Homeless 101: Week #1 at Bellevue - Welcome To The Machine

For the record, the men's homeless shelter on E 30th St. in New York is no longer known as Bellevue, but the locals still call it that. It is not an address of envy - not Park Av. for sure, although just a few blocks away. But as a participant in the US Repatriation program, one might wonder if the initial entry is just a little too first class. At JFK I am met at baggage claim by a pleasant man named Douglas. Douglas works for Heritage Health and Housing, a subcontractor for OTDA, the Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance, who gets the job from ISS, International Social Services, a subcontractor of HSS, the US Department of Heath and Human Services, who got the job from DOS, the US Department of State - it's a reasonably maddening combination of acronyms and agencies that make you wonder if the whole country, and not just Bellevue alone has somehow become a madhouse. But as Pink Floyd might say, "Welcome to the machine".

Douglas meets me at baggage and announces that his driver is waiting. How nice. Here I am, a man about to be homeless and I will be chauffeured into the city by a man and his driver. What's wrong with this picture? We'll get to that later. Doug's driver turns out to be his cousin, in a rather nice late model Jeep Wrangler. We trundle into Manhattan in this 4/WD and head towards Bellevue. I have not eaten on the plane as airlines in the US now charge for food and I have only $8 in my pocket. The food from Asia was part of the ticket price but in America it costs 3 to 4 dollars for a prepackaged breakfast biscuit so I decided to save what little money I have.

On the way into the city, Douglas leans over the front seat and hands me $150. "This is the first installment in your repatriation loan", he says. He also hands over a receipt and loan agreement to sign. The repatriation program allows a US citizen to borrow money from the government to get re-started in the US. The current amount for New York is $340 a month. I had read on the Internet that the amount was closer to $500 but have been told by Doug that it had been reduced by yet another government budget cutting program. How is it that we can afford to bail out banks, insurance and auto companies but can only give regular citizens $340 a month for food and needs upon re-entry? That's a question that the Occupy Wall Street protest will address as well, but that's not going to start until September 17th and here we are on the 12th. Nobody has any idea what's going to happen over the next month.

So I request a stop at Dunkin' Donuts. With $150 in my hand it's as rich as I have been in months. I deserve a donut. A stop at the shop and it is America in all its branded glory - with a Starbucks next door. We inhale a few donuts, down a coffee and it's off to the mansion, the former psychiatric hospital that was, just last year, a possible target for sale as a boutique hotel. Even Donald Trump wanted it - but it was not sold and remains the 30th Street Men's Shelter. A home away from all the other homes lost by men to the vagaries of life.

Entry to Bellevue is through a metal detector and a conveyor belt for x-ray scan of all your belongings. Guards watch and search and probe. So much for that first class ride from the airport. "Intake" begins in a small faded room with wobbly chairs and a big fat black lady sitting in a glass cubicle with a speaking hole fitted in the glass and a small slot through which to pass paper on the counter. She gives you a clipboard to sign and tells you to sit down. "This will take a few hours", says Doug, but what he really means is six hours. We are there by 10 but my room assignment doesn't come up until very late afternoon.

To be continued - Dear feed readers, I will continue this later tonight. I have a busy day and need to tend to things. Please check in to the blog later to continue...

Homeless 101.2: Happy, Scared, Known, Worried, Engaged, Hopeful, Resolved

Photo by Bryan Derballa for the Wall Street Journal

My friend says I have now been outed. Today's Wall Street Journal online features a slideshow on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) demonstration in which I 'occupy' slide #4. It's a lovely shot and it features this blog address prominently. It also hits the point of the occupation square on the head. Why are able-minded people out of work? Hits here have gone over 500 today. But is it the kind of press I need to get a job? An old line says that any press is good press so I'm going to play it that way. I do indeed live in a homeless shelter and you don't get to be in the Wall Street Journal every day. But that's where the worry begins. Will my Back To Work program see it as a productive way to go about finding work (All of my social programs could be cut if any one of them takes issue with me for any reason - and reasons can always be manufactured)? Is street theatre the kind of job hunting that will pass the system's muster. I doubt it, but it's part of my arsenal as a creative business person and to not use it would be more of a crime than most of my roommates in the shelter have committed. (Continued...)

