Posted on December 9, 2013 by Patrick Markee This week’s stunning New York Times series tells the heartbreaking story of Dasani, a homeless girl living in a notoriously bad City-run shelter. Her moving story is a window into the day-to-day hardships of homeless kids and the failure of Bloomberg homeless policy. The remarkable article is by award-winning journalist Andrea Elliott, who followed Dasani and her family for more than a year, and it deserves to be read in its entirety – you can find part one of the five-part series here, and there are loads of photos and videos accompanying the piece. Among other things, Elliott’s article shines a spotlight on the horrific conditions at the Auburn Family Residence in Brooklyn, a notorious shelter run directly by the NYC Department of Homeless Services. The scandalous conditions there – running the gamut from fire safety hazards to vermin infestation to mold to horrendous misconduct by shelter staff – are a bracing counterpoint to Mayor Bloomberg’s infamous remark last year that shelter is a “pleasurable experience.” The article also highlights the disastrous failures of Bloomberg’s homeless policies, in particular how his administration took away Federal housing aid for homeless children and families and replaced them with short-term subsidies that became a revolving door back to homelessness. Dasani’s family was enrolled in two of those failed short-term subsidy programs – Housing Stability Plus and Advantage – and as a result has spent years cycling through the costly and decrepit shelter system. Following are a few excerpts from this stunning article, but the complete five-part series demands to be read: Nearly a quarter of Dasani’s childhood has unfolded at Auburn, where she shares a 520-square-foot room with her parents and seven siblings. As they begin to stir on this frigid January day, Dasani sets about her chores. … Dasani guards her feelings closely, dispensing with anger through humor. Beneath it all is a child whose existence is defined by her siblings. Her small scrub-worn hands are always tying shoelaces or doling out peanut butter sandwiches, taking the ends of the loaf for herself. The bond is inescapable. In the presence of her brothers and sisters, Dasani has no peace. Without them, she is incomplete. Today, Dasani rides the creaky elevator to the lobby and walks past the guards, the metal detector and the tall, iron fence that envelops what she calls “the jail.” She steps into the light, and is met by the worn brick facade of the Walt Whitman projects across the street. She heads east along Myrtle Avenue and, three blocks later, has crossed into another New York: the shaded, graceful abode of Fort Greene’s brownstones, which fetch millions of dollars. “Black is beautiful, black is me,” she sings under her breath as her mother trails behind. Dasani suddenly stops, puzzling at the pavement. Its condition, she notes, is clearly superior on this side of Myrtle. “Worlds change real fast, don’t it?” her mother says. In the short span of Dasani’s life, her city has been reborn. The skyline soars with luxury towers, beacons of a new gilded age. More than 200 miles of fresh bike lanes connect commuters to high-tech jobs, passing through upgraded parks and avant-garde projects like the High Line and Jane’s Carousel. Posh retail has spread from its Manhattan roots to the city’s other boroughs. These are the crown jewels of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s long reign, which began just seven months after Dasani was born. In the shadows of this renewal, it is Dasani’s population who have been left behind. The ranks of the poor have risen, with almost half of New Yorkers living near or below the poverty line. Their traditional anchors — affordable housing and jobs that pay a living wage — have weakened as the city reorders itself around the whims of the wealthy. Long before Mayor-elect Bill de Blasio rose to power by denouncing the city’s inequality, children like Dasani were being pushed further into the margins, and not just in New York. Cities across the nation have become flash points of polarization, as one population has bounced back from the recession while another continues to struggle. One in five American children is now living in poverty, giving the United States the highest child poverty rate of any developed nation except for Romania. This bodes poorly for the future. Decades of research have shown the staggering societal costs of children in poverty. They grow up with less education and lower earning power. They are more likely to have drug addiction, psychological trauma and disease, or wind up in prison. Dasani does not need the proof of abstract research. All of these plights run through her family. Her future is further threatened by the fact of her homelessness, which has been shown, even in short spells, to bring disastrous consequences. Dasani’s circumstances are largely the outcome of parental dysfunction. While nearly one-third of New York’s homeless children are supported by a working adult, her mother and father are unemployed, have a history of arrests and are battling drug addiction. Yet Dasani’s trials are not solely of her parents’ making. They are also the result of decisions made a world away, in the marble confines of City Hall. With the economy growing in 2004, the Bloomberg administration adopted sweeping new policies intended to push the homeless to become more self-reliant. They would no longer get priority access to public housing and other programs, but would receive short-term help with rent. Poor people would be empowered, the mayor argued, and homelessness would decline. But the opposite happened. As rents steadily rose and low-income wages stagnated, chronically poor families like Dasani’s found themselves stuck in a shelter system with fewer exits. Families are now languishing there longer than ever — a development that Mr. Bloomberg explained by saying shelters offered “a much more pleasurable experience than they ever had before.” Just three days before the mayor made that comment at a news conference in August 2012, an inspector at Auburn stopped by Dasani’s crowded room, noting that a mouse was “running around and going into the walls,” which had “many holes.” “Please assist,” the inspector added. “There is infant in room.”
