It is a few months short of three years since Hurricane Sandy barreled down on NYC. The flooded subways have new barriers. The submerged hospital generators are back in order. The boardwalks along the shore are up and trod by beachgoers once again. But what of the thousands of poor renters, most on public assistance, who lost their homes that day? I don’t know all their stories. I only know one intimately, and it is not a happy story. But I do know that nearly all the stories like this one of Sandy or Katrina are about African Americans. It is systemic racism, racism that insures that the poorest and most inhumanely treated are black in America’s big cities that makes it possible for society as a whole to tolerate these conditions. It is racism that allows those that are a little better off to separate themselves and feel less vulnerable. It is not true. We are all vulnerable in a system that can just throw people away.
The names in this story have been changed because of the secrecy of the domestic violence system and the likely repercussions if real names were used.
My own involvement in Sandy was minimal. I volunteered as a doctor for all of three hours, and that led to my meeting Latoya. Since then she has not just become my friend, but I have seen her being brutalized by the bureaucracy for the poor. I doubt that many can survive these indignities and privations and emerge a wholly functional human being. Maybe that is the point.
The neighborhood where I live, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, was little affected by Sandy. Some trees were down, the Hudson River looked choppier than normal, Broadway denizens complained that brunch was not readily available. Images on TV of flooded homes and subways, total destruction of communities and communication looked far away.
Finally, two weeks after the storm, the volunteer requirements decreased enough so I could do a weekend shift. I was assigned to a shelter in the Bronx, the Franklin Ave Armory, normally a shelter for homeless women, many of whom have mental illness. Now the occupancy had been increased by hundreds of storm victims, most from the opposite end of the city in Far Rockaway, at least two hours away by subway. There were families with young children, single adults of all ages, and a huge row of pets in cages along the wall. Rows and rows of cots covered the massive armory floor, with only a few feet between them. Plastic bags of hastily gathered belongings filled the gaps between beds. The occupants had only been there for a few days, having been moved once or twice already from schools or other shelters in Brooklyn and Queens. Everyone was poor and most were black.
Armed with my prescription pad and a stethoscope, I entered this cavern, expecting someone to welcome me, have an area for me to work and bring me patients, but no one seemed to care. I made my way to a long table of what appeared to be people in charge and introduced myself. Disinterestedly, they told me I could use a table along another wall and do what I wished.
One of the evacuees, a man in his mid thirties, was wearing an orange reflective vest and was giving leadership to the others. Tyrone. He spread the word that there was a doctor. No other health professional had been in attendance during the three days they had been there. A line formed. Most people needed refills of medications lost in the storm two weeks before. I wrote them out, but there was no nearby pharmacy. No petty cash to get people there. No way to pay for people, almost everyone, without their insurance cards. The insulin some people had had spoiled as they were told there was no refrigerator, not even that big one I had seen in the staff area
As I was leaving, Tyrone and I exchanged numbers. The evacuees were all being moved again that night, but no one would tell them where. I was curious. At noon the next day he called. “They dropped us off at hotels all over Manhattan, 10-20 at each one. They didn’t give us any money, food stamps, vouchers, nothing. We’re starving, even little babies.”
“Did you call the Red Cross?”
“Yeah, they said they can’t help us. They have nothing to do with Manhattan.”
“I can’t believe this” I really couldn’t. “Let me call and do my doctor bit.” It didn’t work. I got the same answer They should go to City Harvest, a big food bank in midtown. I told Tyrone I would meet him with my car. “No food”, the guy at City Harvest lamented. “The Red Cross took it all.” Tyrone and I drove around the city to supermarkets, telling our tale and collecting $60 here, $100 there of donated food. Then we stopped at the hotels to distribute it, a pittance for hundreds of hungry people.
But Tyrone had their numbers, most of the families. He called them all. Let’s demonstrate at the Red Cross headquarters he proposed, luckily not too far away. I asked my activist friends. We showed up, 30-50 in all, several different days. Finally the media came. Victims spoke on TV. The Red Cross relented, granting $100 a week per family, that is if you were home when the representative came calling,
The hotels were nice, some even luxurious, but only a few had hot plates or refrigerators. Good business for the owners as occupancy isn’t so great in November. But nobody said to these displaced persons that they could stay until a place was found for them. It was week by week. Every week there was the specter of eviction and packing up and praying a new stay would be granted. As the holidays approached, more regular guests wanted in. Families began to disappear. Some to shelters far away, some to half way houses for addicts or inmates, some on the sidewalk. There was funding if you’d leave the state. Half of the hotel rooms were paid for by NYC, half by FEMA. No one knew who was in charge of his or her case. No social work agencies were assigned for weeks, and then the city gave a contract to various agencies, most prominently BRC, an organization usually concerned with picking up homeless people off the street and delivering them to shelters. They got paid for each delivery. They acted like thugs and treated the storm victims abusively.
