On February 8th Me and my groupmate, Alex, went to the Manhattan Church of Christ to help the homeless by giving them food. A man named Carl Garrison runs it. When I got there,e we set up chai, rs, and Carl explained what to do. There were a bunch of things to do, and there was always something you could do, so it never got boring. I started by setting up the chairs. The,n I put a bunch of cookies into cups to give to the homeless people. Then we took out boxes of Oreos and chips. Then, homeless people started coming in, and I gave them cookies and coffee. Then, after a little, we started handing out meals. We did this for a while, then took a break in a room we could chill in downstairs. After a little, I checked the time, and it was almost over. It had only felt like 45 minutes,s but 3 hours had gone by.

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Me and my partners were lucky enough to get an interview with the commissioner of the DHS (Department of Homeless Services). We got to interview Molly Park, about what she wanted to do for the city, and what she has already done for the city. When we asked her what she wanted to accomplish this year she said she has a whole list. One of the main things was reducing the numbers of homeless people, and connecting people to permanent housing. Since she was appointed for this position, she has already increased the number of people connected to permanent housing by a lot. She then talked about how covid had a big impact. During covid everyone had more services and more help, and when that all stopped, people started having nothing to eat and nowhere to live, which has caused a massive increase in homelessness in the past few years.

We asked Molly what was one thing she would change about homelessness in NYC, and she said having more housing availability. She said that NYC doesn’t have enough housing to have everyone with a roof over their heads. If it was possible she would want to make more housing available and build more places for people to live. We then asked our last question about where she thought homelessness will be in 10 years. She said that New York City will try their best to make more housing space and get as many people housed as possible. But on the other hand she said that rent will definitely keep increasing, causing homelessness to get worse and worse. Rent is already too high in NYC, so if it gets worse and worse homelessness will become an insanely big problem.

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Coalition for the Homeless has been one of the best sources throughout our project. We were lucky enough to get an interview with someone who worked there for more than 20 years! We talked to him a lot about the stereotypes on homelessness, and how it affects the homeless. He said that the stereotypes affect them a lot. He added that people stereotype the homeless to be crazy, mentally ill, drug addiction, alcoholics and raged clothing. He then said a quote that was very relatable to me, “I actually find it kind of depressing that you all have grown up in an era where mass homelessness is kind of considered a normal fact of life.” This really hit me because it is something we all see everyday, it is something that is a part of all our lives, and I completely agree with Patrick.

We then talked about homelessness in the future, and why it’s becoming worse and worse. The main reason we got was definitely inflation, and rent being higher and minimum wage not being enough. He then said he helped a man, who waited 7 ½ years on the affordable housing list to get permanent housing. He then contrasted the US to Europe. He gave us a statistic about how in Belgium, ⅓ of people in Belgium get housing with a poor income, which is insane how housing is so affordable compared to NYC.

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We interviewed Patrick on February 11th and we mostly asked him about the causes of homelessness and homelessness stereotypes. Patrick Markee worked as the former deputy executive director at Coalition for the Homeless for 20 years. He said that one of the main causes of homelessness is the affordable housing gap. The affordable housing gap is the money difference between someone’s salary and their rent. Patrick told us that rent is growing higher and higher each year while the average salary in New York is barely increasing. Patrick also told us about how when he was a child in New York City he never saw any homeless people living on the street, making him believe there were none. It was only till he moved to Boston to college when he noticed mass amounts of homeless people on the streets, making him believe that all of a sudden homelessness had become a big problem. Even though Patrick has dedicated 20 years of his life to working with Coalition for the Homeless before he obtained proper knowledge he believed certain stereotypes about homelessness that almost everyone believes. Patrick has spent his career educating people on the real meaning of homelessness and we are very lucky that we were able to obtain a small amount of his expertise.

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Franklin Spurbeck works as a senior research assistant at Portland Universities Homelessness Research & Action Collaborative. Franklin’s job is to turn data into a clear and efficient analysis. For example, if 10 people are interviewed about how expensive their rent is Franklin will take their answers and turn them into statistics and graphs regarding past information and future prediction. After Franklin has created new statistics and compared them to other versions of data figuring out the causes and effects of homelessness becomes a lot easier. We asked Franklin some questions about homelessness and its main cause. The three main answers we got were, housing costs, income, and substance abuse. All of these things Franklin believes are the main causes/contributors to the homelessness epidemic. Another big takeaway that we took from our interview was how mental health affects an unhoused person. Specifically how negative stereotypes affect an unhoused person’s mental health. There are certain stereotypes that all homeless people are drug addicts, and that every homeless person wants to kill you and those things are just not true. Even though, yes there are some crazy people out there, they are less than ⅓ of NYCs unhoused population. It’s because of these fake ideas people have been so unempathetic towards the unhoused community. Franklin proved our thesis that New York City’s homeless community is often stereotyped and standardized as a crazy group of individuals all living on the street due to mental institutions closing almost 100 years ago by explaining to us that due to people’s fear and unwillingness to trust, homelessness has become a norm due to no one wanting to disrupt the century long tradition of normalizing the unhoused. If people were able to see past the stereotypes and minority of mentally unstable individuals they would understand that being unhosued is not a self brought curse. It is something you cannot control. If the public opened their hearts up, maybe landlords wouldn’t raise their rent a crazy high amount or an employer would look past the fact that someone didn’t have a home a couple of years ago. If people were able to do that the world would truly be a better place and we know this because of Franklin Spurbeck.

