One would assume that so long as you’ll be able to maintain a gentle job and handle your cash moderately properly, you must be capable to afford an honest place to stay. However for hundreds of New Yorkers, it’s not that easy.
The New York Instances detailed in a report how some folks working regular jobs — making as a lot as $50,000 per yr — are nonetheless compelled to stay in shelters as an alternative of their very own houses.
Based on the report, a few third of the households dwelling in New York Metropolis’s homeless shelters have at the least one grownup that goes to work. However a scarcity of inexpensive housing choices within the metropolis implies that lots of them are relegated to what the story refers to as “employment shelters,” amenities which might be focused to assist individuals who work full-time and part-time jobs.
The function takes a take a look at the routines and backstories of a number of folks. One man had cut up time caring for his ailing mom whereas driving a taxi at night time, however was kicked out of the home his late father bought in 2023 after the COVID pandemic. A single mom of a toddler son, who works as a household advocate by day, misplaced her condominium after her mom needed to transfer right into a nursing dwelling. In some way, she makes an excessive amount of cash to qualify for meals stamps.
One other man had spent years advancing by totally different positions as an worker of the Division of Recreation. After shedding his longtime condominium in a fireplace and making an excessive amount of cash in the summertime to qualify for one of many metropolis’s housing vouchers, he took lesser pay as a fireplace guard. He’s now one in all greater than 10,000 folks with housing vouchers who’re actively searching for open residences as the town’s emptiness fee is the bottom it’s been in 50 years.
Homelessness in New York Metropolis already impacts these coping with psychological sickness and habit. However this story paints an image that exhibits the housing disaster is deeper than many understand.
“New York Metropolis is changing into extra for the rich, and I don’t assume that’s going to finish properly,” stated Kuber Sancho-Persad, the taxi driver referenced above. “ why? Poor folks make this metropolis go.”