Tyrone was invaluable. He and other concerned friends began to call meetings. There was a designated organizer for each hotel. That’s how I met 26-year-old Latoya. She led one of the hotels near Times Square and did it well. She cajoled the other evacuees to meetings and inspired them to act. Latoya had three kids, nine-year-old Moses, whom she had at age 15, three-year-old Tia, and the baby, born one month after the storm. Her 19-year-old sister was taking care of him. The father, Tom, was with Latoya in the hotel. He was Moses’ legal guardian as Latoya was too young when he was born. Then Tom spent four years in jail on weapons charges, but they had all recently moved from Pennsylvania, one month before Sandy.
Sometimes we would meet in hotel lobbies, sometime in a midtown union office. Volunteers showed up to offer writing workshops, and provide psychological counseling. Victims shared their tales of bureaucratic woe. If you wanted to keep up your welfare or food stamp or health benefits, you had to go back to your home office, far away in another borough. If your kid missed school, Administration for Childrens’ Services (ACS) would threaten you with child removal. But where should the kids go? Near the hotel? Back where they came from? How do you get around without a subway card?
Maybe some more marches were needed. FEMA had its NY offices down near City Hall. We gathered in our usual modest numbers, evacuees and supports. Tyrone and two other tried to go inside and talk to them. “Sorry,” the burly guards said. “FEMA does not interact with the public.” You can say that again.
The movement wasn’t big enough. Sandy survivors kept disappearing. Some left town. Many dispersed to shelters or who knows where. Even Tyrone got evicted and headed south. Latoya was still in the hotel with her family. She was holding up, but Tom was losing it. He began physically and psychologically abusing her and Moses. She began a domestic violence (DV) case, but a few days later the social service agency said they’d found a large apartment for all of them. They packed up all the family’s stuff and delivered it to Brooklyn. Latoya and the kids refused to go. What would Tom do in the isolation of an apartment? She didn’t want to find out. The three of them took up residence in other evacuees’ rooms. Finally she ended up in the living rooms of activists.
By now she had been designated a candidate for a DV shelter, but it’s not that simple. First they have to have room, and then they have to accept you. I heard Latoya in my living room, telling her story to one shelter intake person. She was so patient and soft spoken as she told her tale for 15 long minutes, I was very impressed. “Rejected,” the person said. “You sound too unstable for us.”
“Wait,” I said, unbelieving. “Let me speak to her. This is probably the most mature, cooperative tenant you could ever get.”
“Sorry, all decisions are final.” Finally, over two weeks since her eviction, a place said yes, and a van came to take them and their few belongings off to another borough. Now the kids would have to find new schools and a new address would have to be established for all the agencies.
At least there was a little stability, but the tales I would hear of the indignities of daily life were disturbing. Rooms were surprise inspected all the time and any violation, like not having enough food, was grounds for eviction. Not having money to buy the food was not an excuse. When her refrigerator broke and all the food spoiled, they tried that one on her. Families came and went rapidly. Latoya had found some advocates through Family Court, and she was kept from eviction by them numerous times. I remember when she broke the rule against leaving the laundry room during her two-hour time slot to take her three-year-old to the bathroom. Only the lawyers saved her then.
There are currently at least 58,906 homeless people, including 14,093 homeless families in NYC and the shelter directors must be under constant pressure to make room. Since moving residents into stable housing is almost impossible, finding a reason to evict residents is the next best option. They finally got Latoya after about a year. She was coming in one night from the subway, when a cab driver ran in the door screaming “She left my cab without paying.” So now she had not only let someone see where she lived but had committed a petty crime. She’d have to go in the morning. Thankfully, the cab driver came back later and said it wasn’t her. Maybe he’d looked at his video and realized his mistake. No matter. Now someone supposedly knew where she lived even though he didn’t even know who she was. She wouldn’t have to leave the system, but she’d have to go another borough. New schools, new agencies, new doctors.
As a DV victim, the family was under the auspices of ACS, which was charged with making the sure the children were safe and well-cared for and helping the family stay together. That is what they were supposed to do. Most workers, however, were young, inexperienced and apparently uncaring. Did that come from having too many cases or pressure to remove children after several recent child deaths of ACS clients? As the agency said to the NYT on 2/18/15, they offer only limited training and only to new employees. Initially, she had a helpful ACS worker, but all that changed in the new shelter. From then on ACS’s main role seemed to be to constantly threaten Latoya with child removal if she didn’t satisfy bizarre demands. On one occasion they visited her sister’s apartment, where her youngest was living, on a Friday afternoon. If she didn’t get a “toddler bed” by Monday, the baby would be put in foster care. “What’s a toddler bed?” I asked
In my day you went from a crib to a bed. Turns out it’s a small mattress on the floor with decorations and prices start at $60. A new way for some toy manufacturer to make money, but we had to come up with it. The ACS worker also suggested she put a child in foster care or get one on chronic medication as that way her benefits would increase. Latoya was horrified. At the end of the school year, ACS demanded that Latoya come up with $800 to pay for private summer camp for both kids. If she didn’t, they threatened, the children would be removed for neglect. No matter this was an extraordinary amount of money to pull out of a hat. Her activist friends had to come up with that. After one day the camp, which was not equipped to deal with disturbed children, refused to have Moses come back. The money was never returned to Latoya.