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In this fieldwork we interviewed Franlin Spurbeck, a researcher on the homeless. I again was a note taker, and so was Hudson, and Stevie did the talking. She shared very valuable information with us and helped us learn more about our topic because they are an expert on it. They educated us on many things such as facts about effects from homelessness, and ways to stop homelessness.

Something that they said that caught my attention was that being homeless can make kids have a less likely chance of having a better future, and a good education. She said education can play a big role in being homeless, because when so, you must make good choices to maybe make it out. If you have a bad education it can cause being an alcoholic and making bad choices to help yourself.

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My grade and I went to MCNY. We took the train to 103rd Street. When we got there they took us upstairs and talked about the importance of activism in NYC. Then we got to see all the different types of activism in NYC. We saw disability rights, Black rights, women’s rights, trans rights, and many more.

I liked the museum for many reasons. I liked the look of the museum and how they set everything up. It looked modern, and there was some nice artwork. I liked the activist exhibit because there were different sections for different activism. I liked this because it felt like you could toon into that world of activism. Overall the trip was really fun and I liked it.

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On January 17 our group interviewed Marcia Flores. She is the education partnerships manager at Advocates for Children of New York. What this means is she tries to get kids who are homeless, schools near their shelter. Because the shelters are assigned randomly a lot of times kids are put in homeless shelters far from their school, Marcia tries to help kids by changing their shelter to somewhere closer to their school.

Marcia explained that her and her team have to look at data from schools to tell if a kid is homeless. They do this by checking how many times kids have been absent. If a kid has been absent more than 17 times they investigate. They do this by contacting the family and child. They then try to work with them to get a closer shelter.

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My grade and I went to the Museum of the City of New York on Friday the 24th of January. We visited the activist exhibit and learned about so many different things about activism. We started the visit in a colorful room that talked about anti- asian hate and was a woman who did activism through artwork. That was my favorite part of the trip. Then we all got papers to make little activist circles. I made mine about homeless rights on where to live and stay, which ties to my CAP topic, “Homelessness in NYC”. Then we entered a different room that had many different sections for different things, like Transgender Activism, and Women’s Rights Movement, which were the main ones we talked about. Overall I think the trip was cool and interesting, and I am glad we went.

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In this fieldwork me and my group members interviewed Marcia Flores, who is a part of the organization, Advocates for Children of New York. Me and my partners have roles in our interviews. I was the note taker so I was taking notes on her answers to our questions. My two partners, Stevie and Hudson were asking the questions and engaging in the conversation with Marcia Flores. I wrote very fast trying to catch words and examples she said, in total I wrote two pages of notes. The interview lasted about 45 minutes and the conversation was very friendly and informative.

Something that really caught my attention by what Marcia was saying is the way the shelter system works, the way the shelter system doesnt care about where people are living or going to school. Marcia gave a great example saying that, if a kid goes to school in Queens but can get put in a shelter in the Bronx or somewhere far from school or old housing. Marcia then shared a story about a 12 year old girl who was homeless with her mother, and was autistic and needed a special education. It was very interesting to hear about how hard it was to find them a shelter and the right education for their daughter. Overall I think this interview went very well and I learned so much new things about homelessness and how it affects education.

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On Friday the 17th me and my group interviewed Marcia Flores. Marcia Flores works for AFC (Advocates for Children of New York) and for Project LIT. At AFC she focuses on educational rights for children as well as partnering with homeless shelters and doing press interviews regarding her knowledge and expertise in her field. Our interview with her was over zoom and it took 31 minutes and 46 seconds.
We mainly asked Marcia about the causes/effects of homelessness and what NYC government should do to help decrease homelessness. She said that one of the main reasons people are living on the streets is because they cannot afford housing, especially with young children. She also said that a lot of homeless children that she works with are immigrants or migrants who do not speak English, therefore making the process of trying to find affordable housing ten times harder. She said that, yes mental health can cause homelessness but not as much as you think. Most homeless people suffering from mental illness are the people you see walking to school or on the train, the people making themselves known, who people like Eva Pinkley, who we did an earlier interview on, are trying to get out of the streets and into shelters with good mental health services. But the people Marcia works with are the people you don’t see. People couch surfing and living in shelters. Those people make up the majority of NYCS homeless community. Marcia also told us that being homeless as a child is almost a lifelong sentence of struggle. If you were homeless as a child but have just rented an apartment with your savings it seems like you will not have to worry about not having a home anymore, right? However, no one will hire you if you were homeless, even if that was 10+ years ago, therefore you cannot get a job, will not be able to pay rent, and will end up homeless once more. Marcia believes that NYCS government should hire more bilingual teachers as well as assigning children to schools that are close to their shelters or living location. She thinks that if that gets done New York’s 146,000 homeless children will have a better chance at a successful education, and hopefully future.

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I interviewed Eva Pinkley in order to learn more about homelessness in NYC. Eva Pinkley works for a non profit organization who help homeless people over the course of many years. The organization focuses on building trust with the homeless community and mostly helps people with addiction or mental/physical trauma.

Eva does field work every single day across all the boroughs and she believes that racial discrimination definitely plays a large role in who lives on the streets. She believes that 99% of New York City’s homeless are non white (not a backed up fact.) She also believes that the main cause for homelessness is mental and physical trauma, and the fact that most communities do not have access to good mental health care. She thinks that if New York City’s government made mental healthcare free and advertised it more New York’s homeless population would decrease rapidly.

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