by
NARR (:19)
Standing near a metal gate on twenty third street….Henry Williams looks pretty good…taking in the sun. He's slight but jaunty in his neat black jeans and green sweatshirt. A pair of headphones straddles his green baseball cap. He's sixty-four years old. You might not notice anything unusual about him. But Williams is homeless.
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///bring up sound of peter's place outside and entrance hallway///
AX (: )
Henry Williams: …It's a nice place that we set up in the day time
NARR
He spends his days at a homeless drop in center called Peter's Place.
AX (
Henry Williams:…And we can play cards, watch TV and draw, do different things you know? It's really not a bad place, it's one of the best drop in centers that I know around in the city for seniors.
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///bring up sound of peter's place room…voices and activities….////
NARR (:45)
Actually, it's the only city-funded drop-in center that caters to homeless people over fifty-five. Today…staff have popped a black and white movie in the VCR….and music from another era fills the
center…A crowd of gray and not so gray heads crown nearly every chair… Some clients spend the night in those chairs but Williams heads for a shelter bed.
MB
///bring up peter's place room sounds, movie playing in
background///
AX (~10)
Henry Williams: Well they have a bus that take us to the church where we can take showers and lay down and get a good night's
sleep.
NARR (:15)
Williams grew up in Sumtner, South Carolina and came to New York in nineteen fifty nine. He worked a string of odd jobs, including a back breaking six-years in steel, until his health crumbled. Then his wife of forty years died. That set a simple but catastrophic
chain of events in motion.
AX (~30)
Henry Williams: I had one love one that I been with for 40 years and then I'm on disability, the rent was too much for me to pay, then I had to come down here and look for something cheaper…The rent would
have been like 900 dollars a month and my check was like 640 at that time, now it's only 666. That's all I get a month, you know?
MB
///post peter's place room tone, movie still playing, then warm under///
NARR ( :36)
That monthly check is called supplemental security income…or SSI…and it's a government benefit for elderly people with tiny social security checks. With nothing more than SSI…Williams arrived at peter's place about a year and a half ago. Now he spends his days the basement center packed with comfortable chairs …rows of lockers…and a tiny cafeteria in the back. He can eat three meals a day… see a doctor or counselor…get help finding housing…or just
relax.
MB
///post peter's place room tone, movie still playing, then warm
under///
NARR
Some clients look more disheveled than Williams…one man with shorn pant legs shuffles by on swollen bandaged feet. But at the computer bank behind the reception desk….sits a woman with combed white hair and a tailored suit. Peter's Place director Deborah Ellis has an office along the wall behind those computers….She says a growing number of her clients don't fit the stereotype of homelessness.
AX (:12)
Deborah Ellis: When one does picture someone who's elderly and homeless, they picture someone who's mentally ill or an alcoholic. They're not necessarily picturing someone who could look like their mother or father or grandparent
NARR
She estimates that two thirds of her clients do struggle with substance abuse or mental illness. But a growing number look more like Williams … with their low, fixed incomes…their rent, suddenly increased…and another misfortune piled on…all combining to trip a
delicate wire.
AX (
Deborah Ellis:…who because of the sky high rents in New York City are evicted from housing, they may not have been on the lease, they may have exhausted their resources for health care, lots of reasons where they wind up in this situation and walk in here and are absolutely shocked, just stunned they're here.
NARR (:15)
And more than a hundred fifty of them visit Peter's Place every day…some new…many returning. Ellis says that number has increased more than forty percent over the past few years. They never turn anyone away…but "intake"…. or the first assessment of a client's needs…felt that influx.
AX (:12)
Deborah Ellis: The number of people coming in for services was so high that at one point we had to close intake because we just couldn't meet the demand.
NARR ( :34)
Those numbers could swell even more. The latest census shows that New Yorkers are aging…more than one million are sixty five or older….and nearly twenty percent live below the poverty line… Which
puts market rate rents out of reach. Ellis says city-subsidized senior housing carries a wait list hundreds of thousands of names long. And since federal funding cuts effectively shut down the
city's 'last resort' housing program called section eight…. She says Williams' only option is a single room occupancy, or SRO, hotel.
AX (~18)
Deborah Ellis:… which can be fine but there's not enough, and they have strict criteria, and may involve clients having to move to another borough, where they don't know anybody, and they're frightened…and it can be very stressful for them.
NARR (:23)
Staff say they've started Williams' application for city-funded SROs but the process can take months. They don't want to send him to a
private SRO because those don't offer any services and they aren't always the safest places to stay. While his paperwork makes its
way through months of backlogs….
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///bring up sound of Williams outside peter's place….traffic sounds…then warm under///
….Williams steps into the warm spring sun outside Peter's place to smoke a cigarette and watch the lunchtime traffic on twenty third street.
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///fade sound of outside peter's place///
NARR (
Every evening….
MB (:02)
///Chelsea streets warm under////
///bring up sound of bus arriving////
….a yellow school bus takes clients from peter's place to a network of shelters around the city. One group pulls up every night except Friday and Saturday at the shelter carved out of a basement
room in a seminary in Chelsea. There…a small group of men can shower….have a little dinner and spend the night.
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///sound of men filing off bus///
NARR (1:20)
Six men file off the bus and head for an open gate …
MB
///men greeting shelter staff, walking into shelter///
and walk through a dark basement corridor. They emerge in a well-lit room lined with six folding cots where they'll spend the night. It's like a Manhattan studio apartment, half kitchen, half
bedroom, a wooden dining table as centerpiece. Old fashioned throw rugs line the floor…and the place is almost cozy.
MB
///fade up sound of men pulling up chairs, opening fridge, putting
dinner on table////
The men fall into a silent….choreographed routine. One plucks a wooden salad bowl from the well-stocked refrigerator while another tunes the radio and sets the alarm. They set the table with paper napkins and plates and reach into a metal tray mounded with left over cheese and fruit from a seminary luncheon. As seventy nine year old Hamp Carson snacked on a stick of monterey jack, he said he also left his apartment when the rent spiked up.
AX: (~12)
Hamp Carson: 1000 a month…I retired! All the kids got grown and married, gone, but I be getting another place.
NARR (:05)
Like other peter's place clients…..Carson's children live nearby but lead their own lives.
AX: (:~15)
Hamp Carson: My family come see me, my son come to see me all the
time, my daughter… fact they send me a card with money and
everything…brought it over there for Friday….100 dollars in there,
my lord…
NARR (:13 )
Carson and two other men pick the last grapes from a plump bunch. They sit around the kitchen table as if they were dinner guests in someone's home. There's talk of former apartments…the cold
snap…getting ready for bed.
…and tomorrow morning, the yellow school bus will come for Hamp
Carson and his bunkmates and take them back to Peter's Place.
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///fade down streets of Chelsea///
NARR (:03)
…and there…they'll wait another day.
NARR (:14)
Back at Most of us assume that if you slip off that ledge, a soft weave of ropes will catch you…But Deborah Ellis at peter's place says that's not the case for Hamp Carson.
AX (~15)
Deborah Ellis: …Really, there's nothing out there that is that safety net for them. It does not exist. We are it. And this is not what I would call an appropriate safety net for people who've lived long lives….
NARR (:13)
Outside Peter's Place one morning…Henry Williams says that…after a year and a half…he's ready to move on.
AX(:36)
Especially when you at my age, 64. Yeah. I mean…I got more years behind me than I got in the front, you know?
NARR
Kristin Espeland….Columbia radio news.