Moses had apparently been having trouble in school since kindergarten. He was very smart, that wasn’t the problem, and very articulate around adults. Sometimes he would make speeches at demonstrations that would blow you away. But in school, around any kind of authority figure, forget it. He wouldn’t obey instructions, was abusive to other kids and teachers and sometimes violent. The suspensions were getting more and more frequent. For 5th grade he went to a school known for its kindly child-centered policies, but even there he was uncooperative and violent at times. Near the end of the year, 5th grade, he was transferred to a special suspension school. There he was evaluated for an IEP (individual educational plan), which recommended special education for his emotional needs. Latoya was completely in agreement with this process, but no one ever asked her to sign the plan, so it was shelved, unbeknownst to her.
For middle school, Moses was assigned to a charter school with uniforms and a strict disciplinary code. Latoya was expected to buy uniforms and make other contributions to the school, something ACS was supposed to pay for but never did. She had to beg from her supporters again. The new school knew nothing of the prior problems or IEP and had no provisions for special education students. Moses lashed out even more under all the new restrictions and spent most of the year on suspension. At least this school was supportive of having a new IEP done.
Clearly Moses was in need of therapeutic intervention, which finally started 1.5 years after he came under agency supervision. The disruptions in his life had been plentiful, even before the hurricane. The family had never been independent, living in Pennsylvania with grandparents or on welfare. Latoya had been in foster care as a child, the daughter of a crack addict. Tom had spent time in jail, then become abusive of his family and was now breaking all his appointments to visit his children. Schools were always changing. Latoya had less and less idea of how to deal with her son’s behavior as it became worse and worse. Moreover, she spent the better part of every day negotiating with bureaucratic “service” providers, with whom she had to control her emotions. The only safe place to express her frustrations was with the kids. She yelled a lot. She took the multiple mandated parenting classes, but it didn’t seem to help much, at least with Moses.
When services for Moses were finally begun, the therapist was a very young woman. Only later did we learn that this provider was a social work student. There weren’t any psychiatrists at the center to begin to assess his problems, nor any psychologist who saw him directly. Eventually, Latoya recognized the futility of these sessions and took him to a local hospital’s child psychiatry department. It took about six months for a doctor to be assigned. The appointments were soon after school let out, 30 minutes from home on the bus, and if they were late the appointments were cancelled. Preventive Services, an agency Latoya had sought out to get Moses therapy in the first place, pressured her to stop these visits in order to save the cost of Metrocards and take Moses to a treatment center nearer her shelter, where there were no psychiatrists. Latoya objected, but the psychiatrist Moses was seeing, who was impressed with the depth of his problems, left the clinic after six months. After that, although his outbursts kept escalating, there was no consistent treatment.
Memorial day weekend, 2015, Moses went completely out of control. He refused to listen to his mother and ran down to the shelter office in a rage. Latoya then made a bad mistake. She somehow thought that if she called the police, they would see his behavior and frighten him into quieting down. When they came, Moses told them that she beat him and tried to strangle him with a belt. Although there was not a mark on him, the police arrested Latoya for child endangerment and felony assault. Both children were put in foster care.
It being a holiday weekend, Latoya spent it in jail, panicked over her situation and how Tia must be feeling. Myself and two other older white professionals met her in court on Tuesday morning and were able to talk with the public defender she’d been assigned. Luckily he was an experienced and compassionate lawyer who managed to get her released on her own recognizance and the charges reduced to a misdemeanor.
Latoya and her family were in the process of being moved to a subsidized apartment the week before her arrest. Immediately, that housing was cancelled, no matter the injustice of the accusation. The next week began the struggle to get back the children. They were miserable in the foster home, where the mother was combative and completely unable to manage Moses. At least the foster care agency recognized this and did move them to a better home. Now there were dates in family court to decide the children’s fate. Latoya was extremely anxious for Tia to come home, but not even sure she wanted to take Moses back as long as his behavior remained the same. She felt guilty, but the second foster mother seemed to know how to handle him better than she did. Luckily again, for it’s all the luck of the draw, the Family Court lawyer was also concerned and competent and had social workers and other assistants to help her. In a couple of weeks Tia was returned home, not too much the worse for wear. Of course, now that the family size was smaller, all her benefits were discontinued. No Medicaid, no food stamps. Food stamps are still off, three months later. Medicaid was restarted in mid-August. During the last year, Latoya became ineligible for any further cash assistance or welfare, as it used to be known, having met the five year lifetime limit imposed under Clinton. The city had gone to court to institute child support payments from Tom, but Latoya hasn’t seen a penny of it. The city keeps it all to repay her welfare “loan.”
