New York City’s homeless population has skyrocketed in the last decade, with approximately 60,000 people living in shelters on any given night, according to Coalition for the Homeless. “Just being inside the building, even if you can’t get a bed, is going to be a better option than going outside. “This is life-threatening weather, so to tell someone, ‘Sorry we did the lottery, you don’t have a bed and have to go outside,’ - that’s sentencing them to death,” Mayes said. But the blizzard threw all structure out the window, transforming New York City Rescue Mission into a daytime shelter as well, with many people expected to sleep up against the wall. Homeless people come in for a meal, shower, and night’s sleep, before leaving in the morning. Normally, the shelter determines who stays for the night based on a lottery and the number of beds. “We’re using every square inch of this building,” Craig Mayes, CEO of New York City Rescue Mission - a homeless shelter - told msnbc.
Other service providers were doing things differently. “There’s never been a night I’ve driven where there haven’t been at least a couple of people out.” “The 7-9 pm route is every day, even in bad weather,” Fitzgerald said. Bartholomew’s Church from 5:30 to 7 p.m., and followed by three delivery routes around Manhattan and the Bronx. And so Coalition for the Homeless, a privately funded advocacy and direct service organization, went about its business as usual - beginning with its Grand Central Food Program operated at St. But for thousands without homes, it was just another night. With hours to go before the belly of the the blizzard arrived, the van drove on.įew New Yorkers were out on the street Monday evening, most already hunkered down in their homes as instructed by city officials. William Dagnino was one of the last people to receive food from the crew in the Coalition for the Homeless Van before they had to get off the streets of Manhattan because of the state of emergency declared by New York mayor Bill De Blasio ahead of the approaching blizzard. But he was happy about one thing - Frank did take a pair of donated socks with his meal.
In that time, Fitzgerald, now a program assistant with the organization, has never been able to convince Frank to wear shoes. Paul Fitzgerald, 26, who was driving the van full of food that night, said he’d known Frank since he started as a volunteer with Coalition for the Homeless four years ago. Irritated about the bread, Frank shuffled east on 40th street toward 9th Ave., away from the second stop on the Coalition for the Homeless’ uptown feeding route. He wore no hat, no jacket and plastic bags for shoes.
Frank waited with the others for dinner from a van - meatball soup, oranges, milk, some stale bread.
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