A NIGHT OUT IN NYC
by Jan Carlsson-Bull
July 11, 2004
Walking across East 79th Street, on my way back from lunch in the park with my daughter, Shana, I was buoyant. It was a blue-sky day in the late spring. I had just spent quality time with my eldest daughter. We had lolled around my favorite spot in Central Park, the boat pond, near the bronze sculpture of Alice in Wonderland and the Mad Hatter. I was taking my time. I was paying attention to the details of my brief sojourn, when I came to a standstill, riveted by the stunning array of peach-colored roses filling the modest square footage at the base of a not so modest brownstone. I bowed to sample the aroma.
"That's a Georgia peach, Ma'am!" I turned to spot one of New York's finest, a policeman with a head of hair just about the color of those roses. "Oh," I responded. "If you think those are pretty, you should try the Mr. Lincolns. Nothing holds a candle to Mr. Lincolns, ya know. We grow them in our yard. The Georgia peach just doesn't compare." His smile was broad, and his eyes flashed as he delivered with high enthusiasm his opinions on roses and gardening, and the neighborhood. Oh yes, it was a New York moment. Now a New York moment isn't the same as a New York minute. As you well know, a New York minute is in no time at all. A New York moment is to be savored.
There have been so many for me, so many moments worth savoring in this city of unpredictable beauty and unexpected commentary. "Expect the unexpected!" was the mantra of the Village Voice when I first arrived here, in the mid 1960s. I expected the unexpected and got it, as I hopped a subway, the "7th Avenue IRT," from my Upper West Side dorm at Union Theological Seminary. I was intent on discovering all the legendary neighborhoods of this city. Off I went to Washington Heights and the Cloisters; to Washington Square Park and the Village; to East Harlem and the melange of Hispanic, Italian, and African American; to the West 60s and the rising arts complex that was becoming Lincoln Center, and yes, all the way to Queens for the very last day of the World's Fair.
Those landmarks have personal layers embedded in their karma. The daughter I met for lunch just days ago in Central Park was the daughter I had taken almost every day of her toddler years to Washington Square Park, when the Village became my home. The frontage of Lincoln Center, with its glistening fountain and panoramic view of the Chagall murals, conjures up the many evenings I was lucky enough to get standing room only at the Met. Then there's East Harlem, where I would spend my seminary intern year working in a community center and living on the same block where the renovated brownstone housing the Booker T. Washington Learning Center now stands. There was even the Fulton Fish Market, in its funky malodorous days before the runaway commercialism of South Street Seaport. There was the East Village—just as it was becoming known as the East Village—and St. Mark's-in-the-Bouwerie, the site of my seminary field work, the church whose sanctuary I would return to decades hence for the memorial services of my late brother-in-law and sister-in-law, both avant-garde dancers in what would become known as TriBeCa.
Now there's the Upper East Side and this church and this glorious sanctuary, which resonates with the memories of these past seven years, this precious time during which I've come to know so many of you as I've been privileged to serve as one of your ministers.
And yes, there's Montclair—Montclair, New Jersey, where I've lived for the past 25 years, where my husband, Dan and I met and where we raised our three daughters. Montclair is the community that has oft been compared to the Upper West Side, and comparable it is with its varied architecture, its diverse populace, its state-of-the-art jazz, its cutting edge theatre, and its ever-growing roster of cafes and bistros that observe city hours for the town's citified patrons.
New York City—in and near it—has been home for a good long time, and a New York cop who waxes eloquent on roses is just no longer a surprise. He's a neighbor, with his own roots deeply embedded in city soil.
New York City, home. While I actually lived here for a spare eleven years, my husband is convinced that I've lived in every neighborhood—maybe because I'm ready, like my NYPD acquaintance, to render opinions and stories on just about every neighborhood. Of course Dan is also convinced that everyone who has done anything worthwhile is Unitarian Universalist, but that's another sermon. The reality is that New York City is in my blood.
So how is it that I'm moving? How is it that Dan and I are pulling up stakes from these communities we love and heading to Massachusetts, to Boston's South Shore, at the end of this month? Even with the welcoming call to become Minister of First Parish Unitarian Universalist in the coastal community of Cohasset, where seagulls outnumber pigeons, we'll miss New York. I will miss this city profoundly, and I will miss you profoundly.
Moving is discomforting. We're pulling hard on those roots that are so deeply embedded as we consider how to transplant to a new community, how to affiliate with a new city, and as we ponder the risk of breathing Mets and Yankees in Red Sox territory. We're even trading a city that hosts one major party convention for a city that will host the other.
