Yesterday, I ran
into a friend of mine in Soho. I hadn’t seen him in a long time.
“Long time no
see,” I said to him. “You look good.”
He shrugged in
his self-deprecating Jewish way.
“Well, at least
you’re eating regularly and you have a roof over your head,” I said.
He shook his
head.
“You’re
homeless?” I asked, half-joking.
He nodded.
“You’re kidding
me!” I said.
He told me that
he’d been sleeping on the F train for the last two years, with the exception of
one month, when he was able to stay at a friend’s co-op, and his birthday (his
60th), when he treated himself to a room at the Y.
As I was talking
to him, I realized that I personally knew four people who either are or have been homeless.
At this point, if
you’re a Republican, you would probably say, “What’s wrong with these people?”
And I would say,
“What’s wrong with our economy (and our society, in general) that people who
were formerly what you would call ‘middle-class,’ people who played by the
rules and did everything they were supposed to do, still wound up being
homeless?”
It’s no surprise
when people like Mitt Romney are tone-deaf on this issue. But the reality is
that most politicians—Republican and
Democrat—are so wealthy that they’ve lost touch with the challenges facing
middle-class people. (And forget about the poor. Nobody even talks about them.)
My Soho friend,
Norman (not his real name), is a photographer. I don’t know exactly what
happened to his last apartment (he was living in New Jersey), but he’s been
working as a messenger for the last few years because he couldn’t support
himself as a photographer.
I have another
friend who was recently forced to move back with his sister in Virginia because
his landlord stopped accepting his rent check at the apartment he’d been
subletting for the last 19 years. He had been working as a doorman at an
apartment building in Soho, but quit his job, partly because the staggered
hours were destroying his health. He retired shortly afterwards.
A third friend,
who admittedly had certain mental health issues that prevented him from working
in office buildings—a serious liability in a city like New York—slept for a
period of time in a Korean deli on Fifth Avenue and 13th Street
before, after a long period in which he studied to be a priest among other
things, he found a room in a house upstate. I’m not sure what he’s doing for a
living now, but I know that at one point when he was still sleeping at the
Korean deli, he was distributing flyers for a copy center.
A fourth friend,
formerly a successful architect, has had to move back with his family on Long
Island because he hasn’t been able to find work as an architect. I’m not sure what he’s been doing for money the last few years.
As you can see,
some of my friends have been forced to take jobs (messenger, flyer distributor,
doorman) that would make it hard for them to find so much as an apartment
share, let alone their own apartment, in a city as expensive as New York. So
what we’re seeing is a crisis in jobs, as well as housing.
A fifth friend
just started a new job at half his normal salary after being unemployed for
almost two years. Fortunately for him, he owns his apartment and had received a
substantial severance package when he left his previous job.
But most people
who describe themselves as “middle-class” are just one crisis away—one job
loss, one medical emergency—from being homeless.
So the next time
some Republican tries to blame a homeless person for being homeless, I would
say, “There but for the grace of God go you.”
And I.
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