(Photo: Cassidy Dawn Graves)
“It’s not so good, huh?” laughs Kathleen Webster, president of the Sara D. Roosevelt Park Coalition as she refers to the D- grade that the park received from New Yorkers for Parks. The near-failing grade was issued last year by the nonprofit whose research and policy recommendations help in advocating for more equitably distributed, sustainable and well-maintained parks in the city.
Lunch for the homeless at the Bowery Mission (Photo: Ilyse Liffreing)
Governor Andrew Cuomo began the year with a pretty progressive State of the State on Wednesday. In the annual speech, Cuomo called for 12 weeks of paid family leave, a $15 minimum wage, and emphasized the importance of reducing CO2 emissions. Looks like New York is safe from Trumpkins, Cruzinators and the like, for now anyway.
The Porter Avenue Shelter, operated by the Doe Fund (Photo via Doe Fund Facebook)
A fight is brewing between the City and the Doe Fund, a non-profit dedicated to helping provide the homeless with shelter, temporary jobs, and vocational training. The Department of Homeless services has moved to place a number of sex offenders at the organization’s Bushwick facility, but the Doe Fund claims it lacks the resources for what it says is a fundamentally different type of homeless person. After filing a lawsuit against the city, the non-profit is now appealing to the community by way of a petition and a “town hall meeting” held yesterday at its Porter Avenue shelter. But City officials, including local Council Member Antionio Reynoso and Mayor Bill de Blasio’s office, are pushing back.
“Glowing Homeless,” a neon sculpture made in response to the death of a man in McGolrick Park. (Photo: Fannie Allie)
At the start of last week, as the streets of Greenpoint became eerily empty, ten homeless men crawled into roll-out cots found in the basement of the Lutheran Church of the Messiah. While the rest of the city braced for the onset of a blizzard, these men were able to close their eyes with pillows under their heads rather than the usual wooden park benches.
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All week, we’re bringing you a series of deep dives into the surprising histories of storied addresses. Back to our usual after the New Year.
295 East 8th Street (Daytonian.com)
An ad for apartment 2W, at 295 East 8th Street, calls it “the most WOW loft you’ll ever see, fit for anyone with a flair for the spectacular.” Matt Dillon once lived in the massive brick building at the corner of Avenue B, across from Tompkins Square Park.
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(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
A group of Bowery locals and activists are once again voicing concern about a homeless shelter that has long been linked to various crimes in the East Village.
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(Photo: Ilyse Liffreing)
The pantry at The Bowery Mission is bleakly bare. Where once enough food was stored to fill up the small shopping carts of the homeless who came in looking for comfort every two weeks, now the organization has to suggest its members come only once a month. It’s in “urgent need” of more food.
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Just weeks after Richard Gere was homeless on East 10th Street, another actor is down and out on the same block, between First Avenue and Avenue A.
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Richard Gere today. (Photo: Elizabeth Flock)
We found Richard Gere this morning huddled between two trash containers on East 10th Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A, where the actor is filming Time Out of Mind, a movie about a homeless man in New York.
Just blocks away, near Tompkins Square Park, a handful of actual homeless New Yorkers pushed carts filled with bottles and cans they had collected for resale. Over on Second Avenue and East Seventh Street, a group of “travelers” sat outside the shuttered May Chan restaurant. We asked both groups of people to share a little bit about their daily life. Here are six things they said the film should portray about homelessness in New York City.
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“The real thrill existed in our new found ability to reach the fridge while still in bed.”
I often wonder if we would have ever left Manhattan, had a strange man not been living in the basement of our apartment.
Living in the city is a surreal experience for most post-grads – high rise buildings full to the brim with clouds of marijuana, organic produce, and receipts from the local dry cleaner – and if our little corner of the Lower East Side was not one of the last safe places for stowaways, vagabonds, and migrant workers, perhaps we would have continued on with life the way it was; my girlfriend, Danielle, pushing papers for a small corporate law office, and me, pitching diversity inclusive initiatives to one of the last generations of old white men in corporate advertising.
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