Hope 2009: Homeless Street Survey

This past Tuesday between 12:15am and 4am thousands of volunteers canvassed the five boroughs to survey New Yorkers who were spending the night on the street or on a subway platform. Held each January since 2003, the Department of Homeless Services conducts the survey to estimate the true number of chronically homeless- those people that cannot or will not secure indoor shelter on a midwinter night.

“Tonight is a Code Blue”, says Fernando, the district captain from DHS to the room full of canvassers at a Bay Ridge, Brooklyn elementary school. Code Blue indicates that the air temperature, then dipping below freezing, made sleeping outside a critical health risk for those intoxicated or without adequately warm garments.

We were all looking at our handsomely designed Hope 2009 guide book that outlined the priorities and protocol for the survey. Fernando added that if we found a person whom we judged to be in severe risk, we were to call the vans to pick he or she up and bring that person to a shelter- a service we provided to all who were willing to accept it.

(City and private shelters are not all guaranteed safe havens. They present their own set of risks throughout the night. Theft or bodily harm occurs unobserved and the setting can be more dangerous than the streets. )

The main goal of tonight was not to reach out, but to obtain information. That information would be culled from a questionnaire we carried with us. We were instructed to administer this questionnaire to anybody we met on the street, regardless of appearance. There are potentially 11 parts to the questionnaire, but Question 6 is the most important.

“Do you believe that this person is homeless? (If the answer is “Yes”; then you have several questions about the individual’s identity, age and location. If the answer is “No”; then you write down the time and your done. )

Most of our encounters never really went beyond Question 2: “May I ask you a few questions?” Answer: “No”.

Our team was made up of five people, four of whom worked for the City or in health care respectively: a grade school speech therapist, a Board of Education claims advisor, a nurse, and a Department of Transportation construction worker. None of us planned to go to work the next day and until then we took a four-hour walk in Bay Ridge.

Our leader, the claims advisor, carried the maps - printed swatches of street grids outlined and bordered with arrows tracing our route.

So we headed out.

Even if a stranger on the street cooperates with you asking he or she a question, that permission does not make Question 3 any less awkward:

“Tonight, do you have some place that you consider to be your home or a place where you live?”

“Yes? You pry further, “What kind of place is that? A room/apartment/house/hotel/dorm/drop-in center/shelter/subway/bus…car?”

Most people we met were clearly going home as they jangled keys nearing a house or a car, but accordingly to guide book rules we were to ask these people just the same.

If we skipped anybody we might miss one of the several hired decoys spread around the city to keep tabs on survey quality. The decoys could appear in a suit made of either fine wool or deli bags. We had to be vigilant.

We walked the Arab, Irish, Italian, Chinese and Greek enclaves of Bay Ridge and Sunset Park. We crossed the Gowanus Expressway and Bay Ridge Parkway. We examined brownstone lined streets, the alleys behind large Italianate homes, and the garden store lot that sells make your own wine kits.

The speech therapist talked about growing up in this neighborhood and the people that cut holes in the fence to go below the overpasses. The construction worker talked about patching those holes.

The claims advisor deciphered the switchbacks on our route. “Haven’t we been on this street already?” We stopped in for hot cocoa at the 24 Hour diner.

The guidelines state that we walk until we have completed the turf or 4am, whichever arrives first. The time approached 3:30am. One cut through a park and then we go back to the school.

We found no homeless in our 4-hour tour of the neighborhood and we felt a bit cheated. It's an odd point of view to take on other people’s destitution, but when roaming the street with a script and an agenda you want to show something for it. I imagine however, nobody with a full folder of accounts relished their hull. The format is to yield data, but it is ultimate people counted on those sheets. Now more than ever the recession is making us all consider the tenuousness of survival in the land of plenty.

I will be back next year for HOPE 2010 and my hope is still to find no homeless in Bay Ridge.

We Have Arrived: 1.20.09

The sight from the capital steps was filled with millions of Americans, many of whom had arrived at 4am to secure a better view of history soon to be made. When that moment finally arrived, President-Elect standing in front of Justice Roberts, hand on bible, was a visage that seemed like destiny, but still so surreal.

He (correction) slightly stumbled through the oath, but then Barack Hussein Obama our 44th President turned towards the crowd and delivered soaring words that will launch us into a new era. He spoke sweepingly of unity, possibility, necessity and specifically about our role as citizens to participate in our future.

Now is a daunting chapter of time as described by our president, but it is in this darkened period that America will remake itself. To begin this national reboot he uttered one of the better lines of the speech, "as for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. " It was Obama's most singular break from and indictment of the last eight damaging years, and the man soon to board a helicopter and fly off from OZ immediately after the ceremony.

President Obama used a critical historical moment of American resilience to close his speech. He recalled of the crossing of the Delaware when Washington and his troops braved cold long odds to be victorious over an advancing enemy.

Change has come to Washington in the crucible of crisis, we should however feel confident that that among all that which is packed into that word "change" intelligence is foremost. Until we commence analyzing our new president, let us celebrate and be happy Americans.

Here is an email from observer Charley Miller celebrating today's victory for Democracy:

In about 30 minutes, Obama is scheduled to deliver his inaugural speech and I'm sitting here thinking that while many people are talking about the man that will serve as our 44th President, or about the symbol he represents in the eyes of our country's racial struggle, something that seems to be lost is something that has nothing to do with Obama but rather with our country. I think Obama would be the first to remind us that if anything, his inauguration proves our system can work, in the sense we always have another chance -- this thing WE call democracy. And while so much has failed us lately, it's nice to take in today as a sign that democracy ensures that while we don't always get it right, WE can and will keep trying. WE are the people. WE make the change. The whole world is watching.

D.U.M.B.O: Angles

One of my favorite neighborhoods to photograph. D.U.M.B.O (down under Manhattan bridge overpass) is full of geometric drama.