With homelessness increasing in the United States, many people, including President Trump, have proposed institutionalizing those who can no longer afford their rent or mortgage costs. But as I learned myself this year, one serious medical event can be all it takes to destroy a stable living situation.
Story continuesA simmering threat of confrontation pervades the five-story building, and sometimes residents act out violently against authority figures or other residents. I’ve witnessed a couple of overdoses and several fights, including a brawl between two security guards — one of whom left the grounds in an ambulance.
My first few months at the shelter, I’d walk half an hour to a friend’s house to dog-sit. He was a former television actor on “Law & Order,” and I’d helped him and his husband out with money after the two became homeless following his AIDS diagnosis. Some karma. Before his husband’s death this year, he found an apartment, but last month took on a roommate to help pay the rent, so now I usually pass my days at the Brooklyn Public Library.
Another of my roommates is Jamal, a 24-year-old aspiring architect. One of the smartest people I’ve ever met, he has been at Renaissance for almost two years while on parole from a narcotics conviction for which he still performs weekly community service. When I met him, he’d recently found a job at a church on Manhattan’s Lower East Side and seemed close to leaving the shelter, but he has seven children by six different women to support, so he had to time his next move carefully.
Yet turnover at the shelter is also a constant feature of life here. Noah, for example, the schizophrenic senior citizen, began soiling his bed and the floor during the night, so the staff moved him to another room where he could receive more direct supervision. The resident who took over Noah’s bed, Angel, paints his fingernails and toenails bright pink or green.
After five months at the shelter, and completing each bureaucratic phase one step at a time, I’m still not ready to submit my public housing application to the city. Often, I find myself waiting weeks or longer for responses from the city, state and federal offices that will either allow me to advance to the next step, or else result in a dead end.
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