This blog. aHBiNYC is now available as an eBook. It covers the writer's homeless experiences in New York City from September 11, 2011 through January 2013 in 245 pages and 50 chapters. To order simply use the PayPal button in the sidebar, send $10, and include your email address in the PayPal memo form. Thank you.

A Homeless Blogger In NYC Occupies Wall Street

Brush with the law

Do I protest the system that both messed me up and partially supports me? One answer: "Yes". It's the only sensible thing to do. The only way to contribute to ending a system that gives back very little to those who support it - those 99% who don't share the wealth of the 1% who control it. I saw a sign at the protest recently  that said, "The System's Not Broken. It Was Built This Way" - and that's a sorry damned comment on the whole mess, because it might be true. And so in whatever hours I can, on nights and weekends, I Occupy Wall Street, along with thousands of others, to effect the change we elected, but didn't get. Unfortunately, the first thing Obama did was bail out the banks - while the rest of America, the tax base, was left hanging. Obama, for whatever we thought we bought, sold us out. And that's sad again because I supported him, as did much of the world.

McLuhan lives!

And so I paint. In my teens I taught myself to paint signs, because I loved typography and eventually ended up working as a professional sign painter to pay for college. It was a good job, much better for me than working at Mickey D's, and the solitude of the work was always peaceful for me. It is again. I haven't lettered in 35 years. I had forgotten the meditation it provided - to think of something, to design it in my head, and then to put it to surface. The end result is never the work itself. It's the reaction it gets from others. And that feeds both the artist and the viewer. Lovely. The work is all freehand and done from a scratchy ball pen thumbnail. Making it bigger is the actual art. The sign you see says, "The Medium Is Our Message". It is paraphrased from a Marshall McLuhan expression. In this case, I meant it to describe what the demonstration in Zuccotti park is all about. About the idea of expressing ideas by assembling, and creating mass communication (The business I ended up in.). The medium is the gathering and the signs and the message is simply whatever people take from it. Not a list of demands, not a manifesto, not a protest - but a gathering together to exercise the rights of our first amendment. That's the message.

If the painting looks better at the start than it does at the finish, that's because it was painted three times. Once on Friday evening. Then again on Saturday, because the tempera paint was washed away by the rain overnight. Then again on Sunday, because it was washed away a second time. Finally on Sunday, I switched to acrylic paint that could survive the rain. For that, I had to use colours that were less brilliant, but stable after drying. It went from graphic design to street art for all the repaints, and somehow, it works that way. Maybe I could get a job being a signpainter again - if this homeless writer thing doesn't work out :)

Homeless 101.1: Is Homelessness a Crime in America?

Homeless America

At the 30th Street Men's Shelter in Manhattan one would certainly think so as truly homeless people are treated just like and along with criminals of a number of varieties. At the corner of the building hangs a sign pointing to the entrance. "Intake and Vagrancy Control", it reads. Upon entering all items must be removed from pockets, belts and watches removed and put in trays for x-ray. Then the 'clients' (as residents are duplicitously called) pass through a metal detector and are whisked with a wand if anything beeps. A combination of DHS (Department of Homeless Services) Police and rent-a cops patrol every inch of the place and one is never out of the view of security at any time, except when in a bunk room - but the bunk rooms have not locks or latches. "You watch your shit here, boy", said a guard to me. "We've got crooks and scammers and pimps and drug runners and more in here. You watch your shit all the time", he said in regard to anything I might be carrying. It applies to your behaviour as well. (Continued...)

This blog. aHBiNYC is now available as an eBook. It covers the writer's homeless experiences in New York City from September 11, 2011 through January 2013 in 245 pages and 50 chapters. To order simply use the PayPal button in the sidebar, send $10, and include your email address in the PayPal memo form. Thank you.

The Book - Born Homeless

I say "Born Homeless" without animosity but more a twinge of irony: Being here now and homeless is no news at all. Things began that way for me at the Guild of the Infant Saviour on E. 86th Street in 1956. My book, (Continued...)

This blog. aHBiNYC is now available as an eBook. It covers the writer's homeless experiences in New York City from September 11, 2011 through January 2013 in 245 pages and 50 chapters. To order simply use the PayPal button in the sidebar, send $10, and include your email address in the PayPal memo form. Thank you.