I'm in transition, holding on to the home that's here, looking ahead to the home that's there. It's unsettling, anxiety producing, and reminds me that I'm a lousy Buddhist, completely unable to walk a straight line through this bardo of relative privilege—moving from one home to another.
I wonder. I just wonder. What must it feel like to be in transition with no end in sight? What must it feel like to move from one home to no home? What must it feel like to have only a shelter as your prospect for a bed—no comfy sofa to stretch out on, no place for mail delivery, no refrigerator to open after you walk in the door, no place to put your toothbrush where if you go away and come back hours or days or weeks later, it will still be there? What must it feel like to be out on the street?
This past May, a few of us sampled a response to that question. From this congregation and with members of over 60 faith communities, we gathered in City Hall Park to participate in the 20th Annual Interfaith Convocation and Overnight City Budget Vigil for Housing Justice to witness to homelessness and the need for affordable housing in this otherwise great city of ours.
It was fortunate timing. All Souls' Task Force on Housing had just been formed. Its goal? Affordable housing for all. Its prospects for achieving this goal? Participation in building programs for low-income families, support of faith-based shelter programs, and advocacy—especially collaborative interfaith advocacy—of fair housing policies. While some of us had been involved for more than a year with the East Side Congregations for Housing Justice, the birth of this task force marks a formal commitment to take on the mega-issue of homelessness and housing through faith-based action.
Let me offer some context. Two of the leaders in this task force have been regular volunteers at our Monday Night Hospitality. For those unfamiliar with this activity, every Monday night throughout the year, holidays included—even Christmas Eve, volunteers from All Souls and greater New York City serve dinner to upwards of 160 homeless guests. Every Friday noon throughout the year, holidays included, volunteers from this congregation and our larger community serve noonday dinner to upwards of 100 homeless guests. So many of you make such a difference in the lives of our neighbors who are barely hanging on and who know what it is to be in what can easily feel like perpetual transition, without a home, dependent on shelters, and all too commonly, residents of the street.
It makes a difference to feed the hungry. It does. But if we stop there, I believe, I firmly believe, that we'll be serving ourselves with the illusion that this is enough. Now please hear me. Our dinner hospitality programs are stellar; we need to feed the hungry. But we live in a city that can do better. We live in a city that can mobilize the will and the way to provide everyone with the permanent shelter that we call a home.
So we summoned our energy for the day-into-night witness known as "Building the Blessed City." Two of our members made their way to City Hall Park early in the afternoon of Friday, May 13, to join others in erecting a "House for the Blessed City." We built a house in City Hall Park—well, a very small house. Its four walls carried signage setting forth the four major policy areas needed to end chronic homelessness in New York: permanent housing; homelessness prevention; human rights, emergency and support services; and employment and income support. We completed these walls with 20 planks representing the comprehensive policy platform—five planks per wall. For example, on the wall signifying "Permanent Housing Production," was a plank advocating the need to maximize incentives for developers to create more affordable housing by overhauling current zoning and tax incentive programs. On the wall signifying "Employment and Income Support" was a plank advocating a raise in the federal and state minimum wage. This House for the Blessed City was our physical statement—an interfaith statement—of the need for systemic change to end chronic homelessness.
I arrived as the house was being completed—a convenient time, I suppose, since I avoided the hammer and nail part of the day. I did get to share in the enthusiasm of placing a decorative tile just under the roof, the tile of our All Souls' Task Force on Housing. It bore the design of our flaming chalice and was one of 60 tiles affixed to this house by congregations throughout the city.
In the early evening, we walked the few blocks to St. Paul's Chapel for the convocation. St.Paul's was packed. For me, it was one of those occasions, when New York moments are layered, poignantly layered. Huddling in a pew with my friends from All Souls and other congregations, I found that we were surrounded by museum-like photographic reminders of the hospitality extended to the firefighters and other rescue workers by St. Paul's in the days and weeks following the events of September 11, 2001. As one of the chaplains at Ground Zero, I had been among the clergy recipients of their 24/7 welcome. It came rushing back, and the needs and pain and hospitality of this city came rushing in. I sat there and recalled that issue of the Village Voice that came out in the later weeks of that memorable September. On its cover were the spectral images of the homeless who inhabited the streets surrounding the towers. How could I forget? Memory piled upon memory. Human need layered human need.
