Here’s how homeless kids and families are trying to survive in one of America’s richest cities

[inanna]

11 Jul 2015 at 10:32 ET

Kewanee Colbert has a full-time job prepping food for one of those fancy gourmet meal delivery services that are booming in New York and other cities. Still, he lives in a Bronx shelter for homeless families with his fiancée and three kids, ages 2, 4, and 7. While he’s grateful that his family has a roof over their heads, he sums up the experience as, “It gets to you.”

The family is not allowed to have any visitors; not even the kids’ grandmother, he says. The adults have a 9 p.m. curfew. They have to sign in and out whenever they leave the shelter, and must log in at least once a day, or they get kicked out and have to apply all over again. They’re not allowed to leave town without a very good reason — a funeral, say — and they need a special pass for that. An incomplete inventory of items banned from their unit: air-conditioner, microwave, cable TV, a large TV or more than one TV (if the family is in possession of an inappropriate size or number of TVs they have to put them in storage). In fact, most shelters only allow two pieces of luggage each. There are weekly inspections of their room, including the contents of their mini-fridge.

Still, it’s much better than the Staten Island shelter they stayed in before that. “It kind of looked like a storage room,” he says. One room for all five of them, including his four-year-old daughter, who is autistic and cried through the night, keeping the other kids up. No space for his son to do his homework. No running water in their room, no kitchen. A shared bathroom with the others at the facility. When the family stayed there, his daughter went through autistic regression. “She can’t tell us when she has to go to the restroom,” he says. “She would hold it for a long time and she just started going on herself.”

But even that was better than applying at PATH, the city’s homeless families intake center, where adults with kids go to be placed in shelter. “It was really a horrific experience,” he says. The family was denied placement when they applied last winter, so they were bussed back at 5 a.m. each and every day with their kids and all of their belongings from wherever they were temporarily being put up (the city must place people somewhere for the night when the temperature is below freezing).

cont'd...

Link: http://www.rawstory.com/2015/07/heres-how-homeless-kids-and-families-are-trying-to-survive-in-one-of-americas-richest-cities/

The guy has a full-time job. How has it come to THIS?!

[randys1]

1. I have a close family member who has to live in shelters as a result of drug addiction

The good news is he is in San Francisco where much help is offered, and now that he is on a maintenance program and not spending all day everyday hunting heroin, he can take advantage of these programs.

But life is hell even with all that help, but he isnt complaining, he is grateful.

We have such a fucked up and totally upside down system, heroin addicts stealing billions in suits on Wall Street, and yet there are people in the streets with the same addiction, homeless.

The difference?

Simple, one was born to wealth and Ivy league and the other wasnt.

[inanna]

2. Articles like this also make ME grateful....

I don't have much....but I do have a job and a roof over my head. I have enough to eat. I have a family who cares.

Hell, I even have a crappy laptop computer.

But the fella in this article is doing exactly what society has told him to do: he works full-time.

And to what end?

[niyad]

3. he has a full-time job that doesn't pay a sustainable, thriving wage.

[brer cat]

4. Right.

And I wonder if he has any chance of changing his situation in the future. He is a long way from affording housing in NYC. I can't imagine living in those conditions and not being able to see a path out.

[Igel]

5. He has a full-time job in a fairly expensive city

and is trying to support 5 people. It's always "come to this." It's not new and it's not unexpected. What's new is the mandatory shelter requirement.

When I was a kid I lived in an area that had a lot of full-time, good union jobs. It was what some sort of think of as the end of the "golden age" for American blue-collar labor. But you know what? There were parts of the community I lived in that were dirt poor, because along with those full-time middle-class wage single-bread-winner jobs there were still people who had minimum wage jobs or one of those nice jobs and huge families. Many were high-school drop outs. Our next-door neighbor is a case in point. When we moved in their house was in good shape, typical two cars family; they had a boat and went on vacation each year. 10 years later the boat was gone, the house needed serious work, and the two cars were the same two cars, one up on blocks. During those 10 years he added 3 sons to his family, and his family's needs, himself, wife, and 6 sons, outstripped his income. Today he'd need to be making $41k/year, $19.70/hr with no vacation or illness, to come up to the poverty line (more, actually, considering the state he lived in). What saved them was their oldest son got a job and helped out, and when he moved out the 2nd oldest son got a job. Etc.

So Mr. Colbert here would need to work 52 weeks per year, full time, at 13.66 to just get up to the minimum amount for the 2015 poverty guidelines for "Anyplace, USA" for a family of 5. In NYC, he'd have to make more like $15.70 ... at least.

Even at $15.70, he'd barely be able to find find a place to live for two adults and 3 kids to live. Then furniture, utilities, transportation ... Oh, and food.

The alternative is a two-income family, either he has two incomes (hard, with a curfew) or his fiancee gets a job (she's curiously absent from the income-side of the discussion, so I assume she doesn't have a job). If she worked full time, they'd probably be able to scrape by--but then there'd be 3 unattended kids at home much of the time.

Or he needs to find a skill that gets him paid more. Otherwise he's going to be subsidized at least as much as he is now, one way or another, until the kids are gone or he's single.

It's lose/lose.