intensifies. First came the mentally ill released from state hospitals, then able-bodied men hit by the recessions of the early 1980s and now families, most of them headed by single mothers. Hayes sees AIDS victims as the next major homeless group.
Time of Prosperity
“There’s been homelessness in the United States since the 18th Century, but never before has there been mass homelessness during a period of economic prosperity,” he said. “Maybe that’s why we feel so bad about it.”
Under fire for not doing more to provide affordable housing, Koch declared in a recent television interview: “If you think we’re going to go into bankruptcy to provide everyone in the world who comes to New York City with a studio apartment, you’re nuts.”
Although New York has become the nation’s homeless capital, with an estimated 27,000 people in shelters and welfare hotels and 30,000 or more on the streets, it is hardly alone. Nationally, preliminary figures gathered by the Coalition for the Homeless suggest a 25% increase in the homeless population since last year.
The group’s report, based on a survey of shelter providers in 20 cities, found that 45% of the homeless--and by far the fastest growing segment--are families with children.
Homelessness topped a list of domestic concerns in a recent Roper poll, with 68% of respondents saying the federal government should provide more aid. But such support has its limits; Koch’s plan to build 10 new homeless shelters here has sparked intense opposition in the affected neighborhoods.
No other major city forces medical treatment on the homeless, although District of Columbia officials said they plan to hospitalize more of the mentally ill after a court ruling broadening the city’s authority.
Fran Griffith, homeless coordinator for Los Angeles County, said that about one-third of people on the streets are mentally ill, but that “we only deal with the homeless on a voluntary basis.” Officials estimate there are up to 30,000 homeless in Los Angeles, but only 5,000 beds available in shelters, hotels and mobile homes.
Alton Miller, a spokesman for the late Chicago Mayor Harold Washington, said there has been “a substantial increase in the number of homeless women and children,” but that “they are mostly not mentally ill . . . . We see the homeless as part of the affordable-housing problem.”
An estimated 25,000 people in Chicago are believed homeless, and the city’s 2,200 shelter beds are “always filled,” Miller said.
Here in New York, as winter weather arrived early this year, more of the homeless have sought refuge in train stations and bus terminals. They are not always welcome.
At Grand Central Station, transit police accompanied by German shepherds routinely force homeless loiterers to leave. Still, they continue to huddle on wooden benches beneath the ornate chandeliers, reading discarded newspapers, sipping coffee or dozing off as well-dressed commuters stride by.
“I’m unsympathetic,” office manager Walter Jamieson said as he bought a train ticket for Connecticut. “I feel people bring it on themselves. I work hard for a living; why can’t someone else?”
More Theft
Tracey Richards, a newsstand manager at Penn Station, said that in colder weather he finds more homeless people stealing candy and snacks from his stand.
“You can’t blame them, though,” he said. “Instead of calling the police to arrest them, I just take the stuff back . . . . If I was out of luck, I’d want somebody to look out for me.”