Now the struggle over Moses’ future began in earnest. Latoya, the foster mother and the other family advocates who knew him were convinced he needed a residential therapeutic program. Getting that done meant a new set of hurdles, which included the foster care agency objecting to a new psychiatric evaluation in less than a year. A school north of the city for emotionally disturbed children was found. A new IEP was done and the Board of Education agreed to pay for this school. Moses did start there in July, but only as a day student. That’s all that was approved. The foster care agency opposed residential treatment. Is that because they would then lose funding for him? It took one week for him to be banned from the bus for attacking the matron and other students. In August, he was sent all the way upstate for a new neurologic and psychiatric evaluation. He will still be a day student, but with a paraprofessional, and will begin a mood-stabilizing drug. I hope it’s enough. Time is running out for this young man. Meanwhile a new obstacle arose for Latoya. She was informed on July 23 that she was being evicted from the DV shelter. Why? Never has a resident tried harder to get her life in order, to do all the classes and fulfill all the demands put upon her. It turns out that Latoya did not return to the shelter before curfew 18 times in two years. Most of these latenesses occurred when she or one of the children was in the ER. Two have recurrent asthma and bronchitis. Two episodes were after she got out of jail, when she was terrified and traumatized, imagining they would throw her out the minute she reappeared or make new accusations against her. She stayed with a close friend in the neighborhood. Although it is strictly against the rules to have an unexcused absence, no one made any mention of it until two months later. During that time the case worker at the shelter who had been Latoya’s main support, and many other workers supportive of clients, had been fired. The director wanted to move people. Latoya and her lawyers demanded a hearing, but it turns out the shelter is privately run by Safe Horizons and not under NYC legal jurisdiction. When a hearing was held, it was at Safe Horizon’s office, with an arbitrator who was friendly with the shelter representative. Latoya lost.
The next day Latoya became part of the PATH program, which entails making a daily early morning trip to the central Bronx office for the homeless, then receiving temporary housing for the day, keeping her belongings and young daughter with her at all times. Actually it took only two days for her to get a new placement, but the news wasn’t good. It was a single room with only bunk beds for furniture. There was a mini-refrigerator with two electric burners on top, but the unit was broken. The second day, as she kept a downtown appointment, the room was broken into and all her clothes and money were stolen. She was told she must accept this placement as there were no others.
Two days later, Latoya ended up in the hospital for 48 hours, suffering from dehydration and an infection. After that they at moved her to a similar room with a working refrigerator and burner and lots of roaches. At least it is in the same neighborhood as the old shelter, so her daughter could go back to camp.
The highest figure the city gives for people moved to more permanent housing is 6300 individuals in the last year, but that may include people like Latoya and her family, who never actually got to stay in the new housing. Mayor DeBlasio has proposed 16,000 apartments be made available for very low-income families over the next ten years. Her chances aren’t good anytime soon. Latoya would like to be a psychologist. She took two classes at Bronx Community College in 2013, but she had no time to study or time for study sessions, so she failed one. She looked for part-time work in her neighborhood, but found only occasional hours in a bar, for less than minimum wage. After paying for childcare, it wasn’t even worth it. Next year, Latoya will have only one child with her, who will be in school. She would like to try and find a job. Not only does she face the usual obstacles of the high unemployment rate, but it is likely that the many requirements placed upon her to meet with multiple agencies will making holding any job difficult. She would then be faced with working for the Work Experience Program (WEP), in which city aid recipients work 35 hours a week without salary or benefits at jobs once held by union workers and which they cannot even cite on a resume.
This is a woman with brains, integrity, ambition and leadership skills. Does she have any chance to become a productive and happy citizen and raise healthy children as a poor black homeless woman in NYC? It doesn’t seem likely. Latoya is now surviving solely on the beneficence of an activist church in Harlem where she has become an active member of the social justice committee. If she hadn’t been together enough to become a leader three years ago and forge ongoing ties with more well-to-do activists, she would be penniless. It is hard to imagine how she would be surviving without resorting to crime or prostitution. I sometimes criticize her for being late or unresponsive or irresponsible, but I think if I were ever in her position, I would have done far worse long ago. Just surviving makes her a giant.
Z