What age are you most likely to become homeless in NYC? 1 year.

October 31, 2018 2:11 PM

There is a picture of homelessness etched in public perception: a solitary, disheveled man holding a cardboard sign. But the largest single population in NYC's shelters is kids under 6. Antonio Sanchez lives with his parents and two older siblings in a studio-like apartment provided by a shelter organization. He was born into homelessness, and when he was just one week old, he was one of 11,234 children under 6 living in a shelter system that houses about 60,000 people daily. There were 1,164 children born into the shelter system last year, up from 877 in 2015, according to data obtained by the Coalition for the Homeless.
posted by stillmoving (6 comments total)

Thank you. This was a good read with excellent photography. but it's also sad.
posted by KleenexMakesaVeryGoodHat at 2:50 PM on October 31, 2018 [2 favorites]

There was a recent post on a social media sites I subscribe to, something along the lines of, "X percent of Obscenely Wealthy Person Y's income would house Z percent of the nation's homeless," and, like, 99% of the responses were, "Why do the homeless deserve it?"

I just don't even know how to process the idea of sitting in judgment of whether or not human children deserve to live in a building.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:39 PM on October 31, 2018 [19 favorites]

Thank you so much for this article. Now I'm going down the rabbit hole of related articles.
posted by bendy at 7:31 PM on October 31, 2018

Guess how many pro-life people immediately reached for their wallets to make donations to homeless shelters. Guess how many called their congressrats to encourage them to raise taxes for the public welfare.

The United States doesn't care about kids.
posted by BlueHorse at 8:52 PM on October 31, 2018 [3 favorites]

Guess how many pro-life people immediately reached for their wallets to make donations to homeless shelters. Guess how many called their congressrats to encourage them to raise taxes for the public welfare.

Or supported the labor unions that would make it possible for working parents to afford secure housing.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 11:56 PM on October 31, 2018 [2 favorites]

Companion reading for Californians: Homelessness: A Tale of Three Cities. A comparison of problems and attempts to help in SF, LA, and NYC. It also turns on the observation that NY's homelessness is much more a phenomenon for whole families, SF is much more about adults. Lots of details in the article.
posted by Nelson at 6:53 AM on November 1, 2018