We filed out of the chapel and headed back to City Hall Park, gearing up for our overnight vigil. By then I had met a woman in her 30s who had just found an apartment through one of my colleagues at a church in this neighborhood. I'll call her Katherine. Katherine had been homeless for close to a year. She is smart, attractive, petite, blond, well groomed, and articulate. She's also a good teacher. "When I was homeless," she remarked, "I was careful not to let my parents know it. My brother was going through some rough times, and they all lived several hundred miles from here. They couldn't have handled it!" I paused. "So you were homeless and you never asked your family for help?" I wondered aloud. "They couldn't have handled it," she repeated matter-of-factly. She continued. "You know, Jan, what really undid me was when I found myself talking with a woman who wasn't homeless, someone in the church who had discovered that I was, and this woman looked at me and said, ÔBut Katherine, you're too pretty to be homeless!" You're too pretty to be homeless.
What kind of "pretty" safeguards any of us from losing our homes? What is a homeless person supposed to look like? What are our stereotypes anyway, and how do we trip over them? For all that policeman on 79th Street knew, I could have been homeless, taking a whiff of that rose with the most wistful longing for a permanent place to grow it.
My night out was filled with conversations of reality and speculation—the reality of my new street neighbors for whom this wasn't a night out, but one of countless nights out, and the speculation of fellow advocates around what difference this might make. At midnight, we were politely asked by the neighborhood police to vacate the park itself. Was everyone politely asked every night this happened?
We formed a border of blankets and sleeping bags around the closed gates. Some slept. I didn't. I hung out and talked and listened and kept my eyes peeled for creatures of the night whose presence I would just have to get used to if I had no other choice.
So many folks passed by, on their way home from neighborhood clubs and bars, laughing, occasionally leering, at this larger than usual encampment. Some stopped to talk. Why are you here? "Most of us are only here for a night," I replied. We're just a few of the 39,000 New Yorkers who don't have a home, roughly half of them, children." I went on. "Did you know that the federal standard for an "Extremely Low Income Household" is around $15,000, which at a stretch would allow a monthly rent of about $400? " One passerby turned to me and asked, "Are you homeless?" Why should I have been surprised? What a logical question of time and place.
I thought and reflected with my friends on the street, "This is May. It's almost summer. What if we were here in November or December? What then?" In my memory's eye I recalled the gentleman who sleeps on the grating over the subway on Lexington Avenue between 77th and 78th. Heat rises, they say. That's what he counts on at least. I recalled going next door to Fleet Bank one Sunday morning to encounter another gentleman curled up on the floor of the ATM lobby.
I thought of our prospective move, about putting our house on the market and pulling up roots, and it all took on a different perspective, a much different perspective. I was a person of privilege, moving from home to home. I'm a minister, with a church home here and a promised church home where I can speak freely about what we can do to end homelessness. I'm a parent of privilege, who can and has offered home beyond the college years to our daughters. And with you, I'm a person whose faith calls us to action.
My night out gave me an inkling of how privileged I am, how privileged most of us are this morning as we gather in this sanctuary. Like the innkeeper in the story told by Bill, we can leverage our privilege and draw on our power to make a difference in this city we love. We can render our own brand of calling out to the Mary's and Joseph's of New York, "Don't go! Come back! You can have my room!" Maybe, just maybe, we can join with our Task Force on Housing, with our East Side Congregations for Housing Justice, with our city's Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing and make good on that possibility. What a New York moment that will be.
Is it possible? Oh yes, it's possible. I know it's possible, because I know who you are. I know how generous you are. I know how smart you are too. And how determined you are, once you decide. We're moving, yes, but I will always feel at home with you. I will always feel at home in this city. Why wouldn't I want the same for every New Yorker? I will always love you. I will always love this city. Amen.
Sources:Dina Donohue, "Trouble at the Inn," in Treasured Stories of Christmas, The Editors of Guideposts, Inspirational Press, New York, 1997, 132-34.
Facts About Housing & Homelessness, Multiple sources: National Low Income Housing coalition, Washington Post Ð March 14, 2004; The State of the Nation's Housing 2003, Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies; Paycheck to Paycheck: Wages and the Cost of Housing in America. Center for Housing Policy/National Housing Conference, May 2003.
Mark Hallinan, "Building Change," America: the National Catholic Weekly, March 8, 2004. http://www.housingfirst.net/n2004_03_08_america.html
Program of The 20th Annual Interfaith Convocation and Overnight City budget Vigil for Housing Justice Ð May 13, 2004, St. Paul's Chapel, coordinated by the Interfaith Assembly on Homelessness and Housing.
Joe Weisbord, Executive Director of Housing First, Presentation to East Side Congregations for Housing Justice, May 24, 2004, summarized by Father Mark Hallinan, Chair, ESCHJ Steering Committee.
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