Homelessness on Rise After Towers’ Fall
With clarity rooted in trauma, Marion Legare remembers a precise detail: The clock in the Port Authority’s cafeteria where he worked read 8:50 a.m. and was fast when the plane hit the north tower of the World Trade Center.
It took 45 minutes for Legare, 39, to make his way with a long line of people through smoke and water and the searing smell of jet fuel down the stairs 43 floors to the street.
Little did he know when he finally emerged from the tower into sunlight that the staircase would lead to a homeless shelter.
Roger Morgan worked for a messenger service when the twin towers collapsed. Fully half of the firm’s clients were either in the trade center or were businesses in other parts of the city that relied on companies in the complex.
Two weeks after the attack, Morgan, 41, was fired from his $6.50-an-hour courier’s job, and, like Legare, the downward spiral began.
Legare and Morgan belong to a largely hidden and uncounted legacy of the World Trade Center disaster: the legion of people who lived from paycheck to paycheck with little or no savings and who have now lost their jobs.
Their plight occupies a far lower priority in public consciousness than the employees who were killed when the twin towers collapsed and the police, fire and other emergency workers who died trying to rescue them.
“All I heard on television was they are giving aid to policemen and firemen,” Legare said.
“For people on the margins, 9/11 really toppled them over, and that includes people who were working,” said Clyde Kuemmerle, program coordinator at Manhattan’s Church of the Holy Apostles, which runs the largest soup kitchen in New York, feeding about 1,400 people a day.
Since the attack, the church has seen a 13% rise in the number of meals being served. But it is difficult to link the entire increase to terrorism.
“Certain jobs were lost because of the trade center,” Kuemmerle said, “but the economy was already in trouble. How much of the rise can be attributed to ongoing economic forces also is a question.”
Before the terrorists struck, thousands of people were being forced into shelters because of a lack of affordable housing and unfavorable business conditions.
The trend was apparent in October when the New York Coalition for the Homeless revealed that the average daily census in shelters and welfare hotels had climbed to 29,498 people, the highest in the city’s history.
November showed no improvement; the number increased by 304.
“Prior to Sept. 11, things were already bad for hundreds of thousands of low-income New Yorkers who were barely surviving from minimum-wage paycheck to minimum-wage paycheck,” said Joel Berg, executive director of the Coalition Against Hunger.
“The economic fallout from Sept. 11 has made things unimaginably worse for such families,” Berg added. “The city’s more than 1,000 pantries and kitchens are swelling with secondary victims of the attack: dishwashers, waitresses, bike messengers, hotel maids, airport porters and store clerks who lost their jobs.”
The ripples also have reached drivers for car services. Many are independent contractors who have lost their livelihoods because they could not meet installment payments for their vehicles.
“What we would like to see is President Bush come up with an aid package to help keep jobless New Yorkers in their homes and apartments,” said Patrick Markee, senior policy analyst for the homeless coalition. “That is what we need right now.”
Out of work, Legare launched a futile search for another job as a cook or food handler.
“There was no work. It was very, very slow,” he said.
He tried applying for unemployment insurance but was told that because he hadn’t worked a sufficient time he didn’t qualify.
As a temporary employee at the cafeteria operated by the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, Legare made $6.25 an hour in the hope of gaining job security.
“I took a bad cut in pay trying to get in with the union. I had spoken to the union rep . . . and he said how I was working out well and, if you stay long term you will get hired,” he said, disappointment in his voice. “I know I would have gotten a permanent job with the Port Authority.”
For Morgan, the bills began piling up, and he couldn’t pay the $110-a-week rent on his one-room apartment in the South Bronx.
Morgan said he didn’t seek unemployment insurance. While it would have covered his rent, only $4.50 a week would have been left over for living expenses.
He was forced to move. The homeless coalition, where he once held a number of jobs, including receptionist, provided stopgap assistance. The organization helped him rent a room at the YMCA in Harlem.
When those funds ran out, he had to enter the homeless shelter for men operated by the Salvation Army on Wards Island in the East River across from Manhattan.
“It is hard to sleep there at night,” Morgan said. “Lights go out at 11 o’clock. It seems half of them want to stay up all night and talk. Unfortunately, I am near the bathroom, and that’s where everybody likes to congregate.
“The lights go on at 6 o’clock, and you have until 9 o’clock to clear the dorm area,” he explained. “The only reason to go back is if you have to go to your locker and get something or change clothes. You have limited access. They prefer that you leave the shelter during the daytime.”
Several days a week, Morgan solicits donations for a homeless group in Manhattan. He is allowed to keep a percentage of what he collects.
Other times, he looks for a job or visits the offices of the Coalition for the Homeless, where he picks up his mail.
For both men, things are starting to look up.
Morgan is being considered for operations manager at a messenger service that hires only people who are or were homeless.
If he gets the job, he hopes to use some of the money he earns to learn how to operate computers.
After almost two months, Legare managed to leave the shelter on Wards Island and reclaim his apartment--with the help of small grants from the Red Cross, Salvation Army and other organizations.
He has worked, for a time, as a messenger, but the job brought back frightening flashbacks. He became anxious when he entered tall buildings to make deliveries.
“Being on a high floor, it would dawn on me if something did happen in the building, how would I get out?”
After dreaming that he found his clothes were being stuffed into bags, he decided to enter counseling.
As the new year approaches, possibilities exist for Legare.
He has found a part-time job in a bakery. Nighttime employment in a French restaurant may follow.
“We will see what happens,” Legare said. “I am just hoping that everything works itself out.”
